This picture was on my face book posts and I added the connection to the above to get the more dramatic picture of the giant rat caught in a kitchen in Sweden. My interest in this is due the beginnings of the 'Syai' project when I decided that evolution on the Syai planet (Feishoafeis) would throw up a dominant human-like species not quite like us. It would be of evolutionary descent from large rodents with some similarity to the rat. Marsupials and even birds can evolve to fill 'gaps' that cause them to become very similar in appearance to the mammals that would (if available) normally fill those gaps. I reason, then, that the Syai wouldn't be much different from us, as far as 'intelligent' life goes. The chilling thought, exercising the minds of some evolution-researching academics lately, is that our rats are waiting in the wings for out final "stuff-up" and extinction. Some branch-species will grow to our size in the post-human regenerating world; will feed off the smaller rat-species, dress in their skins, live in caves and eventually replace our civilization (with one - hopefully - more like the Syai?!)
