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