English

Noun

spiny rat ‎(plural spiny rats)

1. Any of certain caviomorph rodents of the family Echimyidae, especially of genus Proechimys, that resemble rats and have stiff, pointed hairs, or spines.
   • 1999, Egbert Giles Leigh Jr., Tropical Forest Ecology : A View from Barro Colorado Island, page 28,

     Spiny rats, Proechimys semispinosus, are rodents weighing up to 500 g which eat fruits and seeds that have fallen to the forest floor. In Lutz catchment, a spiny rat's territory is three-fifths as wide as an agouti's (Smythe et al. 1982).

   • 2011, Terry A. Vaughan, James M. Ryan, Nicholas J. Czaplewski, Mammalogy, page 232,

     Members of the important Neotropical family Echimyidae, which includes a viety of roughly rat-sized rodents, are called spiny rats. […] Spiny rats are widely distributed in the Neotropics, occurring from Nicaragua southward through the northern half of South America to Paraguay and south-eastern Brazil.

2. Any murine rodent of the genus Maxomys (sometimes considered a subgenus of Rattus).
3. Any murine rodent of the genus Tokudaia.
4. Any murine rodent of the genus Echiothrix.

Derived terms

• Central Sulawesi spiny rat (Echiothrix centrosa)
• large New Guinea spiny rat (Rattus praetor)
• Mindanao spiny rat (Tarsomys echinatus)
• small spiny rat (Rattus steini)
• Sulawesi spiny rat (Echiothrix leucura)

Translations

See also

• spiny long-footed rat (= Mindanao spiny rat)
• spiny tree-rat
• tenrec