New Mammal Species Found in Borneo

lemonysam writes "The BBC is reporting that a new mammal species has been discovered in Borneo by a conservation group trying to document the local species, as part an effort to prevent the destruction of their habitat by logging and agriculture. The species, which has not been identified by local experts or the indigenous population, is roughly the size of a domestic cat and is believed to be carnivorous."

Comments

Re:New "species" of "mammal"?

[presidentbeef]

The article mentions:

"It's more likely to be a viverrid - that's the family which includes the mongoose and civets - which is a very poorly known group," Dr Isaac said.

That being said, they only have two photographs of it so far, so it's hard to tell what it is...

Re:New "species" of "mammal"?

[Black Parrot]

> I have a question: Aren't class, order, genus, and family entirely arbitrary? Shouldn't we now classify living things entirely with genetics?

Not entirely arbitrary. What's somewhat arbitrary is how high in the tree of life the branches that get those labels are. Unfortunately it's a big messy tree that wasn't designed for the convenience of classification.

Looks a lot like a Fossa

[madaxe42]

It really looks like a Fossa - usually native to Madagascar. Wikipedia Fossa.

It's a member of the Viverridae family, which is fairly poorly known, due to their being a) nocturnal b) rare and c) furtive.

Talk about a can of worms you just opened

[Flying pig]

Well, no, they aren't arbitrary, except in the pedantic sense that arbitrary means by making a judgement - as in the word "arbitration", and not in its modern sense of "just one person's opinion". They are based around the understanding of taxonomy available at the time. (And, ultimately, from the religious concept of the chain of being - it's remarkable that current Christian fundamentalism is actually regressive compared to 17th and 18th century Protestantism, and proof that society goes backwards as well as forwards.)

The whole area of the filing of lifeforms - taxonomy - is in a state of flux, and the best way to get a grip on it is to read the popular writings of Jay Gould, who is so sadly no longer with us. Classification with genetics is at an early stage and we still do not know how to measure genetic difference reliably - which is why there is now disagreement over how closely human beings and chimpanzees are related. We can measure very small genetic divergences in the same species, but measuring the size and significance of genetic diferences between related species is very hard.

Disclaimer - I am not a taxonomist, just someone who is interested in the subject. Which is why I urge you to read Jay Gould. Even if you aren't really that interested in the subject, his writings should be familiar to any reasonably well informed slashdot reader.