The Highest Award for the Giant Rat

We introduce the Gambian pouched rat in the new gorilla house. Photo: Miroslav Bobek, Prague Zoo

“Apart from some birds and reptiles, we have here two mammals, white-belted ruffed lemur and Egyptian spiny mouse”, we said at our meeting.

I was surprised that all the mammals except these two would have their adoptive parents. “So, we don’t have any other orphan?”

“Well, there is still a giant pouched rat,” they told me, “But we are not going to put a rat up for adoption.”

“On the contrary,” I answered. “We will offer just the giant pouched rat for adoption! And at the same time, we will commemorate that recently one of them has been awarded the highest prize for animals!”

I was not exaggerating. By the way you also may have noticed the news: A southern giant pouched rat called Magawa, trained in Tanzania by the employees of Belgian organization APOPO, managed to discover and detect 39 landmines and 28 pieces of unexploded ordnance in Cambodia. Therefore, it was awarded the PDSA Gold Medal.

All species of the giant pouched rat, the genus Cricetomys, belong among the most remarkable animals. Therefore, having two couples of the Gambian pouched rat, Cricetomys Gambianus by their scientific name, we began breeding them in the zoo, though at first only in the background area. We introduced them to the visitors in the new gorilla house – which was opened on the same day of this book’s publication.

To be precise, it is not accurate to speak about a giant rat. First, it is not most likely one species, but at least two, and second, a much more accurate name would be a “hamster-mouse” (literally translated from its scientific name Cricetomys). When I was taking photos of it, I was surprised by how much food it is able to collect in its cheek pouches. On the other hand, the genus name “giant” is correct. It seems to me that the frequently used comparison of its size with that of a cat is a bit exaggerated, but it is a whopper, I must say.

We introduce the Gambian pouched rat in the new gorilla house not only because it is a successful investigator of landmines. Our main reason is that in Africa it is very often hunted and consumed as bushmeat. At the same time, it became one of the candidates for agricultural breeding, which should contribute directly to limiting the hunting of wild animals, in other words to a reduction of bushmeat consumption. (After all my experiences from Africa I am very sceptical about this plan, but I would be happy to be wrong as I was in the case of the first paragraph of this chapter.)

I could write much more about the giant pouched rat – it is used, for example, in diagnostics of tuberculosis, but I will leave something for next time. It is such an interesting animal that for sure I will write about it again one day.