Update on the mystery rat, 2002

In October-November 2002, I got two letters from Puerto Rico. The first of them, from Mary Deola, was so interesting that I will post it here in full:

"Hello Vladimir,
I have lived in Puerto Rico for a little more than 3 years. I live over by El Yunque on the coast. I walked out in my backyard about a year and a half ago and found a large rodent of muskrat type just outside the mangrove. It allowed me to come within 3 feet of it. I observed it for about 4 minutes. It finally grabbed a last mouthful of vegetation and wandered back into the mangrove.
I ran inside to look it up in my animal encyclopedia as I had been reading up in Puerto Rico animal books and had not found anything similar. The animal I found that looked
exactly like it was an Ingraham's Hutia that is found in the South Bahamas. I just assumed it was another type of Hutia and did not pursue it. The other day I told my neighbor about it. He is from Puerto Rico and said he had never heard of it. I decided to go the the Internet to get more information about it to show him. To my surprise the only information I found about the Hutia is that the Taino Indians used the word for a rabbit like animal and that the animal is extinct.
It was an overcast day but clear and I am sure that is what it was. It looks very similar to your rodent except the animal I saw was brown with gray hair and was bigger than yours at about 13 inches and taller when it sat on its back legs like a squirrel to study me.
Let me know what you think. The animal I saw looked almost exactly like the Bahamas version rather than the Cuban version of Hutia."

The second letter, from Jose Maeso, was forwarded to me by Steve Patterson. I don't have Mr. Maeso's permission to post his letter, but the idea was as following: he reported seeing a flying squirrel in Puerto Rico. He identified it as Northern flying squirrel (Glaucomys sabrinus), but his description sounds more like Southern flying squirrel (G. volans), which normally occurs as far south as Florida. There are no recent or fossil records of squirrels from Puerto Rico, so the animal, if correctly identified, was almost certainly an escaped pet. This shows that occasional introductions of rodents from mainland America to the Carribean Islands is a serious possibility.

Back to Mysteries of Puerto Rico          Para volver a Sombra el Paraiso

Home