Newly discovered giant rat can weigh 2 pounds and crack open coconuts

said braka 9:51 PM
Solomon Islands locals have long

spoken about giant rats that scurry around in trees and crack open coconuts, but it was never clear whether such a species actually existed. Now, scientists have found the creatures and confirmed that they are in fact a brand new species.
The new species, dubbed Uromys vika, can weigh up to 1 kg (2.2 lb) and measures about 45.7 cm (1.5 ft) from its nose to the tip of its tail – for reference, an typical adult male brown rat weighs on average 350 g (12 oz), while a typical adult male black rat weighs between 75 and 230 g (2.6 to 8 oz).
The discovery was made by Tyrone Lavery, a mammalogist and researcher at the Field Museum in Chicago, along with fellow scientists John Vendi and Hikuna Judge. During a trip to the Solomon Islands in 2010, Lavery heard stories of the giant tree-dwelling rodents, which the locals called vika. Unfortunately, that choice of habitat made the creatures particularly difficult to track down.
"I started to question if it really was a separate species, or if people were just calling regular black rats 'vika'," says Lavery. "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. If you're looking for something that can live in 30-foot-tall trees, then there's a whole new dimension that you need to search."