Perdana, Tanah Mount Lyell California Arrested Camera

Land rat Mount Lyell California. (Source: Vishal Subramanyan, Prakrit Jain, and Harper Forbes)

JAKARTA - Stopped for a moment after eating several caterpillars, the long nose of the hard-to-be ground rat facing up, not realizing the historic portrait that had just been taken.

None of Mount Lyell's land rats have ever been photographed alive, making them the only mammal species known in California, United States to manage to escape human cameras, according to the California Academy of Sciences.

All of this changed in October last year, when the wildlife photographer who had just graduated Vishal Subramanyan along with student scientists Prakrit Jain and Harper Forbes ventured into the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains and captured six Mount Lyell (Sorex lyelli) ground rats alive. There, they photographed and observed them before releasing them.

The idea originally came from Jain, a student at the University of California, Berkeley, who said she was "surprised" when she found out that no one had ever taken a photo of the ground rat Mount Lyell alive.

In collaboration with the Vertebrata Zoological Museum, University of California Berkeley, Jain, Subramanyan and Forbes, weaving plans to search for river habitats and wetland that cross the rare landscape near the small community of Lee Vining, about 300 miles (482 kilometers) east of San Francisco.

"I'm always ready for a crazy adventure. So I said, 'certainly, why not?' We have to try it," Subramanyan told CNN, as quoted March 5.

Tikus have a very high metabolic rate that they die if they stop eating for a few hours, which means they don't last long in a trap.

The team installed more than 100 hole traps, which were designed to get the mice to fall into them as they walked on the ground, and continued to monitor the trap for three consecutive days, only two hours of sleep at a time to monitor the trap.

"We caught Mount Lyell's ground rat in the first two hours and I think the fact we ended up catching six of them, and we caught one easily showing it wasn't too difficult," Subramanyan said.

"It shows that in general, this species is a species that is underappreciated in underappreciated ecosystems, so people don't take their time, really pay special attention to ground mice," he explained.

They also noted four different species of earth rats in the area, some of which are very similar to Mount Lyell's ground rats, so they then perform genetic tests to make sure they do see them.

"Handling the ground rats is a bit difficult," Forbes said, adding they cut a small part of the earth rats for genetic testing.

"They are biting and venomous. So we have to work on it a little. We have to weigh it in a plastic bag, and they are only a few grams, but they chew on that plastic bag. Generally they are a bit annoying, but the results are commensurate," he explained.

By catching ground rats alive, the team said they could observe their behavior, pay attention to the habit of mammals storing food for later or sleeping for a while.

Taking pictures of living animals, especially smaller and less well-known ones, also allows people to connect with them, helping with conservation efforts.

Tanah rat Mount Lyell is threatened by the climate crisis and can lose up to 90 percent of its cold habitat and is in the highlands as Earth warms up, the researchers said, citing a study conducted by UC Davis.

"Without public awareness and affordability through such photos, the species could simply disappear without being noticed, and no one would know about it," said Subramanyan.