Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a strange chap. As well as writing the famous Sherlock Holmes stories he also believed in fairies and was fooled by so-called psychics and mediums (or should that be media?) using trickery that they could move objects through hidden dimensions and other miraculous tasks.
I was reminded of him today on reading this article on the BBC site about a new species of giant rat that has been found in Papua New Guinea. The reason is that Sherlock Holmes alluded to a story regarding a giant rat in Sumatra, not that far from Papua New Guinea, that the world was not yet ready for. Since then many authors have produced versions of the story in an attempt to fill the gap.
This newly discovered rat is similar to those found in sewers all over the world except that it is considerably larger, one example was 82cm long, not something you want to meet unexpectedly on a dark evening.
