Hope for Animals and Their World

by Jane Goodall; Thane Maynard; Gail Hudson

  I find it incredibly inspirational that even now, near the end of the first decade of a new century, with our planet groaning under the explosion of human populations, with the natural world retreating every day before the onslaught of development, there are still places where countless small creatures are living unseen by prying scientific eyes. This is so even in the developed world, but they are mostly found in remote, hard-to-reach rivers and lakes, mountainous forests, hidden caves, and canyons deep in the ocean. And then, during some expedition, they are spotted, their secret lives revealed. Sometimes the area is so remote, so undisturbed, that even larger birds and mammals can be found as well.

  How thrilling to discover something that has never been described—probably the dream of every biologist who ventures into new terrain. When I arrived in Gombe in 1960, it was a very remote place. Apart from a couple of game wardens, few white people had ever been there. And many a time, as I gazed at some brilliant beetle or fly, or found a tiny fish high up near the waterfalls of the small swift streams, I wondered whether, perhaps, I was looking at a species unknown to science. Almost certainly, sometimes I was. For scientists working with plants, invertebrates, and fish are constantly identifying new species, especially now that DNA research enables us to make more rigorous distinctions between similar organisms.

  In this chapter, I have selected a few of the discoveries made since the turn of the millennium, including previously undescribed birds and monkeys. They are not, for the most part, new to the people living there, who usually have names for them. But they are new to science, and for those who make such finds this is exciting, as each one adds to our knowledge of life on earth. There is just one problem: When a new species or subspecies is discovered, it has long been held that it can only be described, as for plant species, from so-called type specimens. Which means killing a few of the new creatures and putting their skins or whole bodies in preservative.

  In the days when I worked for Louis Leakey at the National Museum (then the Coryndon Museum) in Nairobi, it sickened me to see drawer upon drawer of dead animals—the type specimens of not only invertebrates but also fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and small and medium-size mammals—and often there would be many of each. In addition, there were all those that had been skinned, stuffed, and put on display—and these of course included lions, chimpanzees, and so on. Such collections in museums around the world represent killings on a massive scale. Indeed, Dr. Thomas Donegan maintains that the killing of individuals for type specimens and for museum displays may have actually contributed to bird extinctions. In 1900, for instance, Beck collected nine of the only eleven individuals he had observed of a large and very rare bird, Polyborus lutosus, endemic to a small island off the coast of Mexico. Since then, this bird has never again been seen in the wild.

  To Kill or Not to Kill …

  Today, as we face mass extinctions on our planet, more and more scientists believe that it is ethically wrong to kill newly discovered creatures that are rare and most likely endangered, and that new technologies mean that it is not necessary to obtain dead specimens. This has led to a heated and sometimes acrimonious ongoing debate. For example, Alain Dubois and André Nemésio describe those who are against killing for science as an “ethically correct tyranny” who peddle “a hypocrisy and a lie” and choose “ignorance in the name of conservation.” Donegan counters that the International Code for Zoological Nomenclature defines the term specimen as: “An example of an animal, or a fossil or work of an animal, or of a part of these” (my italics). Thus, argues Donegan, it is possible to achieve one’s objective using nonlethal methods, describing a new species through meticulous descriptions and photographs, along with hair or feather samples and blood for DNA analysis.

  Drs. Dubois and Nemésio also believe that if a newly discovered species is known from just one individual, it is probably as good as extinct anyway, so it may be better to kill it for a type specimen rather than risk that it disappear unrecorded by science. But suppose, says Donegan, another individual is subsequently found? In part 4, we describe how the black robin population bounced back from a low of just one remaining female and four males.

  While the scientific debate continues, it is comforting to know that a growing number of previously undescribed species have been documented without using dead specimens—and that the descriptions have been generally accepted, and published in peer review scientific journals.

