Water rat
Hydromys chrysogaster E. Geoffroy, 1804
Muridae
(Alecto Edition Plate 1)

BAU01

$650.00

1. Water Rat. Hydromys chrysogaster. E. Geoffroy, 1804. [W,P&M]
340 x 508 mm
We do not know precisely when or where in Australia Bauer saw this water rat but it was probably
caught in one of its usual freshwater habitats. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the water rat
was probably still common in Australia and Tasmania because in 1802 another specimen was captured
on islands off Tasmania by French scientists on board the Géographe (under the command of Captain
Nicolas Thomas Baudin). When the French expedition returned to France the natural history collections
were deposited in the Museum d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris where Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire was the
first to name and describe the newly discovered animal.
Today, the Australian water rat (which is not the same species as the European water rat) is less common
than it was in Bauer’s day.
T : 268-9; W&M : 315, 333; W,P&M : 92-3