Novelty? Novelteeth!

A whole carnivore has escaped all the acuteness of the voracious scientific eye in Madagascar until recent years. Indeed, science may have continued in untroubled oblivion had chance not favored enterprising researchers from the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, who happened to be wading about the borders of a remote lake (Aloatra?), when they spotted “something strange” swimming past. To be sure, it is diminutive in size, semi-aquatic in habit, and misleadingly like a mongoose. John Fa of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust characterized it as a “scruffy little ferret” and only slightly more substantially as an otter - intent on scraping out a sustenance of fish and crabs. One of the original capturers and descriptors of a specimen, Fidimalala Bruno Ralainsasolo, hinted that a carnivore was not entirely unexpected snuffling about in the reeds of the shoreline (a similar vontsira, as it’s called, inhabits the eastern rainforests) but he hardly expected to see one swimming past with such aplomb. Now he concedes that “differences in its skull, teeth and paws have shown that this animal is clearly a different species with adaptations to life in an aquatic environment.” Just how adaptive this carnivore will prove to be, with its lacustrine home shrinking from deforestation, remains to be seen. It is fortunate, however, that Durrell’s vontsira has at least been seen and described, as it alerts scientists to the fact that more biological diversity remains to be discovered here than has yet met the eye. It is the first carnivore to be discovered in 24 years, but perhaps, it is not the last.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/8056289/New-carnivore-discovered-in-Madagascar-and-she-doesnt-look-very-happy-about-it.html 

(Emma)