  Donegan makes another important point: Researchers who seek to convince poor rural communities that scientific collecting is justified, while hunting or animal trade should be controlled or prohibited, are likely to be regarded as inconsistent and are setting a terrible example. Those who describe species without killing them have the moral authority to encourage conservation initiatives among the local people—in whose hands the future lies. When JGI was working in Burundi, I decided to end a collaborative arrangement with another organization when I found it was planning a large-scale collection of birds and small mammals for scientific research in our study area. I pointed out that we had spent a great deal of time convincing the local population that wildlife should be respected and protected and that if they were now offered money to go trap and kill them, all our headway would be lost.

  New Primates—Our Closest Relatives

  Two new species of Old World monkeys—in the Himalayas and in Tanzania—and one New World monkey in Brazil, have been found since the start of the new millennium. In 2003, the Nature Conservation Foundation organized an expedition to the mountainous Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, bordering Tibet and Myanmar. They found a monkey unknown to science—the first macaque species to be discovered since 1908. Of course the local people knew the animals well and called them mun zala—the “deep forest monkey”—which led to its scientific name of Macaca munzala, commonly known as the Arunachal macaque or stocky monkey. Fourteen troupes of about ten monkeys each were located in areas of undisturbed forest—the monkeys were shy and very wary of people. They are, as one of their names suggests, stocky in shape, with brown fur that is darker on their heads, and short tails.

  Our second monkey, Rungwecebus kipunji or the kipunji, was found in 2003 in the southern highlands of Tanzania. By an almost unbelievable coincidence, it was discovered in two different locations some 250 miles apart, at almost the same time, by two completely separate expeditions! Dr. Tim Davenport of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and his team first found the kipunji in the Rungwe-Livingstone Forest in December 2003.

  Less than a year later, in July 2004, Dr. Trevor Jones led an expedition sponsored by the University of Georgia into the Ndunduhi Forest Reserve of the Udzungwa Mountains and discovered four groups (each group has about thirty to thirty-six individuals) of kipunji living there as well. Sadly, I was told by Tim Davenport that this kipunji population is no longer considered viable, despite the fact that the reserve has been highly protected.

  Meanwhile, the Mount Rungwe–Livingstone Forest has been heavily logged and there have been many poachers. Even so, Tim Davenport’s team has since discovered as many as thirty-four groups of kipunji living there—bringing the total number of individuals up to 1,117 as of March 2009. Fortunately, the Mount Rungwe–Livingstone Forest is about to become a nature reserve (something Tim and his team have fought hard for), which should help keep the kipunji more secure.

  The really exciting thing about this discovery is that the monkey is not merely a new species, but a completely new genus, having biological characteristics that differentiate it from both mangabey and baboons. (For those who don’t remember their school biology lessons, genus is an even broader classification than species.) At first it was thought to be a kind of mangabey and named the highland mangabey, but then a dead one was found, trapped by a local farmer, and DNA analysis showed that it was more like a baboon. It is about three feet in length, with long brownish fur, a crest of hair on its head, and pronounced whiskers on its cheeks. Instead of communicating with a mangabey-type whoop g
obble, the kipunji has a honk bark. Just reading about these sounds makes me really want to hear them for myself. It certainly stimulates the auditory imagination—a whoop gobble and a honk bark.

  In an interview, Dr. Jones said, “I’ll never forget the day we were surveying biodiversity in the forest, and one of our team suddenly grabbed me and pointed to a monkey in a tree a hundred meters away. I grabbed my binoculars and nearly fell over. It was a very surreal moment, and I simply stood there in disbelief.” Soon after this fantastic experience—surely every biologist’s dream—he learned about the new monkey that Davenport and his team had just found. When they subsequently realized that the two new monkeys were the same species, they decided to publish their findings jointly. It has long been known that the mountains of southern Tanzania have provided a refuge for a variety of species long extinct elsewhere—what else, I wonder, is waiting to be found?

