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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."
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 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-
"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?
i know, i know, responding to someone openly going by the name trollable. My biologist's background won't let me leave this be, though.
If the grandparent was living in the bush in Alaska and ate his bear there, it may well have been living entirely off of salmon runs, in which case it would have been carnivorous when he ate it. As for whales, that depends upon the species of whale; the baleen whales eat krill, which is composed of small shrimp-like creatures while orcas- killer whales? you've heard of them -are most certainly carnivorous. Dogs on the other hand will eat just about anything if they have to- rabbit droppings (good source of fiber, those) come to mind. They prefer meat but don't require it in the way that cats do. Tyranosaurus probably tasted at least a little bit like chicken, and quite possibly modern factory farm chicken at that... Do you know what your food's been eating?
Uh, "if it looks roughly mouse-shaped according to my infra-red sensitive pit, eat it"? --Chris Burke 09-08-10
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.