Maned rat

The maned rat, also called the African crested rat (Lophiomys imhausi), is a large, nocturnal, long-haired and bushy-tailed rodent of East Africa that superficially resembles a porcupine. It is the only rodent known to take up and store toxins from another species: it chews the bark of the poison arrow tree, Acokanthera schimperi, and smears the poison onto a strip of specialised hairs along its flanks, which can sicken or even kill a predator that tries to bite it. When the animal is threatened or excited its mane erects and the strip parts to expose this glandular area. Adults are roughly 18 to 30 centimetres long in head and body and weigh about 590 to 920 grams. In the wild it eats mostly leaves, fruit and other plant material, and it has an unusually compartmentalised stomach. It lives in the drier highland forests and woodlands of Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya, often among rocks or in hollow tree trunks.