{"id":96366,"date":"2025-10-24T23:13:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T23:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/96366\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T23:13:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T23:13:07","slug":"lost-for-30-years-this-giant-woolly-rat-just-showed-up-in-the-wild","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/96366\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Lost\u2019 for 30 Years, This Giant Woolly Rat Just Showed Up in the Wild"},"content":{"rendered":"

The trend for extinct or thought-to-be-lost creatures might be to revive them<\/a>, but it\u2019s undeniably cooler to actually prove that they still exist<\/a>. And the rediscovered giant woolly rat is a creature that\u2019s as glorious as it is natural.<\/p>\n

In a paper published in April in Mammalia<\/a>, Czech researcher Franti\u0161ek Vejm\u011blka shares the first-ever photographs of Mallmys istapantap, or the subalpine woolly rat\u2014an elusive creature that has existed in scientific limbo for decades. Its 1989<\/a> registration to the animal repository was purely based on archival data and skull collections in museums.<\/p>\n

No one had actually collected photographic or visual data to prove the creature\u2019s existence beyond historical records, leading researchers to wonder whether it still exists in the wild. As Vejm\u011blka found, the woolly rat is still very much alive in its natural habitat in New Guinea.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s astonishing that such a large and striking animal has remained so poorly studied\u2014despite its size and how really amazing this animal is, there were no pictures of it,\u201d Vejm\u011blka told The Times<\/a> in June.<\/p>\n

A wild discovery <\/p>\n

This was extremely difficult to come by, Vejm\u011blka admitted in a release<\/a>, adding that \u201cIf it weren\u2019t for the indigenous hunters who accompanied me in the mountains and helped me locate the animals, I would never have been able to collect this data.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, the woolly rat resided deep within the rainforests of Mount Wilhelm, a nearly 15,000-foot-high (4,509 meters) mountain with little to no hiking tracks. The area was also home to several indigenous (human) tribes who were understandably wary about uninvited visitors.<\/p>\n

\"LostResearchers spotted the woolly rat during a night outing with local hunters. \u00a9 Franti\u0161ek Vejm\u011blka <\/p>\n

Eventually, he and his team were able to form a collaboration with local hunters, who allowed Vejm\u011blka to join their night hunts. It was during one of these hunts that Vejm\u011blka was able to identify and capture the rodent, which the locals called mosak, or \u201cman-biter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Got to see it to believe it <\/p>\n

The paper presents the first-ever data on the woolly rat\u2019s diet, behavioral patterns, and general aspects of its lifestyle. Specifically, the woolly rats are nearly 3 feet (85 centimeters) long and weigh almost 5 pounds (2 kilograms). It is nocturnal, climbing trees at night to nibble on plants using its sharp claws. In addition to documenting the rat, the team also collected data on 61 species of non-flying mammals native to the region.<\/p>\n

But the encounter also revealed some discrepancies between museum collections and the rats\u2019 actual populations. The rat\u2019s purported \u201crarity\u201d appears to be connected \u201conly to the remoteness of the habitats it occupies,\u201d Vejm\u011blka wrote in the paper, adding that the \u201creliability with which we detected the species locally questions their rarity in nature compared to scientific collections.\u201d<\/p>\n

Simply, field expeditions are truly critical; the more we doubt the persistence of a certain species\u2014not just for this particular rat, he said, adding, \u201cHow much more is there to discover about the biodiversity of tropical mountains?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The trend for extinct or thought-to-be-lost creatures might be to revive them, but it\u2019s undeniably cooler to actually…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96367,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[85,46,8393,141,386],"class_list":{"0":"post-96366","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-rats","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}