Scientists have rediscovered a long-unseen species of mammal with the spines of a hedgehog, the snout of an anteater and the legs of a mole in Indonesia’s Cyclopei mountain range, Reuters reported. Scientists came across the animal sixty years after the species was last recorded.
Attenborough’s long-billed echidna, named after British conservationist David Attenborough, was caught on camera for the first time on the last day of a four-week expedition led by Oxford University researchers.
At the end of the trip, after coming down from the mountain, the biologist James Kempton found among the captured image of a small creature crossing the forest.
“There was great euphoria and at the same time relief after spending a fruitless long time in the field until the last day,” he described the moment he saw the footage with his colleagues from the Indonesian conservation organization YAPPENDA. “I shouted to my colleagues ‘we found her’, ran out of my desk and hugged them,” he said.
The team’s scientists describe echidnas as shy animals known for being difficult to spot. The reason why they are so different from other mammals is that they are part of the monogamous mammals, they are egg-bearing and separated from other mammals about two hundred million years ago, the biologist said.
The species has been scientifically recorded and described so far only once, in 1961 by a botanist from the Netherlands. Another species of echidna is found in Australia and in New Guinea.
The Oxford University researchers studied a remote area in north-eastern Papua where the echidna is part of the local culture. There is a tradition that conflicts are resolved by one side going to the forest to look for an echidna, and the other to the ocean to find a marlin. Both animals are difficult to detect and often take decades and generations before they are discovered. When this happens, the animals become a symbol of the end of the conflict and the return to normal relationships.
(BTA, Antoineta Markova)
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2023-11-10 10:49:00
#spines #hedgehog #snout #anteater #legs #mole
