When Simon McKeown and Lizzie Noble found the red-crested tree rat one night in Colombia, they had no idea it was supposed to be extinct. The couple snapped pictures of this red-manned rodent the size of a guinea pig thinking that they were experiencing a well-known example of Colombia’s spectacular wildlife. Instead, they had stumbled upon what some call the conservation discovery of the decade.
A bird collector and his rat
The last time anybody had seen this rat was at some point before 1913 – before Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, before World War I, and before anybody had ever really heard of Charlie Chaplin. A specimen was picked up by Melbourne Armstrong Carriker, one of the greatest and most prolific bird collectors of the early 1900s who collected over 53,000 bird specimens. If he had collected just a bird a day it would have taken him over 145 years to reach that number.
Sadly, in the flurry of animal-bagging all those years ago, Melbourne didn’t record when or where he found the red-crested tree rat, and the only other specimen that we have, from another collector, is similarly low on the details front. In fact, we don’t even know whether the rats were male or female. So Simon and Lizzie’s pictures of the red-crested tree rat added immeasurably to our store of knowledge, and their encounter with this elusive rodent could so easily not have happened.
The pair was only really in Colombia on a whim, spontaneously volunteering at the El Dorado Nature Reserve after graduating from their Master’s programmes in the United Kingdom and finding themselves with a diploma and itchy feet. A colleague made a recommendation and the next thing they knew, they were flying across the Atlantic. The reserve was by no means particularly large – about 100 could fit inside New York City. But El Dorado Nature Reserve, named after the lost city of gold, is truly a treasure trove of wildlife, holding everything from giant anteaters to jaguars to over 3,000 species of veined plants. For two recent biology graduates from Ireland, it must have been bliss.
The great rat sighting
And so it happened that on May 4, 2011, Simon and Lizzie found themselves in the Reserve’s lodge, enjoying a night in with a DVD. They came down the stairs for a break and found, sitting right there staring at them, a magnificent red-manned rat. As Simon describes it, they did not so much find the rat as the rat found them!
Simon and Lizzie started snapping pictures, taking dozens of this red-crested rodent. It just sat there, soaking up the attention from the paparazzi, not even batting an eyelid when two other staff members joined in the excitement. Maybe it was just feeling a bit lazy – two hours later it was still plopped right there on the handrail! It let Simon and Lizzie have one last look before it quietly wandered back into the forest.
The next morning Simon and Lizzie had a look through the guide books in the lodge – none of the local staff seemed to recognise the rat they had seen, and they were curious to find out what it was. But they couldn’t find any mention of their curious rat anywhere, and Lizzie started to suspect that they might have found something special.
She suggested that they send the pictures to a local wildlife specialist, but Simon was sceptical. He found it hard to believe that nobody had documented a rat ‘the size of half a loaf of bread’, and the idea that he and his girlfriend might have accidentally stumbled upon a new species was just too incredible to believe. They sent their photos off anyway, and Lizzie’s suspicions were soon confirmed – they had indeed found something very special. They had rediscovered the red-crested tree rat, stumbling across a species that over a century of targeted searches hadn’t been able to find!
The rat goes back underground
There have since been multiple attempts to find more of the rats since its rediscovery, but no determined rat-trackers have yet been as successful as the couple that just happened to wander out of their lodge at the right time.
There is some hope for the rats’ survival though. Simon and Lizzie found out afterwards that this rat, which already looked pretty big to them, was probably quite young as it seems relatively smaller than the specimen collected over 100 years ago. The fact that Simon and Lizzie’s rat was a juvenile means that there might well be others out there – while we don’t know much about the red-crested rat, other rats typically have a lot of pups every time they breed. It’s possible that their rat has a hoard of siblings running around in the forest. The red-crested tree rat is currently still considered to be critically endangered, but the protective El Dorado Nature Reserve provides some hope that someone, someday, might strike rat gold.
References
- Rainforest Trust. 2011. Elusive Mammal Rediscovered in Colombia After 113 Years https://www.rainforesttrust.org/news/2011/mammal-rediscovered-after-113-years/
- World Land Trust. 2011. Lost for over a century the Red-crested Tree Rat is rediscovered in Colombia http://www.worldlandtrust.org/news/2011/06/lost-century-redcrested-tree-rat-rediscovered-colombia.htm
- Conservation International. 2011. Spectacular Mammal Rediscovered after 113 Years — First Ever Photographs Taken http://www.conservation.org/NewsRoom/pressreleases/Pages/Rodent-Rediscovered-Colombia.aspx
- Hance, J. 2001. Red rodent shows up at Colombian nature lodge after 113 years on the lam http://news.mongabay.com/2011/0518-hance_redtreerat.html#sthash.KwFWkhaG.dpbs
- ProAves. 2011. Spectacular Mammal Rediscovered after 113 Years! http://www.proaves.org/spectacular-mammal-rediscovered-after-113-years/?lang=en
About the author
After graduating from the MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation and Management at the University of Oxford, Anna Feeney went on to work in communications for the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. When at Oxford she also wrote for the Oxford Times and was Print Editor for Bang! Science magazine.
