(Image source: National Geographic)
BY STEVEN SPARKMAN
You're watching multisource science news analysis from Newsy.
Bite me, I dare you! That’s the invitation an unusual little animal extends to its attackers. A writer for Nature News explains, predators who fall for the crested rat’s taunts get a deadly mouthful.
“When threatened, the rat pulls its head back onto its shoulders, flaring its fur, and presenting the attacker with a striking black and white target, outlining a leaf-shaped area of poisonous hairs. The rat then begins acting aggressively to incite its attacker, daring it to bite the exposed area, and poisoning the predator in the process.”
Natives in the rat’s home in East Africa knew the rat was poisonous -- domesticated dogs sometimes take a bite and wind up sick or dead for their effort. But now researchers have figured out how the rats get their poison fur.
They steal it. The researchers gave a captive rat a branch from a poison arrow tree. The tree’s bark contains the toxin ouabain, which-- in large doses-- can cause an elephant to have a heart attack. Researchers watched as the rat gnawed on the bark, turned, and slathered its toxic spit on its own back. (Video source: BBC News)
The researchers went a step further and checked out the rat’s poison fur under a microscope. What they found was an evolutionary novelty. International Business Times explains.
“Researchers studied the rats both in the wild and in the lab where they ran tests on a line of hairs that run along the rat’s back. What interested scientists is the fact that the structure of the rat’s hair is unlike any other. It is specially designed to absorb the poison -- with an outer layer full of large holes and an inside that’s full of straight fibers to pick up liquids.”
Researchers say the poison-absorbing mohawk isn’t the rats’ only adaptation. A writer for Discover Magazine explains -- for the rats poison to work as a deterrent, it needs to let its enemy strike.
“The bones of its skull have extended around its eyes and brain to create a thick helmet. It’s so heavily reinforced that some zoologists have compared it to the head of a turtle. Its skin is also tough... With adaptations like these, the crested rat can easily afford to be bitten once. The second bite is very unlikely.”
The researchers say the rat is the first mammal that steals poison from a plant. But a writer for National Geographic says -- poison thieves are common throughout nature.
“Other mammals are known to use toxins that they don't produce themselves. For example, a hedgehog species applies a mild toxin from a toad to its fur... Likewise, some capuchin monkeys rub an extract from millipedes onto their fur to repel insects.”
The next mystery the researchers are working on -- why doesn’t the rat drop dead from chewing on poison bark?
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