The Giant Rat Of Sumatra Papua New Guinea

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never did write The Tale of the Giant Rat of Sumatra. He did mention it in one of his Sherlock Holmes stories, but there was never an explanation as to why the tale had never been told. Perhaps it was because he couldn’t find the rat.

Scientists have discovered a new species of giant rat in a remote rainforest in Papua New Guinea.

Measuring 82 centimeters (32.2 inches) from nose to tail and weighing around 1.5 kilograms (3.3 pounds), the species is thought to be one of the largest rats ever to be found.

The discovery was made by a team from the BBC Natural History Unit inside the crater of Mount Bosavi — an extinct volcano in the Southern Highlands province of Papua New Guinea.

“This is one of the world’s largest rats. It’s a true rat, the same kind you find in the city sewers,” said Kristofer Helgen, a biologist from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, who was part of the expedition team.

Initial examinations of the rat — provisionally named the Bosavi woolly rat — suggest that it belongs to the Mallomys — a genus of rodents in the muridae family which are the largest living species of rodent.

That’s a lot of rat in one package.

All we here at the Crabitat know is that we have no desire whatsoever to see one in person. We have seen garden-variety sewer rats that were actually larger than that and we still have the mental scars.

We do, however, wonder if this team of scientists may not have stumbled onto a breeding site used by the Animal Uprising™. Just in case, we are setting the automatic flamethrower turrets on “Full Vaporization”.

One can’t be too careful.