Around the World November 1, 2010
TIMOR-LESTE: Humans shared this island with the world's largest known rat—weighing in at an eek-inducing 13 pounds. Though people are known to have hunted rats there for 40,000 years, this giant rodent probably became extinct only 1,000 to 2,000 years ago. Extinctions, then, may not always be a direct result of human arrival. In this case, the introduction of metal tools and the clearing of forests for agriculture probably doomed the giant rats.
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