Picture: Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust
First revealed past Monday, the first new species of meat-eating mammal to be discovered in 24 years bears its teeth for the cameras in a recent picture. First spotted swimming in Madagascar’s Lac Alaotra in 2004, the cat-size creature resembles a “scruffy ferret” or mongoose, said John Fa, a director of conservation science at the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, who was part of the discovery team. “We biologists are a bit like children. We like new things. So a new species is something that really excites us.” Dubbed Durrell’s vontsira in honor of the late conservationist Gerald Durrell, the new carnivore is an especially rare find according to Fa: “The probability of finding a new herbivore is always greater, because there are significantly more of them. Carnivores are much more specialized and usually found in low densities.” Scientist suspect that the newly discovered animal is in grave peril and might be facing extinction, mainly because unsustainable forms of agriculture are currently on the rise in Madagascar. They think the entire wild population consists of about fifty individual animals.
Source: Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust
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