Pacific Standard July-August 2013 Cover

The Joy of “Few-Toothed” Rats


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Ed Yong’s piece on non-chewing rats would have been good fodder for our rodent-related Today in Mice:

On the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, Jacob Esselstyn has discovered a new species of rodent that radically departs from this universal body plan: a “shrew-rat” that he calls Paucidentomys vermidax.Its name –a mash-up of Latin and Greek—gives a clue to its lifestyle. It means “worm-devouring, few-toothed mouse.”

Would be nice if my former (and turns out, hoarding) neighbors had had “few-toothed” rats.

About Maria Streshinsky

Maria Streshinsky is the editor of Pacific Standard, and was formerly the managing editor of The Atlantic in Washington, D.C. She spent two years working at the U.S. Department of the Interior.