




After seven years of searching and a race against deforestation destroying the rat's would-be home his team finally found it.

Lead author Dr Lavery, of The Field Museum, Chicago, said: "The new species, Uromys vika, is pretty spectacular - it's a big, giant rat.


The researchers likened it to a scene from The Princess Bride when the characters debate the existence of R.O.U.S.es (Rodents of Unusual Size) - only to be beset by enormous rats.

Dr Lavery said: "That's kind of what happened here."

The Solomon Islands, an archipelago of idyllic beaches in the South Pacific a thousand miles northwest of Australia, contain only 47 mammal species. But a remarkable 26, more than half, are found nowhere else on Earth.

The rat measures 1.5ft and weighs more than 1kg (2lbs)

Vika, described in the Journal of Mammalogy, are massive compared to the black rats that spread throughout the world with European colonists.

The rats you'll see in American alleys and London sewers weigh around 200 grams (0.44 pounds).

Vika weigh up to a kilogram (2.2 pounds) and from nose to tail are about 18 inches long.

They haven't yet been observed cracking open coconuts, but have a penchant for chewing circular holes into the rock hard shell of nuts to get at the meat.

Dr Lavery said: "When I first met with the people from Vangunu Island in the Solomons, they told me about a rat native to the island that they called vika, which lived in the trees.


But years of searching didn't turn up any of the giant rats

He explained: "I started to question if it really was a separate species, or if people were just calling regular black rats 'vika'."


Dr Lavery said: "If you're looking for something that lives on the ground, you're only looking in two dimensions, left to right and forward and backward.



Dr Lavery said: "As soon as I examined the specimen, I knew it was something different.


After comparing the specimen to similar species in museum collections and checking the new rat's DNA against that of its relatives, he confirmed the giant rat was new. He named it Uromys vika in honour of the local name.

He said: "This project really shows the importance of collaborations with local people."

He learned about the rat through talking with Vangunu locals and confirmed with them it matched the 'vika' they knew.

Nuts were found bearing the characteristic tooth-marks of Uromys vika

The rat's huge size and possum-like tree-dwelling lifestyle can be traced back to its island home where a host of animals have evolved in isolation from the rest of the world.

Dr Lavery said: "Vika's ancestors probably rafted to the island on vegetation, and once they got there, they evolved into this wonderfully new species, nothing like what they came from on the mainland."





He said: "These animals are important parts of culture across Solomon Islands -- people have songs about them, and even children's rhymes like our 'This little piggy went to market.'"


Added Dr Lavery: "Finding a new mammal is really rare - there are probably just a few dozen new mammals discovered every year.
