27 Unknown Species Discovered

NaijaGuy writes "27 unknown species of spiders, centipedes, scorpion-like creatures and other animals have been discovered in caves beneath national parks in California's Sierra Nevada. The Texas-based Zara Environmental led the 3-year exploration and has published reports with photos of the fascinating critters. "Not only are these animals new to science, but they're adapted to very specific environments -- some of them, to a single room in one cave," said Joel Despain, a cave specialist who helped explore 30 of the 238 known caves in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks."

Comments

Re:Yikes!

[Crunchie Frog]

Aren't those deadly, but only aren't because their fangs are too small to pierece the skin?

Nope just another urban legend

Re:Absence of evidence

[mmontour]

Interesting. It doesn't say that experiments say otherwise; it just says that the experiments haven't been done.

They have been done, on Mythbusters. The venom didn't produce any significant effects.

Probably varies.

[jd]

In New Zealand, you'll find caves filled with glow-worms, which feed on insects that fly in. In many caves with lake systems, you'll find sightless fish that feed off algae that comes in from the outside. Caves with geothermal heating may well have extremophile algae that live off the chemical soup. In general, life tends to be extremely creative in its methods of surviving and adapting.

(Ice worms, another recently discovered species, can only survive in freezing or near-freezing conditions and live in glaciers. They crawl to the surface at night and feed off any organic matter that has settled on the ice. They were discovered in Washington State, I believe.)

What shocks me is that many of the species that have been discovered in the past ten to fifteen years (the Wollemi Pine, for example, as well as the Ice Worms) have largely been in very well-explored, well-documented regions that may not be exactly on the beaten track, but have certainly been visited by knowledgable experts many times over many decades. In some cases, many centuries.

Some of these discoveries (as in this case) have been through inadequate study. Other cases have been uncovered as a result of genetic studies proving physically similar organisms to actually be unrelated. (The converse has also happened.) Yet others have been through skeptisism obstructing observation. These things are all understandable and are inevitable. It's shocking only because virtually all environmental and developmental policy is based on what is known, and what is known is proving to be limited.

We'll be discovering new species for a long time to come, but if we had more scientists doing basic field-work and/or DNA mapping, we'd find them a lot faster. The problem is, basic research isn't profitable (so corporations are generally uninterested) and isn't vote-winning (so politicians don't care). The sciences don't come cheap, but if nobody is going to cough up the cash, it will be left to pure chance on the encounter and blind luck on the necessary awareness. To me, that feels utterly wrong. Knowledge should be gained, not gambled.