Pranticola manra (Pall.
This is a brief taxonomic note on Praticola manra (Pall.), the hairy-tailed rat, contributed by H.C. Robinson of the Selangor State Museum within C.B. Kloss’s “Occasional Notes” section (p. 225).
Summary
The note describes an adult female specimen captured in a nest in a hollow bough in the same jungle as Draco maximus in Selangor. The nest is described as a tunnel approximately three inches in diameter and eighteen inches in length, roughly lined with fibrous material and green leaves. The animal is pale greyish-brown above, yellowish beneath, with an ill-defined dark stripe from muzzle to beyond the eye; the tail is naked for two-thirds of its length and clothed with whitish hair over half an inch long on the terminal third, giving the species its trivial name (p. 225).
Dimensions are recorded as head and body 133 mm, tail 167 mm, ear 19 mm, hind-foot 34 mm. Robinson notes that the species was discovered some fifty years prior and appears rare, with little recorded of its habits. He suggests that examination of a series may prove the Peninsular form separable from the Bornean race, while cautioning that distinctions based on a unique specimen are fallacious (p. 225).