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New species of hog-nosed rat boasts extra-long pubic hair

In addition its pink nose, long incisors and an oddly designed jaw, the rat is characterized by especially long pubic hair.

By Brooks Hays
The hog-nosed rat. Photo by LSU
The hog-nosed rat. Photo by LSU

SULAWESI ISLAND, Indonesia, Oct. 6 (UPI) -- For the third time in three years, an international team of biologists working on a remote island in Indonesia have discovered a new species.

The latest find is a shrew rat with a pink, pig-like nose. The scientists named dubbed it the hog-nosed rat. It's scientific name is Hyorhinomys stuempkei.

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Aside from the pig nose, the rat has a few other unique features. It has especially long incisors, even for a shrew rat, and it's jaw lacks a muscle attachment point called the coronoid process, which is present in most mammals and all known rodents.

"I don't know of any other rodents that have lost the coronoid process completely," researcher Jake Esselstyn said in a press release.

Esselstyn, the mammals curator for Louisiana State University's Museum of Natural Science, says the hog-nosed rat likely doesn't do much chewing. It's diet consists of earthworms and beetle larvae, which the rat likely slurps up and swallows whole.

The new species also has especially long pubic hair. Esselstyn and his colleague Kevin Rowe, mammals curator at Australia's Museum Victoria, don't really know why, but point out that other hopping rodents possess similar hair.

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"It probably helps it in some kind of reproductive way," Rowe told Mashable. "Both males and females have those long public hairs, like whiskers. They're not like human pubic hairs."

The new species is described in the Journal of Mammology.

Previously on Indonesia's Sulawesi Island, the team of scientists discovered (with the help of local guides) and named the few-toothed shrew rat, or Paucidentomys vermidax, and the Sulawesi water rat, Waiomys mamasae.

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