When threatened, the African crested rat lives up to its name and erects a crest of hair on its back to reveal a warning on its flanks-black-and-white stripes running from neck to tail on each side of its body. “A main goal of our study was to determine how common this exceptional behavior was.”
“The initial 2011 study observed this behavior in only a single individual,” said co-author Denise Dearing from the University of Utah. Cardenolides, particularly the ones in Acokanthera, are highly toxic to most animals. A source of traditional arrow poisons, Acokanthera contains cardenolides, compounds similar to those found in monarch butterflies, cane toads and some heart medications for humans.
A 2011 paper proposed these large rodents sequester toxins from the poison arrow tree ( Acokanthera schimperi). People in East Africa have long suspected the rat to be poisonous. Our findings have conservation implications for this mysterious and elusive rat.” “We initially wanted to confirm the toxin sequestration behavior was real and along the way discovered something completely unknown about social behavior. “It’s considered a ‘black box’ of a rodent,” said Sara Weinstein, lead author, Smithsonian-Mpala postdoctoral fellow and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Utah. In a Journal of Mammology paper published yesterday, researchers from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, University of Utah and National Museums of Kenya found the African crested rat is the only mammal known to sequester plant toxins for chemical defense, and they uncovered an unexpected social life-the rats appear to be monogamous and may even form small family units with their offspring. The African crested rat ( Lophiomys imhausi) is hardly the continent’s most fearsome-looking creature-the rabbit-sized rodent resembles a gray puffball crossed with a skunk-yet its fur is packed with a poison so lethal it can fell an elephant, and just a few milligrams can kill a human.
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