Jakarta –
First time picture mice Vangunu was taken by a researcher on Solomon Island. This rodent is known to be elusive and can grow up to half a meter so it is sometimes called giant rat.
Using camera traps and a variety of tasty bait, the team managed to capture images of four of the rodents, which are at least twice the size of ordinary mice. When that happened, these mice were running around the forest on Solomon Island, an archipelago northeast of Australia in the Pacific Ocean.
The journal Ecology and Evolution, which was released on November 20, then confirmed these rats as Vangunu giant rats, referring to their large body size, long tails and very short ears.
“Taking images of the Vangunu giant rat for the first time is such positive news for this little-known species,” lead researcher Tyrone Lavery was quoted as saying detikINET from Live Science, Monday (27/11/2023)
The natives of Vangunu, an island in the middle of the Solomon Islands, have long known this rat is so big it can chew coconuts in their forests. Previously, real evidence of the existence of the Vangunu rat (Uromys Vika) was caught in 2017, when commercial tree felling was carried out in Vangunu and a giant rat came out of a tree and died.
Several years later, the Zaira community, which manages the largest remaining land in the original Vangunu forest and has in-depth knowledge of its ecology, helped researchers install camera traps to then immortalize the secretive rodents in their own habitat.
“All of the images were taken during their nocturnal active time, when they congregate in the middle of the night,” the researcher wrote in his research, adding that the key to their success was sesame oil as bait.
Unfortunately, the Vungunu giant rat could become extinct given the commercial logging that has destroyed much of the island’s forests. Last year, the Solomon island government allowed commercial logging of the last remaining forests where Vangunu life was already threatened.
“Logging permits have been granted in Zaira. If this is processed, it will undoubtedly lead to the extinction of the Vangunu giant rat,” said Lavery.
Representatives of the Zaira community have appealed against the decision. “We hope that this image of U. Vika can support efforts to prevent the extinction of this threatened species,” said Lavery
*This article was written by Khalisha Fitri, a participant in the Merdeka Campus Certified Internship Program at detikcom.
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2023-11-27 12:45:37
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