"Bryn the pygmy rabbit died in 2008, marking the end of her genetic line. This subpopulation lost its sagebrush habitat as the land was developed for agriculture ... In an off-exhibit room at the Oregon Zoo, the staff was quiet, even reverent, as they brought in Bryn. She was one of two Columbia Basin pygmy rabbits left, and since both were old females, this was a solemn occasion."
Rare: Portraits of America’s Endangered Species
posted by melissam
on May 30, 2010 -
16 comments
Attenborough's Pitcher, an "Udderly Weird Yam," a two-inch phallic mushroom already immortalized on
Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, and the "Bombardier Worm" ("Chaff worm" would seem a more accurate name) are just four of the newly described species making the International Institute for Species Exploration's totally arbitrary
Top 10 New Species list.
[more inside]
posted by dust of the stars
on May 26, 2010 -
6 comments
A new species of monkey turned up in India [
NYTimes or
Rediff]. Though the monkeys are new to science, people in the area are quite familiar with them. They call them "mun zala" or deep forest monkeys. It's a stocky, short-tailed, brown-haired creature they have named the Macaca munzala, or Arunachal macaque.
Maybe not that excting for those of us not excited by, uh, mokeys, but did you know this year there have been other new things discovered?
A new species of plec and one of
Neon goby, even more exciting,
a new electric fish was found as well. A quick search turned up dozens of new fish this year.
ABC News says 178 new things found in the oceans this year alone, raising the number of life-forms found in the world's oceans to about 230,000. The big question is, of course, how many of those will
Taste Like Chicken?
The bad news on the little critter front is
1 in 10 bird species could vanish within 100 years, and I bet they all taste like chicken.
posted by Blake
on Dec 16, 2004 -
16 comments
Hinterland Who's Who Back in the mid 1906s the Canadian government made what have now become the longest running public service annoucments ever. They're also possible the most boring, but that can't stop them from being amazingly popular. Don't forget to check out the spoofs.
posted by tiamat
on Oct 21, 2003 -
35 comments
The All Species Inventory is a non-profit organization dedicated to the complete inventory of all species of life on Earth within the next 25 years - a human generation. It's an interesting project, based on open-source ideology (check out their "
Principles") but seems to be limiting itself to strictly
Linnaean methods.
posted by Irontom
on Sep 23, 2002 -
10 comments
