Talk:Short-footed Luzon tree rat

112 years Rarest Discovery

This is the most outstanding Philippine discovery of endangered and rarest dwarf rats. On April 2008, American and Filipino biologists discovered a 185 grams dwarf cloud rat, Carpomys melanurus, a rare breed (endemic to the Cordillera) of cloud rat in a patch of mature mossy forest on Mount Pulag (Luzon’s highest peak at 2,922 meters above sea level), Benguet, first found by a British scientist in 1896. Mt. Pulag is the only place that hosts the 4 cloud rat species (which includes the bushy tailed cloud rat, locally called “bowet).” Mount Pulag has one of the most diverse biodiversity of the Philippines with the dwarf bamboo, the Cordillera cloud rat and the Koch pitta bird among its endangered denizens.GMA NEWS.TV, NUJP members climb Mt. Pulag for press freedom</ref> Danilo Balete and Dr. Lawrence Heaney, team leader and curator and head of mammals at the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago stated that “It was found in the canopy of a large tree, on a large horizontal branch covered by a thick layer of moss, orchids and ferns about five meters above ground; the rat was a really beautiful animal with dense, soft reddish brown fur with a black mask around its large dark eyes, small round ears, a broad and blunt snout and a long tail covered with dark hair; the cloud rats are one of the most spectacular cases of adaptive radiation by mammals anywhere in the world, with at least 15 species ranging in size from 2.6 to 15 kg, all living only in the Philippines."

Inquirer.net, Team finds rare cloud rat breed after 112 years--Florentino floro (talk) 08:31, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Photograph

I've got an email by Lawrence Heaney. He state that the rat in the photo is not an Carpomys species but possibly an Apomys species --Melly42 (talk) 21:45, 21 November 2016 (UTC)