Several years previously Timmins discovered a new species of striped rabbit in the same region.
"Sceptics might say that if we are still discovering such amazing new animals then why are people worried about wildlife loss; but, of course, it is an indication of how little we know and a window on to what we could be losing without ever knowing," he said at the time of the kha-nyou encounter.
The notable mammal discoveries of the last decade have been made not by Indiana Jones-style mammal-hunters but by scientists who were not necessarily looking for what they found. Timmins, for instance, was working on an anti-poaching program in Laos when he came across the kha-nyou.
The discovery of this year's third new mammal, the kibunji or Highland Mangabey, a black-faced monkey with a punky quiff which lives in Tanzania, was made independently by two groups of scientists who only became aware of each other's work when they met in a bar in Dar es Salaam and began drinking together.
Tim Davenport, a British
scientist working with WCS, said yesterday that since his photographs of the monkey were published in Science, he and his collaborators had obtained a specimen of the animal -- a monkey killed by a Tanzanian farmer during a crop raid -- and was subjecting it to DNA analysis to disprove early questions over whether it really was a new species.
"There's this assumption that Africa is fairly well known, but it's surprising how little is," he said. "And the places where the interesting things are yet to be found tend to be these remote mountain ranges."
Davenport acknowledged that "discovered for science" would be a more accurate phrase than "discovered," since a monkey which raided village vegetable gardens and had a local name had clearly been known to locals for thousands of years.
He and his team first heard about the kibunji during a routine survey of village life and hunting in the areas on the fringe of the wild country they were surveying -- a standard technique to enrich scientific knowledge of an area.
"We started hearing about this animal," Davenport said. "This area has a lot of spirit animals and we were trying to work out which is a real animal and which is a spirit animal, which is very difficult. At first we thought the kibunji was a spirit animal and it turned out to be real. Now I take the possibility of other spirit animals turning out be to be real more seriously."
One such possibility, yet to be discovered or proved fictitious, is the Rongwe tiger.
"It's some sort of striped animal, and we haven't come across anything more than the description. Whether it's a striped hyena or aardwolf way out of its range, or whether it's a spirit animal, or a new species, we can't be sure. But finding these things is often the thing that gets us out of the tent in the morning," Davenport said.
RSS