  The New World monkey, the blond capuchin (Cebus queirozi), was discovered near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2006 by Antonio Rossano Mendes Pontes. It has golden hair with a white “tiara” on its head. Thirty-two individuals were seen in a forest and swampland fragment of only about five hundred acres. One individual was caught, examined, photographed, and returned to the forest. Some suspect that rather than a new species, the blond capuchin may be a rediscovery of a monkey named Simia flavia, known only from a drawing by German taxonomist Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber in the 1770s.

  Primates from Brazil and Madagascar

  In the vast forests of the Amazon Basin, many secrets of nature still lurk. My longtime friend Dr. Russ Mittemeier, who now holds the prestigious position of scientific director of Conservation International, has spent many years exploring the Brazilian Amazon forests. Between 1992 and 2008, he and his team discovered, described, and named a total of six new marmoset species and two species of titi monkeys. One of them, for me, was very special because on a brief visit with Russ I was able to meet the little creature. Russ had only recently rescued her from a remote village. Diminutive and absolutely enchanting, this scrap of a primate sat on Russ’s shoulders as he told me stories of his travels.

  Presently she moved onto my shoulder, and I had an unreal feeling—I was in contact with a tiny being that only a handful of Westerners had yet seen. How many of her kind, I wondered, were out there, living their unknown lives? It was subsequently determined that she represented a completely new genus. Now known as Callithrix humilis, the black-crowned dwarf marmoset, she has a name longer than she is! In fact, during the first eight years of the new millennium, a total of eight new species of prosimians (all primates other than monkeys and apes) have been described in Brazil: three marmosets, three titi, and two uakari.

  During the same eight years, no fewer than twenty-two new species of lemurs were discovered in Madagascar—seven species of the tiny mouse lemur, two giant mouse lemurs, five dwarf lemurs, two woolly lemurs, and four new sportive lemurs. Russ has also spent time in Madagascar, and in 2006 a mouse lemur and a sportive lemur were both named for him.

  New Birds

  Whenever a new species of bird is found, a ripple of excitement runs through the circles of the ever-growing bird-loving public. In 2007, Dr. Blanca Huertas, of the Natural History Museum of London, led an expedition to the remote Yariguies Mountains in Colombia, and among many fascinating discoveries that she and her colleague, Thomas Donegan, made was the Yariguies brush finch (Atlapetes latinuchus yariguierum), a small bird with striking black, yellow, and red plumage. I spoke briefly on the telephone with Blanca and asked her how she felt when they found this bird.

  “It took time before it sank in,” she said. She thought for a moment, then added, “I think it is wonderful that we have left a little fingerprint on science.” (Her team left another little fingerprint when they found a new species of butterfly.) Blanca told me that this brush finch was the first bird species from the New World in which individuals were not killed deliberately to provide type specimens. Instead the team planned to identify the species by means of detailed descriptions, photographs, and blood samples. In fact, one of the two birds caught for this purpose died accidentally, so they ended up with a dead type specimen after all.

  For the past few years, environmentalists have been pushing to have the area protected; the finding of the new species has been of great help in this respect. Blanca told me that the area will very soon be declared a national park.

  Ant from Mars

  In mid-2008, short articles appeared in many international newspapers about a newly discovered ant from Brazil’s rain forest—the Ant from Mars. Soon after I saw one article, I tracked down Christian Rabeling, the biologist who discovered it near Manaus, and we had a fascinating conversation. The most exciting thing is that this ant is not just a new species, but a new genus. Its closest relatives seem to be ants that lived some ninety million years ago. I asked Christian how he felt about this discovery: “I think someone really loves me!” he said.

  He found the pale, eyeless ant by pure chance. One evening, when it was nearly dark, he was sitting in the forest getting ready to go home. He saw a strange white ant walking over the leaf litter and, not recognizing it, popped it into preservative in one of the small vials that he always carried and put it into his pocket. When he got back home, he was tired and had quite forgotten about it. Three days later, he found the specimen in the pocket of his pants. It was then that he realized he had found something extraordinary. Subsequently he sent photos of his specimen to Stefan Cover, who is in charge of the ant collection in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, the largest ant collection in the world.

