English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Italian
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
A rat may not sound like an animal worth caring about. But, the San Quentin kangaroo rat (Dipodomys gravipes) is not your ordinary rodent. Kangaroo rats get around by jumping on their two hind legs like miniature, pouch-less kangaroos. One of the 22 species of kangaroo rat, the San Quentin kangaroo rat exists only in […]
Lost and Found
How to Get the First Photo of an Extinct Monkey
There had been no trace of Bouvier’s red colobus monkey (Piliocolobus bouvieri) since the 1970s. In 2008, after almost 40 years without a recorded sighting, scientists considered it extinct. Bouvier’s red colobus is so rare that if you google it, you won’t find a single picture of it on the internet. This monkey lives in […]
19 years for a moustache
The moustached mystery The existence of the Guadalcanal moustached kingfisher, also known as the Mbarikuku, had remained a mystery to scientists for decades. Having a large, orange and white body with a prominent blue “moustache” and blue wings, the species is very showy. However, due to its secluded environment, it has remained poorly documented and […]
Playing Hide and Go Seek in Kalalau Valley
Hawai’i is easily one of the most isolated places on earth, home to over ten thousand species found nowhere else in the world; each arriving as a castaway through the agency of wind and sea thousands of years before human habitation. Without the threat of predation or competition, Hawaii’s native plants and animals developed remarkable […]
Hunting for a Harlequin – rediscovering the Jambato harlequin frog
The Jambato harlequin frog was not always a rarity. Many villagers from the mountains of northern Ecuador remember the days when the little frog was a common sight: dwelling in damp corners of their houses, being prodded by curious children, and not infrequently being ground up for medicine. Amphibian of the Andes The Jambato harlequin […]
The Cuban Solenodon: Is it a goat; is it a bird… no it’s a dinosaur rat!
If I told you that I knew an animal that smelled like a goat, chirped like a bird, kills with its saliva and runs on its tip-toes, you wouldn’t believe me- right? So there’s not a lot of point in my writing this, given that you believe my subject to be completely imaginary. Okay, now […]
The tale of the Night Parrot: An epic of rediscovery against the odds
Parrots are birds. Birds fly. So parrots fly. Simple, right? Well, not exactly.
Frogs, sex and la(r)va
The Quito rocket frog (Hyloxalus jacobuspetersi) disappeared before it even got a name. It was first described for science in 1991, but it wasn’t spotted after 1989, with some scientists claiming that no one had laid eyes on them since the 1960’s. Story goes that it was once widespread across the Ecuadorian Andes, jumping from stream […]
From saddle cover to media sensation: the story of the yellow-tailed woolly monkey
During his famous 5 year-long expedition to Latin America (1799-1804), Alexander von Humboldt collected, together with his naturalist partner, Aimé Bonpland, around 60,000 plant specimens and an unknown number of animal specimens that we can safely assume to be in the thousands. Some of these specimens were being shown and described to the scientific world […]
Un-masking the true identity of the Tasman Booby
Remote volcanic islands, ancient bones, scientists and a species brought back from the dead. It might sound like a Jurassic Park rip-off but this is the story of how a diverse team of researchers un-covered the fate of the Tasman Booby. Unearthing history On Lord Howe Island, the husk of an old volcano 1600km east […]