Dracula fish



Discovered: Burma

Documented: 2009



It's not big and it's not pretty, but Danionella dracula is certainly unique.



The transparent 17-millimetre-long "Dracula fish" is the only member of the 3700-strong Cypriniformes group to have vampire-like fangs on its top and bottom jaws, which the males use to impress each other and to settle squabbles over territory.



The discovery of these fangs was something of a surprise because the Cypriniformes lost their teeth about 50 million years ago, says Danionella expert Ralf Britz of the Natural History Museum in London.



So did the Dracula fish manage to keep its teeth while all around were losing theirs? Er, no. Instead, it evolved something new.



What look like teeth are actually bone which has grown into curved spikes that poke through the skin.



By comparing the Dracula fish's DNA with that of zebrafish and other members of the family, Britz estimates that the bony fangs evolved within 30 million years of the family losing its true teeth.



(Image: The Natural History Museum, London)

The world's smallest snake



Discovered: Barbados

Documented: 2008



If you shuddered at the discovery of a fossilised 13-metre, 1-tonne boa constrictor earlier this year, perhaps Leptotyphlops carlae is more up your street.



At only 100 millimetres long and no thicker than a strand of spaghetti, it is the world's smallest snake, able to curl up on a British 10 pence coin or an American quarter.



Blair Hedges of Pennsylvania State University, University Park, found the diminutive snake under a rock in Barbados last year.



Also known as the Barbados threadsnake, it belongs to a group of snakes that burrow into the ground in pursuit of ants and termites, which they suck dry before spitting out the husk.



Threadsnakes tend to be small - the previous record holder was the Lesser Antillean threadsnake, at 110 millimetres. But Hedges believes L. carlae is as small as it gets.



Thanks to their tiny body cavity, females only manage to lay a single, very elongated egg. Any smaller and a snake would be unable to reproduce at all, he says.



(Image: S. Blair Hedges)

Psychedelic frogfish



Discovered: Indonesia

Documented: 2009



When the psychedelic frogfish, Histiophryne psychedelica, turned up at a popular dive site off Ambon Island, Indonesia, in January 2008, it posed something of a mystery. How had a brightly coloured, 8-centimetre-long fish managed to stay hidden for so long in such well-trodden waters?



Then, in June, it caused another stir, when all of the 12 or so individuals disappeared without trace. But not before a team led by Theodore Pietsch from the University of Washington in Seattle had noted several brand new behaviours (Copeia, 2009, no 1, p 37).



Perhaps the oddest was that it seems to dislike swimming. Like other frogfish, it "walks" along the reef on its long, leg-like pectoral fins, but when startled it does something unique.



While other species swim to safety, H. psychedelica escapes by jet propulsion, squirting water out of gill-like openings towards the back of its body as it pushes off the bottom with its fins. This, says one diver who observed it, makes it look rather like "an inflated rubber ball bouncing along the bottom".



The new species also hunts differently. All the other 325 known species of anglerfish, the group to which frogfish belong, sit in the open and attract prey with a lure.



H. psychedelica has no lure. Instead, it hunts by squeezing itself into tiny crevices where small fish hide.



Finally, while other species of frogfish change colour to match the coral they are sitting on, H. psychedelica stays true to its name whatever the background, sporting mind-bending swirls of orange, white and blue.



The psychedelic frogfish is still missing, presumed hiding. With diving companies desperately seeking what was briefly their star attraction, we may yet find out where it came from and why it has taken such a different evolutionary path from its cousins.



(Image: David Hall / Seaphotos.com) Advertisement

Pink cyanide millipede



Discovered: Thailand

Documented: 2007



It's bright pink, smells of almonds and goes by the slightly camp name of "Mangkorn chomphoo" but you wouldn't want to mess with this beast.



Discovered in central Thailand in 2007, Desmoxytes purpurosea is a large, spiny "dragon millipede" that oozes hydrogen cyanide to ward off predators - hence the almond-like smell.



The shocking pink is probably intended as another warning to leave well alone, says co-discoverer Henrik Enghoff of the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. Potential predators seem to get the message: D. purpurosea spends its days hanging out in the open on leaves and rocks in its humid jungle habitat (Zootaxa, vol 1563, p 31).



Mangkorn chomphoo - Thai for "shocking-pink dragon millipede" - is the latest addition to the dragon millipede family, whose members are found in south-east Asia and Australia. These creatures are often large, spiny and colourful, but Mangkorn Chomphoo takes the biscuit.



At about 3 centimetres in length, it is one of the largest, one of the spiniest and definitely the most lurid of them all.



