January 22, 2020
1 min read
Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAmFish-Eating Rat Discovered in Peru
Originally published in July 1893
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“A very interesting new mammal has recently been received at the British Museum in the form of a fish-eating rat from the mountain streams of Central Peru. The animal is about the size of a common house rat, but has a flattened head, strong and numerous whisker bristles, and very small eyes and ears. The chief interest of the new form centers in the fact of its being wholly a fish-eater, having its incisor teeth modified for catching a slippery, active prey by the development of their outer corners into long sharp points, and its intestines altered by the reduction almost to nil of its caecum, an organ in vegetarian Muridae. always of great size and capacity. There is no other rodent which wholly lives on fish, to the exclusion of a vegetable diet. Its proposed name is Ichthyomys stolzmanni.”
—Scientific American, July 1893
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