OUR story about fresh sightings of the pizza munching Giant Rat in last week's Star has stoked up huge interest across town as people try to fathom just what the monster rodent is.

Is it an escaped exotic animal from a private collection, or some massive mutation of a sewer rat?

One reader suggests that it could be a young Wallaby, but Amanda Peers from St Helens who has lived in Perth, Western Australia for the past decade is certain the animal is a Quokka, a small marsupial that early explorers mistook for a giant rat.

She said: "As soon as I saw it I knew what it was. I assumed it must have escaped from a zoo. They are quite tame animals and should be able to cope with living here."

But Ann Callon thinks the creature is a South American Degu, which she described as a cross between a chinchilla and a rat.

She said she immediately recognised it because her son had kept them as pets.

News of the beast soon spread to Knowsley Safari Park, where Denise Chorley, Education Officer at the park insisted that the animal was not a rat.

"They just don't sit like that," she said.

"It's very marsupial like, but has the wrong head for a Wallaby."

She said that the photograph of the creature will be analysed by experts at the safari park.

Sightings of the animal have been reported across the borough, the latest being by a group of workers at the YMCA, who said they saw a large rat like creature disappear under a kerb on Corporation Street last week.

* There have also been sightings by people in Rainford of a large savage-looking animal lurking off the bypass. Have you captured either of these mysterious 'beasts' - or any other strange creatures in the area - on camera? If so, click here to send us your photos.