The coat consists of long, silver and black-tipped guard hairs over a dense, woolly, grey and white undercoat, with the face and limbs having short, black fur.

A mane of longer, coarser black-and-white banded hairs extends from the top of the animal's head to just beyond the base of the tail.

[7] L. imhausi differs from typical Muridae in having the temporal fossa roofed over a thin plate of bone, rudimentary clavicles, and an opposable hallux.

[9] Its diet in the wild consists largely of leaves, fruit, and other plant material, but it has been known to eat meat, cereals, root vegetables, and insects in captivity.

By virtue of its large size and biomass, L. imhausi may be one of the few muroid rodents that can harbor a symbiotic microflora in the foregut and profit metabolically from gastric fermentation of cellulose.

The maned rat was believed to be solitary, but is now known to be somewhat sociable, with multiple animals trapped in the same territory; they purr and groom one another.