Naming a rat

It is a touchy use of the word “discovered” when a rodent that Laotians routinely eat is spotted at a hunter’s market and declared to be a new species. Just think of the debate over saying America was discovered by a European who stumbled over it 12,000 years after humans first settled there.

But until now, the foot-long critter that Laotians call kha-nyou, or rock rat, at a market in Thakhet, it didn’t have a scientific name. Now, newly inducted into the noble order of Rodentia as Laonastes aenigmamus, kha-nyou finally has an official slot in the ancient kingdom of Animalia. It could be argued that identifying a new rodent in Asia is not on a par with, say, discovering a new continent, but who knows? Robert J Timmins of the Wildlife Conservation Society, who was involved in the identification of the new species, is more worried that his discovery might not be around much longer. In fact, scientists have yet to see a living kha-nyou. And there can’t be too many around if it took so long for scientists to spot one, if they live only among limestone boulders in Laos, and if the locals find them tasty.

It is extraordinary that an animal that took off on its own evolutionary course millions of years ago could remain unknown to science for so long, and it is troubling that it might have vanished before we even knew of it. — International Herald Tribune