New Animal Discoveries!

[RJDiogenes]

That's incredible. A six-foot lizard remaining undiscovered until 2009, and in a not terribly isolated place. They scamper up trees and hide when they hear somebody coming.

Who knows what else might be lurking out there, indeed...

It's a shame they taste so good. I wonder if they are endangered. It would be terrible to have them become extinct just as they are found.

[RJDiogenes]

Haven't had a new animal discovery in a while, but here's one now.

A new Squid-like Worm has been discovered in the Philippines. It's a bit Lovecraftian, but beautiful. The researchers think it may be in the midst of rapid evolutionary change.

[Lupine]

The notion of rapid evolutionary change is I think a tad dodgy based off only a few observations, but it is an interesting critter. Though to me it looks more like a shrimp than either a worm or a squid.

[RJDiogenes]

Yeah, it looks kind of like a smorgasbord of species-- very strange.

[Lupine]

I noticed that the little guy got mentioning on a NatGeo doc about the Celebes Sea last night.

[RJDiogenes]

Nice. I'll have to check for a repeat or if it's on On Demand.

[mudshark]

The notion of rapid evolutionary change is I think a tad dodgy based off only a few observations, but it is an interesting critter. Though to me it looks more like a shrimp than either a worm or a squid.

There's an image gallery linked in the National Geographic article - the marine worms pictured show a wide variety, some of them pretty exotic-looking, but there are a couple which are close enough in appearance to this new "squid worm" that they might at least be distant cousins.

[RJDiogenes]

Yeah, the Hawaiian one looks like it could be related.

[mudshark]

We have seen some of these already, but it's year-end so, from the folks at National Geographic, it's time for:

Ten Weirdest New Animals of 2010: Editors' Picks

[RJDiogenes]

Very cool stuff (except for the poor monkey ). Some of those would make good inspiration for aliens in an SF story, especially the ninja caterpillar and the handfish. The toad picture leads to an article about several new toad and frog species found in Colombia that have some very strange adaptations, including one who hatches on land and skips the tadpole stage.

[mudshark]

The pictures of the handfish of Tasmania reminded me of the batfish of the Central and South American Pacific coast (including the Galapagos Islands) which were in the fish books we looked at as kids - they also walk about on the bottom using their fins as "feet" and "hands". Turns out they're both part of the same order, but different families; interestingly, in a separate batfish genus from the one to which my childhood fish-book ones belonged can be found a couple of species also called handfish.

[Lupine]

The octopus reminds me of a cuddly Cthulhu. The tube-nosed fruit bat is pretty trippy looking. Kind'a looks like King Seesar from one of the Godzilla movies.

[RJDiogenes]

Wow, you're right. That octopus does kind of look like my plush Cthulhu.

[RJDiogenes]

Here we have a bonanza of new and rare species in Suriname.

New Animals.

Love the cowboy frog.

[Lupine]

I like the "Pac-man frog" myself.

Those catfish look prehistoric.