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The cloud rats are a group of nocturnal rodents native to the forests of the Philippines. There are six known species of cloud rat. These animals have not been studied extensively. The Filipino Ecosystems Research and Development Bureau has begun breeding Northern Luzon slender-tailed cloud rats in captivity. London Zoo, Prague Zoo and the Bronx Zoo are the only locations outside of the Philippines where cloud rats are bred in captivity.[1] Some species of cloud rats are kept in the mini-zoo of the College of Agriculture and Forestry of the West Visayas State University in their Lambunao campus in the province of Iloilo.[citation needed] Cloud rats are slow-moving herbivores and are thought to be preyed upon by large birds. The rats are quite large, and they have been hunted by people in the Philippines for their meat, driving the rodents to near extinction.
[edit] Dwarf cloud rat
In April 2008, American and Filipino biologists found a 185-gram dwarf cloud rat (Carpomys melanurus), a rare species of cloud rat endemic to the Cordillera, in a patch of mature mossy forest on Mount Pulag, Benguet. The species was first discovered by a British scientist, John Whitehead[2] in 1896. Mt. Pulag is the only ecosystem that hosts all four cloud rat species (which includes the bushy tailed cloud rat, locally called bowet).[3] Danilo Balete and Lawrence Heaney, team leader and curator and head of mammals at the 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."[4]
[edit] Species
- Giant cloud rats - genus Phloeomys
- Bushy-tailed cloud rats - genus Crateromys
- Dwarf cloud rat - genus Carpomys
- A fourth species in the Crateromys genus was discovered in 1987, but has not yet been named.
[edit] References
