It's not quite a rat. Nor is it a squirrel, or a mouse. It's definitely a rodent  , and it's also a brand-new family of mammals. The locals of the Southeast Asian country of Laos call the creature a kha-nyou (ga-nyou). The kha-nyou have long body hair, short legs, and a hairy tail less thick than a squirrel's. They're vegetarians living in the rocky hills of Laos, and they come out at night, but for more information, you'll have to ask the Lao people. "It was for sale on a table next to some vegetables. I knew immediately it was something I had never seen before," said Robert Timmins, a researcher for the Wildlife Conservation Society. Timmins was working in Laos to stop people from selling endangered animals when he spotted the species. Criminals who trade illegal wildlife can make a lot of money, but they also push the animals closer to disappearing from the planet. The kha-nyou live in karsts, or rough rock. Mark Robinson, a scientist with the World Wildlife Foundation, set out with Lao villagers to find a few more of the rodents for study. They climbed onto a karst, trapped with rice, and caught several. "To find something so unusual in this day and age is just extraordinary," said Timmins. "For all we know, this could be the last remaining animal family left to be discovered." It's a big deal to discover an entirely new family of animals. Humans, for instance, belong to the same family as great apes, chimpanzees, and gorillas. So even though kha-nyous look like rats, they're really very different. The last time scientists discovered a new family of mammals may have been in the 1970s, when they found new bats in Thailand. Timmins seems to have the gift for finding new animals in Laos--he discovered a new species of rabbit there in 1999. Scientists call the kha-nyou Laonastes aenigmamus, which means "mysterious mouse that lives among the stones."But if that's too hard, Timmins and Robinson suggest you call them "rock rats". It implies in the passage that   _  .
finding a new animal family in Southeast Asia is easy finding a new animal family in modern time is extremely rare in Southeast Asia new species of animals are often discovered animals that look like the same are of the same family