Team including Tim Flannery dub
previously unknown species, which weighs nearly half a kilogram, Rattus detentus – Latin for
‘detained’
Wednesday 13 April
2016 23.04 BST
Last modified on Thursday 14 April
201602.26 BST
Manus Island ’s
newest “detainee” may have been on the island hundreds of thousands of years.
Rattus
detentus, an ancient, isolated and previously unknown species of the genus Rattus
– a rat – has been so named for the Latin “detained”, “in reference to the
isolation of ... Manus Island and
to the recent use of the island to detain people seeking political and/or
economic asylum in Australia”.
The animal has been described for the first
time, in the Journal of Mammalogy, by an international team of
scientists including a former Australian of the Year, the mammalogist and
palaeontologist Prof Tim Flannery.
Detentus is known to live only on Manus Island
It is an “island giant”, according to
Flannery, larger than almost any rat across the Melanesian archipelago. A
typical detentus weighs nearly half a kilogram, with short, very
coarse fur and a short tail.
Over millennia of isolation on
Manus, detentus has adapted to conditions. It has powerful front
incisors but small molars, suggesting it uses its front teeth to break open
hard nuts. Detentus is, according to Flannery, an early branch of
the Rattus genus found across the Melanesian archipelago.
Before
confirmation detentus existed, Flannery said scientists had suspected
there was a large rat endemic to the island. He said it had been exciting and
“an immense privilege” to be able to discover and name the new species. “I’ve
been looking for this rat for 30 years,” he said.
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