  Stefan told us his reaction. “The first glimpse I got was just a grainy image on Christian’s computer. But it was obvious right away that I was looking at a completely unusual animal. I said, ‘Holy smoke. I don’t know what the hell that is.’” Later he told us, “Usually I know an ant when I see one. I can identify the subfamily, what genus, in some cases I can even guess the species. But looking at this ant made my brain go into tilt. It was definitely an ant—but unlike anything I had ever seen.”

  Stefan, knowing that Ed (E.O.) Wilson, famous among other things for his definitive book about ants (and a great hero for Christian), would love to see the strange ant, fetched him from down the hall. And Ed, looking at the image on Christian’s computer, made his now famous comment:

  “My God! That looks like an ant from Mars.”

  “It was thrilling for all of us,” said Stefan. “A lot of scientists live for this moment.”

  There is a final quirk to this story. Five years before Christian made his find, Manfred Verhaagh had found two strange-looking ants in just one of several soil samples from the area where Christian was working. Manfred preserved them in a vial—but as he was traveling with them, taking them to be identified, the container leaked and the priceless specimens were utterly destroyed. They tried everything to rehydrate them, but nothing worked. When five years later, Christian found the “Ant from Mars,” he sent a photo to Manfred—who immediately knew it was the same as the two that had been destroyed!

  Science Fiction in the Depths of Sea and Earth

  As we’ve mentioned, new species of invertebrates are continually being found. But sometimes a discovery seems out of the ordinary, especially when we find a survivor from a world millions of years ago, when life-forms were struggling to survive in the inhospitable environment of the cooling planet.

  Such is the case with the recent discovery of giant tube worms in the depths of the Gulf of Mexico by marine biologists from Penn State University. In this unlikely and eerie world, the worms live on chemicals from volcanic vents on the ocean floor. They have no natural predators and can grow to ten feet in length! The biologists, who measured the growth rate of individual tube worms over a four-year period, calculated that they would have to live for 250 years—a quarter of a millennium—to reach their maximum length. If this is true—if there were no growth spurts caused by changes in sea chemicals due to volca
nic action—they would be the longest-living invertebrates on earth. Or at least of those that we have discovered—who knows what other wonders are out there!

  The next tale is even more extraordinary—the discovery of the Ayalon Cave (as it is now known) near Ramla in central Israel. The entrance to an extraordinary world was discovered accidentally when workers in a deep limestone quarry broke through the wall. When scientists from Jerusalem’s Hebrew University got there, they found a whole unique ecosystem a hundred yards under the ground.

  I managed to track down Professor Amos Frumkin of the Hebrew University, and he suggested that I contact his student Israel Naaman, who was one of the first to enter the cave. Israel described it as being a very big “maze cavern.” The conditions, he said, were “not friendly for us—narrow passages, heat, and extremely high humidity.” But, he went on, “the feeling of walking into an unknown place that no one has been before is incredible.”

  It is best if I quote Israel’s words, for they give a real sense of the excitement that he and other members of the group felt at the time. “We arrived to a great round hall, forty meters diameter, with twenty-seven-meter height ceiling. I couldn’t see the other side of the hall; darkness swallowed the headlight beam. I took out a stronger hand light and an amazing spectacle was discovered to me—a beautiful underground blue pond. The water was still and the other guy bent forward to the water and started screaming, ‘There are animals in the water!’ On the water surface there was a thin bacterial mat and in the water, pale crustaceans swam, up to five centimeters long and of lobster-like shape.

  “Later, guided and equipped by biologists, we found in this lake and its surroundings, a very rich and vital ecosystem, including six new species of arthropod, four of them aquatic and two terrestrial. Additionally we found remains of two other species that probably had become extinct due to intensive pumping of water from the aquifer.”