has no shadow to see.
Well, fact-check first. The truly closest relative to the groundhog is the giant forest squirrel (Protoxerus stangeri mayensis) but it may be extinct. I’ve never seen it, no one seems to care very much about it, and the only picture I could find was of a specimen collected in 1842 that is in a drawer of the Field Museum in Chicago.
But the giant pouched rat (Cricetomys gambianus Waterhouse) definitely exists, because I’ve eaten it.
I didn’t roast it, but our guide roasted it on a skewer to attract the pygmies along the Lobe River in the Cameroun that would then trade the skewered roasted giant pouched rat, to guide us to see lowland gorillas. But we, too, needed dinner.
It tasted just as good as the Guinea Pig I ate in Cuzco.
The main difference between an African groundhog-like animal (the Giant Pouched Rat) and an American groundhog-like animal (the Groundhog) is that the African groundhog-like animal does not appear on Oprah.
Nor does the African variety pretend to forecast weather. There is no movie named “Giant Pouched Rat Day” and in fact no movie made by Africans that is that incessantly trivial. African Giant Pouched Rats do not appear on 7 o’clock local television shows during the weatherman section and they do not appear to have a single day of being loved with 364 days trying to escape the landscape exterminator.
The Groundhog’s better common name is Woodchuck. The African Giant Pouched Rat’s better common name is Big Rat.
However, only the Groundhog is capable of reflecting the stir crazy mentality of someone living in the depths of an endless winter.
Wow! how much does it weigh?
The African giant pouched rat can weigh up to 6 pounds if it has just fed on the African giant bulging frog.
What does rat and guinea pig taste like? Chicken??
Rat and Guinea Pig taste like compressed, under-done chicken. Take your local grocery store variety, buzz it in the microwave until you’re sure the creepy crawlers are gone but the meat is still lightly red and not the least bit tender. Take it to your nearest weapons manufacturer and have it put in a cylindrical punch press until you get a cube about 2″x2″x2″. Season to taste.
I am a research student working on African giant rat. How many grams of feeds can adult male giant rat consume daily?
As much wood as a woodchuck can chuck.
Good luck! – Jim