West African shaggy rat long as the head-and-body length; it is ringed by small scales and clad with sparse short bristles. The head-and-body length of this rat averages and the weight averages . The West African shaggy rat is native to tropical West Africa; its rangeincludes Benin, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo. It inhabits wetlands and swampy areas, streams, riverbanks, lakesides, young oil-palm plantations and rice fields. The West African shaggy rat is a terrestrial species. It is nocturnal and a good swimmer. It lives in a shallow burrow, the entrance often hidden under a
Queen of the Gambia Queen of the Gambia Elizabeth II was Queen of The Gambia from 1965 to 1970, when The Gambia was a constitutional monarchy within the Commonwealth of Nations. The Queen was also the monarch of the other Commonwealth realms, including the United Kingdom. Her constitutional roles in The Gambia were delegated to a Governor-General. The Gambia was granted independence in 1965 under the Parliament of the United Kingdom's Gambia Independence Act 1964, which unified the Gambia Colony and Protectorate into an independent sovereign state. After two referenda on constitutional amendments, the first unsuccessful because it did not pass by the necessary