New Animal Discoveries!

[RJDiogenes]

This is the resurrection of one of my favorite Threads on the old board. Luckily, I had cross-posted all these items on a couple of other boards so I was able to gather them up again (and I only had to replace one of the links).

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Over the last couple of years, some amazing discoveries have been made in isolated areas of the planet. Many new species of plants and animals have been found, which is surprising in this day and age.

One such area is a "Lost World" in an isolated region of Indonesia. Recently there was an article about a couple of new discoveries: A giant rat (too bad it wasn't in Sumatra ) and a tiny possum. This is a follow up to previous discoveries of dozens of new species of plants and animals, including new species of frogs. I love frogs.

Also, not too long ago, there a bunch of new species discovered in the Congo. Yes, there are some new frogs there.

And here is an article about several new species found in Vietnam. No frogs this time, but it's pretty cool nonetheless.

And I just found this article about a strange new creature discovered in Tanzania: Giant Shrew Or Tiny Elephant? Cool little guy.

And courtesy of Unicron: the yeti lobster, a denizen of hydrothermal vents.

More new animal news, this time on the Antarctic sea floor. Fields of tunicates!

Yet more news from Antarctica. Giant starfish!

And now we have more news from remote Indonesia. And it's a strange new frog. He has no lungs!

This isn't exactly a new animal, but an animal thought extinct for over a hundred years: The Dwarf Cloud Rat of the Philippines. It lives in a mossy forest that was devastated by logging up until about forty years ago and is now recovering; the article doesn't explicitly say so, but hopefully this means that the animal's population is rebounding along with the mossy forest's regrowth.

I think this is all pretty exciting. Not only do I love animals, but it's just great to think that there are new species out there to be discovered in the world.

Has anybody else come across any news of new animal discoveries?

[RJDiogenes]

More good news from Indonesia: A tiny primate called a Pygmy Tarsier that was thought to be extinct for the past eighty years has been found alive.

Unlike most primates, they have claws instead of nails; they can also swivel their heads 180 degrees and they have sharp, pointy teeth. So be careful if you see one.

[RJDiogenes]

What till you see this:

[youtube]RM9o4VnfHJU[/youtube]

Courtesy of Blindgroping and Orpheus at Shattered Corpse; coincidentally, Australis also Posted it at TrekBBS today.

[jgc]

Huh.

[Lupine]

Here's a new species of rat. Or semi-new since I saw a picture of it on a show called "Ratzilla" last night.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/0 ... pstoryview

About the cutest rat I've seen.

And this place sounds like something out of a Edgar Rice Burrough's novel:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... new-guinea

All it needs are wild women in leopard skin bikinis.

[RJDiogenes]

That's fantastic! Giant Rats and Fanged Frogs! Sixteen new Frog species, in fact.

I haven't forgotten to bring over those other links, either; I just haven't had a chance to do it....

Maybe this year for NaNo, I'll write Lost World Of The Fanged Frogs.

[Lupine]

And it's neat that all this is in a volcanic crater. Just like a pulp novel.

[RJDiogenes]

Yeah, nobody would believe that if you wrote it-- too unrealistic.

[mudshark]

Here's a new species of rat. Or semi-new since I saw a picture of it on a show called "Ratzilla" last night.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/0 ... pstoryview

About the cutest rat I've seen.

Following a link off of this one, found another article about a newly(?)-discovered rat-eating plant. On a mountain in the central Philippines, this.

[RJDiogenes]

Awesome! One day a new giant rat, the next a new giant rat eating plant. It's like an arms race.

[Lupine]

I think I remember hearing about that earlier in the year.

[mudshark]

I think I remember hearing about that earlier in the year.

The CNN article wasn't dated, so I wasn't sure how current it was. Further checking indicates that the plant was first noted in 2000 by missionaries hiking in the area, identified as a distinct species (Nepenthes attenboroughii*) in 2007, and formally described in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society in February of this year, so it's entirely possible you did hear about it earlier.



* Named for David Attenborough, who's supposed to be a pitcher plant enthusiast.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepenthes_attenboroughii

[Lupine]

^Actually I might have been thinking of a section of The Search for the Last Undiscovered Animals by Karl P. N. Shuker. There's a brief section in Chapter 6 about a supposed plant from India that consumes mice.

[RJDiogenes]

^^ Damn, that book seems to be out of print.

[Lupine]

^I found some on Amazon today fairly cheap.