(Image: Somsak Panha / WWF-UK)

Mammals galore



Discovered: Tanzania

Documented: 2008



Of all the world's biodiversity hotspots, the Udzungwa mountains of central Tanzania are among the hottest. Over the past decade, several new species have turned up here, including a partridge and even a monkey.



The latest discovery is a sengi, or elephant shrew. It is not actually a shrew, but a member of the afrotheres, a group that includes elephants, hyraxes, aardvarks and sea cows.



Sengis are considered living fossils as the 15 known species are almost identical to their fossilised ancestors of 23 million years ago.



The new sengi, Rhynchocyon udzungwensis, weighs 700 grams and is the size of a large rabbit, which makes it a giant among elephant shrews (Journal of Zoology, vol 274, p 126).



The giant sengi joins an astonishingly long list of recently discovered mammals: 1 in 10 known mammal species were discovered in the past 15 years.



The most important of these new arrivals is generally agreed to be the Laotian rock rat, Laonastes aenigmamus, a squirrel-sized rodent discovered in Laos in 2005 that is so different from any other known creature that a whole new family had to be devised to describe it.



(Image: Mason's News Service / Rex)

Flesh-eating ghost slug



Discovered: Wales

Documented: 2008



Proving that the gardens of suburban Wales are just as mysterious as the rainforests of Borneo, the "alien, flesh-eating ghost slug" first appeared in a domestic garden in 2006, but was only officially named Selenochlamys ysbryda last year.



According to Bill Symondson, an invertebrate ecologist at Cardiff University in the UK, who described the slug along with Ben Rowson of the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff, the ghost slug is "such a brilliant white it almost glows".



It lives underground and hunts earthworms or other slugs by stretching itself into a long, worm-like shape and sneaking down earthworm burrows. Then it uses sensitive receptors on its antennae to sniff out its prey.



When it finds a worm or slug it stabs its victim with its many sharp, spiny mouthparts (in close-up, left, with a single tooth inset) before sucking the rest of it - alive - into its mouth.



Since its closest relatives are found in the Caucasus region in south-west Asia, Symondson speculates that the species evolved in a cave system there, and was perhaps brought to the UK in bat guano that was exported as fertiliser.



Luckily, the species doesn't seem to be taking its ghoulish title too seriously. "They are at quite low densities, so we don't think they are a threat to earthworm populations," says Symondson.



(Image: Ben Rowson & Bill Symondson / National Museum Wales)

Blonde-ginger bat (flying fox)



Discovered: Philippines

Documented: 2008



This blonde/ginger fruitbat has striking stripes on its face that make it look rather like a fox.



It is known as the Mindoro stripe-faced fruit bat, or Styloctenium mindorensis.



The species' closest relative lives some 1,200 kilometres away on an island in Indonesia.



(Image: Harvey John D. Garcia)

Brown eelpout



Discovered: Antarctica

Described: 2006



Pachycara cousinsi is known from a single 41-centimetre-long specimen.



The specimen was caught at a depth of 4.5 kilometres, during a British research expedition to the remote Crozet Islands, in the Indian Ocean between Antarctica and Africa.



The fish has "watery, jelly-like flesh, probably due to their sluggish lifestyle and as an adaptation to pressures exerted on their bodies."



(Image: Nicola J. King)

Old species, new insights



It's not only new species that can amaze scientists. These creatures, discovered decades ago, are only now giving up their secrets.



The fish with a cockpit head



Discovered: California, 1939

Described: 2009



The 15-centimetre-long deep-sea barreleye fish Macropinna microstoma was discovered 70 years ago off the California coast. Until recently, though, little was known about it, as all known specimens were dead and damaged after being brought up in fishing nets.



This year, however, Bruce Robison from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California has collected the first footage of a live M. microstoma, filmed 600 to 800 metres down. They also collected a live specimen to study on the surface.



For the first time, researchers were able to see a delicate, transparent, fluid-filled dome on the fish's head, which completely encloses its bright green eyes.



The eyes were already known to face upwards to search for food through the gloom, but the live specimens revealed that once it has spotted food, it can swivel its eyes forward and swim straight upwards to catch it.



(Image: 2004 MBARI)

The only known lungless frog



Discovered: Borneo, 1978

Described: 2008



The Bornean flat-headed frog, Barbourula kalimantanensis, was discovered in Indonesian Borneo in 1978, but it was only in 2008, when two more populations were found, that scientists finally dissected a specimen and discovered it to be the only known frog species without lungs.



David Bickford of the National University of Singapore, who studied the frogs, believes that losing the buoyancy of the lungs allowed them to stay put on the bed of fast-flowing streams, where the higher oxygen content of the water allows them to get all they need through their skin.