A team of researchers detailed a new species of rat first discovered on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi and took note of its unique nose.
According to BBC News, scientists from the United States, Australia, and Indonesia called the rat Hyorhinomys stuempkei, or "hog-nosed rat." Five such rodents were first discovered on the island in January and the researchers published a study on them in The Journal of Mammalogy.
"We had never seen anything like this. It was obviously a new species. We came back to camp and were both surprised that the other one had it as well," study co-author Jake Esselstyn, curator of mammals at Louisiana State University Museum of Natural Science, said in a press release. "I don't know of any other rodents that have lost the coronoid process completely."
Kevin Rowe, mammal curator at the Museum Victoria in Melbourne, Australia and another one of the study's authors, told BBC News he and his fellow researchers spent six weeks on Sulawesi trying to reach a remote forested area.
"We had been setting up overnight traps for a few days - that was when I stumbled upon a completely new rat," he said. "I hollered immediately for my colleagues as I knew it was a new species.
"Obviously its nostrils which resemble a hog's, are very unique. But it also has a long face and larger ears for a rat of its size and lower teeth which are more in common with shrew rats.
"It also has pubic hairs that are very long and extended which we see in other Australian mammals."
