AN ASIAN food market may seem an unlikely setting for a major zoological find. But a rodent intended for the kebab skewer is not only an unknown species, but is the first member of a whole new family.
The rock rat, or kha-nyou as locals call it, was spotted by Robert Timmins of the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society in a Laos market. 鈥淚t was for sale on a table next to some vegetables,鈥� he says. 鈥淚 knew immediately it was something I had never seen before.鈥� Timmins and his team have subsequently trapped the animal on rocky limestone outcrops in and around the protected Khammouan National Biodiversity Conservation Area of central Laos. But they have never seen it alive.
The creature, dubbed Laonastes aenigmamus or stone-dwelling puzzle-mouse, looks something like a cross between a large dark rat and a squirrel, but is actually more closely related to guinea pigs and chinchillas. It has been given its own family, the Laonastidae. The long-whiskered rodent has a thick, furry tail, large paws, stubby limbs and is around 40 centimetres long (Systematics and Biodiversity, vol 2, p 419).
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Though new rodent species are discovered at the rate of one a year or so, new mammal families are much rarer. The most recent such family was created in 1974 following the discovery of the bumblebee bat. 鈥淭o find something so distinct in this day and age is just extraordinary. For all we know this could be the last remaining mammal family left to be discovered,鈥� says Timmins.
