Mythical rat lives in the trees

For many years, the people of the Salomon Islands in the Pacific have sung songs and told stories about a large, tree-dwelling rat with a bite that is strong enough to cut through coconuts. The animal was only known from those stories until 2015, when an Australian scientists discovered one during a forest expedition. The rat was sitting in a tree, which the locals cut down, and the fall injured the rat, which only survived for a few days. So, the scientist could only bring hair and bones back to the lab – but that was sufficient to classify the new animal, Uromys vika. The rat is about 50 cm long and weighs approximately 1 kg, making the rare animal about four times larger than ordinary rats. The giant rat has large, sharp teeth, and in the forest, the scientist found several penetrated coconuts as evidence of the Uromys vika rat’s very powerful set of teeth. In the trees of the Solomon Islands, you will find a rare rat the size of a small dog.