Science Needs More Terriermen

This is a mammal, recently re-discovered in Cuba, called the Almiqui or Cuban Solenodon (Solenodon cubanus). Since its discovery in 1861, only 37 of these creature have ever been caught.

The folks that ponder such things have, at various times, thought this animal had slipped into extinction, but in fact it is merely a rare, regionally endemic, nocturnal, burrow-living animal that no one has really spent too much time looking for in a very expert manner. It seems that pondering animals and putting them into taxonomic "clads" is very different from actually going out into the field to find them with shovels, nets, traps, guns and dogs in hand. Hmmm. Who knew?

On the upside, not everyone in the world of biology is sitting at a typewriter. Dutch biologist Marc van Roosmalen recently went up the Rio Aripuanã river basin in Brazil and discovered a new species of peccary, a type of wild pig. It weighs 90 pounds and is the largest peccary in the world, but it has gone unnoticed by suit-and-tie scientists up to now. The push is on now to protect the area where it lives before it is logged out to make toilet paper and coffee tables.

Other relatively recent animal discoveries include only the second golden-mantled tree kangaroo ever found (this one in Indonesia, the last one in Papua New Guinea), an odd species of bushy-tailed rat "discovered" in the wild meat markets of Laos, the Arfak Pygmy Bandicoot, the Mountain Brushy-tailed Possum, the Red-bellied Gracile Opossum, the Pygmy Three-toed Sloth, Goodman's Mouse Lemur (very cute!), and the oddly-named "GoldenPalace.com" Monkey whose naming rights were sold for $650,000 which will go to support consevation efforts in Bolivia's Madidi National Park.

I wonder how many lost or never-discovered animals might be found in the tropical parts of the world if an energetic person with a good working terrier and a shovel were detailed to hunting in the field? Who is really looking for stuff that dens underground?

If the Smithsonian or National Geographic wants to find out what's out there, the dogs and I are available for travel to exotic locations. Pay my mortgage, slip me a travel stipend, and arrange for a decent retirement and health plan, and I will willingly suffer dysentery and rebel forces in the developing world in the name of science. Operators are standing by!

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