Don’t think there’s nothing left to discover on this planet. A new species of giant rat was found in Papua New Guinea, measuring about 32 inches from nose to tip of tail. It was very friendly to humans:
Dr McGavin said the vegetarian rat was incredibly tame: “It just sat next to me nibbling on a piece of leaf. It won’t have seen a human before. The crater of Bosavi really is the lost world.”
The animal has a silver-brown coat of long, thick fur that probably helps it to survive the wet, cold winters inside the 1,000m high crater walls.
There are also frogs with fangs, plus several other previously unknown species. There’s video here and here.
The discoveries are being seen as fresh evidence of the richness of the world’s rainforests and the explorers hope their finds will add weight to calls for international action to prevent the demise of similar ecosystems. They said Papua New Guinea’s rainforest is currently being destroyed at the rate of 3.5% a year.
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.
You must be logged in to post a comment.