The rare, fuzzy rodent, the Santa
Marta Toro, was re-discovered in 2011 after 113 years, and has been missing
ever since. Mongabay interviews Nicolette Roach, a PhD student, who has been
combing through the El Dorado Reserve in Colombia in search of the
Nicolette (Nikki) Roach, a PhD
Student at Texas A&M University, is on a mission to find the elusive Santa
Marta Toro again.
The tiny rodent was last spotted
in 2011, for the first time in 113 years.
Roach says that finding and
gathering data on the Toro would be a huge symbol of hope for conservation.
In May 2011, two
volunteer researchers had an unexpected visitor at the El Dorado
Nature Reserve Ecotourism lodge in northwestern Colombia.
A rare, tiny rodent called the
Santa Marta Toro or the Santa Marta Tree Rat (Santamartyamys rufodorsalis) appeared at the porch of the lodge,
posed for photographs for nearly two hours, and then shuffled back into
the forest. The Toro had been spotted again, for the first time in
113 years. Only two other specimens of the Toro exist,
collected by scientists in 1898.
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