More New Species--This Time in Africa
By Aurone
@Aurone (4755)
United States
October 6, 2007 11:47am CST
Every semester I make my students in my biology class turn in current event articles that have to do with biology. This month a student turned in an news article he found about new species in Africa. They were found in a forest that scientists haven't been able to get to because of unrest in the Congo. It has remained untouched for many years. They found 2 new shrews, two new frogs, a new horseshoe bat, and a new rodent. Plus 10% of the plant life could not be identified by the botanists. So it is likely that there are some new plant species there as well.
And the really good news is that local chiefs and elders in the area and supportive of making this a protected park area to preserve this new diversity. Much better news for the African species than the Korean ones from last week!
1 person likes this
4 responses
@oscarbartoni (2581)
• United States
7 Oct 07
The way that humans are treating Mother Earth It is surprising that we have not become extinct ourselves yet. How much more destruction will we need to do before we kill off most of the living species and then ourselves? We need to really change the way that we are "protecting" Mother Earth. There do need to be more Nature Parks so that the plants and animals will not be harmed or killed off. We need to go back to places that we have already ruined and change them so that there will be less habitat destruction just because we (humans in general) do not think that we need to go into natural ways and destroy it to have a better place to live.
1 person likes this
@HighReed1 (1126)
• United States
6 Oct 07
That is a good thing. People should protect new species. Maybe these animals won't go the way of the dodo. It's a shame when animals are made extinct.
I'm more for new and unseen animals of the oceans. There are some bizarre things down there!
1 person likes this
@suspenseful (40192)
• Canada
13 Oct 07
It could be variations of old species or they were so well hidden that they could not find them until now. I doubt that God created them right then and there. And with the plant life, if some of it is vegetations, maybe it is an ancient plant that people used for food centuries ago. Now that would be an interesting discovery.
@theprogamer (10532)
• United States
12 Oct 07
Ah, very good! I'll have to look into this when I get a chance. I'm also glad that there will be some protection for these species. I'd say though, we should allow them the freedom to grow and live and hopefully protection won't confound this.
