Giant rats,frogs with fangs in an extinct volcano

“The crater of Bosavi really is the lost world,” said McGavin,head scientist of BBC Natural History unit.

The woolly rat,which measures nearly 82cm in length and weighs more than 1.5kg,was captured on film in an infrared camera trap set up on the slopes. Called the Bosavi woolly rat for now,the creature is thought to live only in the crater and nowhere else in the world. Apparently,it has no fear of humans.

The rat has a silver-brown coat of thick fur that probably helps it to survive the wet,cold winters inside the crater walls. The biologists say it could belong to the rodent genus Mallomys,to which contains other out-sized rat species including a giant woolly rat found in the Foja Mountains of Papua New Guinea by an expedition led by Conservation International in 2007.

The team suspects that it may have come upon for the first time up to 40 new species — including 16 species of frog,at least three new species of fish,20 species of insect and spider and one new species of bat. They claim to have also seen stick insects the length of a man’s forearm,an extremely hairy caterpillar and butterflies the size of a book.

“A camouflaged gecko,a fanged frog and a fish called the Henamo Grunter,so named because it makes grunting noises from its swim bladder” were also discovered,said Steve Greenwood,the series producer for Lost Land of the Volcano.