Posted on 05/06/2018 2:09:43 PM PDT by Libloather
The last time anyone saw the San Quintin kangaroo rat was more than 30 years ago, in the arid scrublands of Baja California in Mexico. Mexican authorities declared the small mammal critically endangered, and possibly extinct, in 1994. So biologists couldn't believe their eyes when not one, but four San Quintin kangaroo rats (Dipodomys gravipes) hopped into their survey traps in 2017.
Named for their ability to leap like kangaroos, the rats are key species in arid areas across western North America, dispersing seeds and feeding predators such as coyotes and foxes. The San Quintin kangaroo rat is about 12 centimeters long, with a long, tufted tail and enormous hind legs that allow it to leap about 2 meters and speed away at 10 kilometers per hour. They once lived by the thousands in a narrow coastal valley stretching 150 kilometers along the Pacific coast of northern Baja California.
But their numbers began to dwindle with the introduction of intensive agriculture in the 1970s, after which their habitat and food disappeared. Then, just 9 months ago, a team of researchers doing a routine inventory of mammals in the region discovered the rats in their survey traps. None of them had ever seen the species before, so they had to compare it with museum specimens and photographs, they will report in an upcoming issue of the Bulletin of the Southern California Academy of Sciences.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencemag.org ...
These critters are probably scattered throughout southern areas of California, BEYOND THAT WHICH RESEARCHERS DISCUSS HERE.
The vector is the Norway rat
History shows again and again
How nature points up the folly of man
It doesn’t count. You are not a scientist and your discovery was not published in an academic publication. Besides, it was dead, wasn’t it? There you go, you probably saw the very last one. Scientists are very smart, you know.
There were only four left. Now they're extinct!
What you describe has nothing to do with Kangaroo Rats, the government was using them to harass people who were interfering with their political scheme. They clearly weren’t looking for the little critters, they haven’t been seen since 1967.
But...but...but, I thought the San Quintin kangaroo rat science was settled.
Maybe they need more grant money...
Only if a federal judge in Hawaii okays it.
The biologists couldn’t find the rats but apparently the rats found each other.
Ah, the humility of scientists!
If we didn’t see it, it didn’t happen!
Kinda like the old, “There are no mountain lions in Western North Carolina...
Yea, right...
A San Quentin rat? What was he in for?
They weren’t even remotely extinct, Elvis just had them all rounded them all up for his petting zoo. This one must have hopped over the hop-proof fence.
There are periodic plague outbreaks in rural areas of AZ and NM. It’s a desert species that causes it there.
They did that in Mexico?
When I was a kid, I used to get the gerbil and the jerboa (African/Asian kangaroo rat) mixed up, by the name.
Paging Shawn Woods.
Check out his YouTube channel, he has an interesting way to get around the censors with his Mouse Trap videos.
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Supposed by whom?
Some ignorant, selfimportant snake kisser?
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