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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."
What does it taste like?
What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
I just HAVE to have a coat with this critter's fur as trim.
What is even more interesting is not only is it a mammal, but it is a carnivore. This means that is relatively high on the food chain, but it has gone unnoticed thus far. This begs the next question: has it really gone unnoticed for so long, or has the species only recently evolved? We discover new insects and bactera all the time, but discovering a new mammal kind of revives that scientific ambition in all of this that there really are some things out there that haven't been found.
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...
Everything I need to know about copyrights I learned from Slashdot.
I have a question: Aren't class, order, genus, and family entirely arbitrary? Shouldn't we now classify living things entirely with genetics?
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
The species only actually sprung into existence about a year ago. You can tell that, because the local people still don't remember seeing it. Soon, the locals will remember it, complete with a history and folklore. By then it may be real enough that it can exist as a zoo specimen, rather than a mere couple of blurry photos.
Even now, its fossil ancestors are probably forming spontaneously in the rocks of Borneo.
Haven't you ever heard of the X-Men? Not only did this thing recently evolve, it probably has adamantium claws and super regeneration.
-Da3vid-
> 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.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"The photos look most like a lemur," he told the BBC News website. "But there certainly shouldn't be lemurs in Borneo."
Tell that to the fucking lemurs in Borneo.
Was it just me, or did the image of the new mammal first look like a tiny brontosaurus?
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.
Obviously a very, very small Bigfoot.
Cress, cress, lovely lovely cress
BBC TV reported that there was some debate over what the new beastie should be called. The leader of the team which discovered it was one Stephan Wulffraat.
I know what my money's on.
...I don't think they exist.
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.
Pining for the fjords
New York is on the coast. It'll only take a few tsunami to shift it, and over millions of years there'll be plenty of those.
Perhaps, 60 million years or so from now, one would find traces of the megacities if one looked carefully in the right place. I suspect our deep earthworks might be longer-lasting; I can't see much that's likely to shift the Channel Tunnel, for instance.
And if the next intelligent race arises when we're as long gone as the last dinosaurs, I'll tell them one place they can look where they'll surely find some of our relics. And a message. 'Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July 1969. We came in peace for all mankind. Signed, Richard Nixon.'
That will last a while, but the meteorites will eventually powder it, and the dying Sun will consume Earth and Moon alike. Will anything of ours last longer still? Thus far, I can think of four candidates. Pioneer 10 and 11, and Voyager 1 and 2. Maybe they'll be found. Maybe someone will come across them and know we were once here, long after the Sun is a dying ember of degenerate carbon. But I doubt it. Space is a big place in which to look for a few tiny, silent, eons-dead robots.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Well, let's assume someone does find Voyager and explores the records of our civilisation that it carries. They decipher the symbols. The notation. The waveform encoded in a spiral groove on a disc of gold. You know what they'll find? The last song of all human culture to survive intact and playable in the universe?
Deep down Louisiana close to New Orleans, way back up in the woods among the evergreens, there stood a log cabin made of earth and wood where lived a country boy named Johnny B Goode, who never ever learned to read or write so well, but he could play a guitar just like ringing a bell...
Happy now? I think it's very comforting. We may be long extinct, our world evaporated, our sun shrunken and fading, but whatever unimaginable alien intelligence finds our capsules will at least know that, for a while, we were here and we rocked.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.