PAPUA NEW GUINEA – Scientists have discovered one of the world’s largest rats in a secret volcano!
The new species has been temporarily called the ‘Bosavi woolly rat’ until a scientific name is chosen. The trapped specimen weighed about 3.5 pounds and was almost 3 feet long!
It was first caught on an infrared camera trap but scientists had to see it in person to be sure it was a new species. It has a silver-brown coat of thick long fur, which is believed to protect it from the drastic temperature changes in the volcanic crater.
Mount Bosavi, the species found, is an extinct volcano that lies in the remote Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea.
Members of the local Kasua tribe, who acted as trackers for the expedition, live outside the crater, which is 2.5 miles wide and has walls up to 3,000 feet high, trapping the creatures that live within.
BBC News has video of the discovery of the rat.
That's amazing! It shows the importance of the world's rainforest and how much is still undiscovered.
this wants me to get into the study of "whatever you call it." cant believe theres still alotta unknown species out there.
pssh it's just a baby R.O.U.S.
Awwww, such a cute happy creature :))
its so amazing how he's just chilling while foreign creatures are petting him..
Yes! Another creature to destroy!
I,m with you on this.
just look at how they have gone in there like a bull at a gate without any thought of what diseases they may be giving to the poor animals.
At the very least they should be wearing masks & gloves.
Why is it that these so called wild life experts fel the need to handle the animals.
Too many wildlfe programmes show the poor animals being captured, poked, held & all sorts of tests being carried out on them.
You're an idiot. They are not 'poking' him or 'testing' him for anything, he seems quite happy to be stroked. If he really was distressed at all, he'd show some signs of defense at least.
P.s There is virtually no diseases or infections which can be passed from human to rodent, so why don't you save your animal cruelty speech for people who aren't trying to save these animals like the people on the video.
If i remember right in that volcano the rat had no natural preditors as the volcano is sacred or something like that thus the rat has evolved no sence of fear so theres nothing wrong with handelling it if they rake the rigth percortans im sure if the Rat didn't want to be handles it would just walk away
isn't it good that we acnolage the existance of thease newlyfound creatures so that we can learn to look after the habitat that they live in?
pluss animal lovers would watch this show so why would they risk loosing viewers and money by not taking the right percortiona behind the camera because they know that it would be leaked 🙂
I want one……..and ill breed em and set em free throughout the world..hahahahhaha
So cool.
Though I might have nightmares about "giant rats"…
I bet they would make great pets. I wouldn't mind owning a few.
they weren't coughing on it or anything "animal lover". or even man handling it in any way it didn't seem to enjoy. as much as i agree with your thoughts about wearing gloves and preventing the spread of our own bacteria which may be harmless to us, to them, they were being respectful of it. also, we can't possibly know all of what precautions they did take. this is in fact, a video less than two minutes long.
World's biggest rat?…Clearly they've never been to New York!
I think it's amazing, and disturbing, that it has no fear of humans
this is really creepy but i found a dead rat on my tank…you couldn't see much…most of it was flesh and bones but it looked like that…im in sydney is this possible lol
i have a pet rat and she is really cute when he said the rat was like a puppy i laughed because it reminded me of my rat
Amzaing the world's biggest rat was found in a secret volcano. On the image it doesn't look like a pretty big. Creepy!
Creepy creature! Hate them!Agreed! One more creature to destroy everything. That's the entire nighmare.