Wednesday, April 6, 2011

The saola: rushing to save the most 'spectacular zoological discovery' of the 20th Century

The saola: rushing to save the most 'spectacular zoological discovery' of the 20th Century
Jeremy Hance
mongabay.com
April 04, 2011 

 One of the only photos of a saola in the wild. Photo taken by cameratrap in 1999. Photo courtesy of William Robichaud.
"The saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis) may be the most enigmatic, beautiful, and endangered big mammal in the world—that no one has ever heard of. The shy ungulate looks like an African antelope—perhaps inhabiting the wide deserts of the Sahara—but instead it lives in the dense jungles of Vietnam and Laos, and is more related to wild cattle than Africa's antelopes. The saola is so unusual that is has been given its own genus: Pseudoryx, due to its superficial similarities to Africa's oryx. In the company of humans this quiet forest dweller acts calm and tame, but has yet to survive captivity long. Yet strangest of all, the 200 pound (90 kilogram) animal remained wholly unknown to science until 1992..."read here

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