Giant coconut-cracking rat pictured for first time on remote island

If you have a fear of rodents, look away now – because scientists have taken the first pictures of an enormous breed of rat with jaws so strong it can chomp through coconuts.

The Vangunu giant rat can grow up to 1.5 feet long, and only one specimen has been recorded until now, after it fell out of a tree six years ago.

Fortunately for UK rat phobics, that was on the Solomon Islands, which lie northeast of Australia in the Pacific Ocean – about as far away from Britain as it’s possible to get.

You might ask why scientists were so keen to get a glimpse of another one, rather than immediately packing their bags and getting off the Islands, but they finally managed it using camera traps and some tasty bait for the rat.

The rodents caught on film were “irrefutably identified” as Vangunu giant rats not only because of their size, but because of their characteristically long tails and small ears.

The findings were published in a 20 November study in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

Lead author Tyrone Lavery, a lecturer of native vertebrate biology at the University of Melbourne in Australia, said: “Capturing images of the Vangunu giant rat for the first time is extremely positive news for this poorly known species.”

The discovery will come as little surprise to indigenous people living on Vangunu, the island in question, who have reportedly known about the rats that can chew through coconuts for many years.

However, the species has thus far escaped science, except for one animal which fell out of a tree in 2017 when commercial loggers chopped it down. The rat was already dead.

This time, locals from the Zaira community, who manage the largest remaining section of Vangunu's forest region, helped set up the traps to document the rats and lured them out with sesame oil.

Researchers wrote: “All images were captured during nocturnal hours, and activity was clustered around midnight.”

Scientists think commercial logging could soon render the giant rats extinct which, even for rat haters, would be a sad thing.

Lavery said: “Logging consent has been granted at Zaira, and if it proceeds it will undoubtedly lead to extinction of the Vangunu giant rat.”

“We hope that these images of [the rats] will support efforts to prevent the extinction of this threatened species.”

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