Giant Grass-Eating

Rats Found In NG

GIANT grass-eating rats up to three feet long were found in New Guinea recently by the seventh Archbold Expedition sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

The expedition’s leader, Mr. Hobart Van Deusen, said in Port Moresby in November, on his way back to New York, that the rats were the expedition’s most spectacular find.

He said the rats had been known to exist in New Guinea for many years as they had been noted by early Lutheran missionaries.

But this was the first time they had been filmed and observed in their natural habitat.

The rats were found by the ex pedition in the Cromwell Ranges near Lae. They measured three feet from nose to tail tip and fed on the soft underside of mountain grasses and small ferns.

Mr. Van Deusen said the rats were peculiar to New Guinea and were not found anywhere else in the world.

He added that during six months spent in the Huon Peninsula, the ex pedition collected more than 1,000 specimens of mammals and about 1,200 specimens of plants.

This was the first time that a systematic survey of the Huon Pen insula had been made— AAP-Reuter.