A new species of rat that is nearly half a metre long and can reputedly crack open coconuts with its teeth has been discovered on the Solomon Islands. For years,
In the isolated Solomon Islands, mothers and fathers have been known to sing to their children of apocryphal rats. In one rhyme, Kamare and Isuku go scurrying up a child, one rat on each side. They climb the ribs and reach the armpits, where the singer finally tickles the child. Isuku, as the song goes, is what your average New Yorker might consider a fairly normal-size rat. But Kamare, the children are told, is big. The mammalogist Tyrone Lavery learned of this rhyme as he searched the Solomons for another giant rat - Vika - rumored to live in the trees, a foot-and-a-half long, with teeth so sharp it can punch through a coconut. And unlike the rats in the song, Vika is very real. Its scale-covered