From ČTK news agency in the Czech republic:
Czech researchers find allegedly extinct Philippine rat
18 April 2012
Prague/Dasmarinas (Philippines), April 17 – Czech researchers found an allegedly extinct mammal species, the Dinagat bushy-tailed cloud rat, on Dinagat island in the Philippines and their colleague announced it at a local scientific conference, zoologist Milada Rehakova has told CTK.
The brown rodent with a white end of the tail is known only thanks to one example from Dinagat Island that was described in 1975.
“My husband, programmer Vaclav Rehak, saw a big hairy rat creeping through the vegetation slowly at the beginning of 2012. A week later, we took the first photographs and video recordings (of the rat) in the wild,” said Rehakova, who has been researching into the Philippine tarsier (Carlito syrichta) prosimians in the Philippines since 2007.
The Czech couple documented the rat in the last virgin forest on the island in January.
The Dinagat bushy-tailed cloud rat (Crateromys australis), which is 55-centimetre-long, including the tail, ranks among the largest rodents in the world. It is a night animal living on trees.
Experts classify six species in two genera, Crateromys and Phloeomys.
The Dinagat rat is critically threatened with extinction. Several scientific expeditions have been searching for it in vain.
Logging and minerals mining are devastating Dinagat and other Philippine islands. There is only one locally protected wildlife area on Dinagat.
See also, with video of the rat, here.
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