It's a pig, Jim... - November 06, 2007
...but not as we know it. In fact it's a giant peccary, (Guardian, Independent, ScienceDaily) from the Amazon brought into the scientific fold by Dutch zoologist Marc van Roosmalen. The details are apparently reported in the Bonner Zoologische Beiträge, a journal which as far as I can see has no website. But van Roosmalen has them on his website -- along with an account of a dwarf mannatee, "the smallest of all sirenians".
The Register points out that the peccary is hardly, despite some of the headlines, a discovery, in that the local Tupi people have known about the beasts in question for quite some time, and indeed hunt them on a regular basis. Fears that others will also join in, and destroy the peccary's habitat, have allowed the new peccary to jump straight from the unknown on to the Red List of endangered species.
It's also not as much of a discovery as all it might have been even for those of us who are not members of the Tipu: Loren Coleman of Crptomundo had the goods last year.
Earlier this year van Roosmalen was in the news for other reasons; amid an outcry of support by fellow scientists, he was given a long prison sentence for allegedly taking four monkeys out of the Amazon without proper permits (Nature story). The Telegraph reports that he has now been released on appeal.
I'm slightly bemused that the Guardian insists this new pig is "huge". It's bigger than Babe, sure, and also than other peccaries. That presumably is why it is being called the giant peccary. But for all that it's only a bit over a metre long, and that's not really a huge pig. This is a huge pig.
Comments
There is a tiny website by BZB (Bonner Zoologische Beiträge) at http://www.zfmk.de/web/Forschung/Buecher/Beitraege/index.de.html
Posted by: Dirk Ehnts | November 9, 2007 11:31 AM