I love good news.
The World Wildlife Fund recently announced 143 new species of animals, including a fanged frog and a tiger-striped pitviper, identified in the Mekong River basin in Southeast Asia. There’s so much bad environmental news associated with that river (such as the brink of extinction for the Mekong Irawaddy Dolphin), that it’s hopeful to see findings like this which might help push countries to be more active in protecting that waterway.
These findings happened at about the same time as a team from the UK was exploring a volcanic crater in New Guinea, and discovered more than forty new species there. The headliner here is a giant woolly rat with no natural fear of humans. I’m glad they’re not around here.
So much of the globe has been mapped (or paved). The fact that there are still pockets of unknown left makes the world so much more interesting.
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