(Image: Jose Nunez-Mino)
The name’s Bond. Plagiodontia aedium bondi. It’s certainly a name to live up to. A cat-sized rodent newly discovered on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola has been named after James Bond, a real-life naturalist who also gave his name to Ian Fleming’s fictional spy.
Found by Samuel Turvey of the Zoological Society of London and his team, the guinea pig-like rodent, which weighs more than a kilogram, is a type of hutia, a family of secretive rodents that live in the West Indian islands. Its name is fitting because the original Bond studied the distribution of hutias and their relatives in the Caribbean.
But the James Bond rodent belongs to a troubled family. Although there were once more than 30 species, most hutia have been driven to extinction by the colonisation of the islands. The newly discovered resident may be one of only eight types of hutia left.
“I am glad we were able to describe James Bond’s hutia before it’s too late, as it is highly threatened by deforestation, even in protected areas,” says Turvey.
Journal reference: Zootaxia, 10.11646/zootaxa.3957.2.4
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