Fanged frog, giant rat, and more found in Papua New Guinea

10/29/2009

A fanged frog (Mantophryne sp) discovered in Papua New Guinea's remote Bosavi volcano crater Credit Allen Allison

Last week I talked about the amazing animal discoveries in Asia's Mekong delta, and here's the other promised story about an amazing expedition to the "lost world" of Papua New Guinea's Bosavi volcano. Reading about these amazing trips makes me want to join a scientific expedition like this!

Between January and March of 2009, a team of biologists and filmmakers became the first Westerners to explore inside Papua New Guinea's remote Bosavi volcanic crater. The country lies on the east side of the large island of New Guinea, north of Australia. George McGavin, an insect specialist and explorer who works as an honorary research associate with the Oxford University of Natural History and the University of Oxford Zoology Department, led the scientific team which also included Bishop Museum herpetologist Allen Allison, ornithyologist Jack Dumbacher from the California Academy of Sciences, ichthyologist Phil Willink from the Field Museum in Chicago, mammalogist Kristofer Helgen from the Smithsonian, bat specialist Alanna Maltby of the Zoological Society of London, and Muse Opiang - the Papua New Guinean who did the first study of of long-beaked echidnas which I blogged about before, among others.

Because of the volcano's remote locale, the scientists had high hopes of finding unusual species there. The extinct volcano has high crater walls, so species with low mobility and species specizalizing in high elevation forest have remained isolated and hence evolved independently for hundreds of thousands of years. The expedition will appear in the BBC documentary series, Lost Land of the Volcano.

The expedition involved months of background prep for just a few weeks of collecting. On the initial trip to the village of Fogamaiyu, they met up with the Kasua tribe who live near the base of the volcano, who remain mostly isolated from Western civilization. They speak a dialect that fewer than 1,000 people speak, and had no televisions that might inform them about the outside world. The tribe didn’t even have a cash economy, so explaining the concept of paying them so the team could set up a base camp near their village proved a challenge initially. The expedition team asked the tribe's permission to explore the volcano, which they received, and then hired several tribe members as trackers, medics, and boatmen, plus a cook.

The rest of the international expedition team members then flew in to Fogomaya by helicopter, which is still a four-day hike from the top. They trekked through dense rainforest  to reach the summit of the nearly 9,000-foot Mount Bosavi volcano, which lucky for them is no longer active, and then ventured down into it. Once they reached the top, the hard work paid off. The scientists found a “lost world” with up to 40 funky, strange species that seem to be totally new to science, including 16 frog, one gecko, three fish, one bat and 20 insects and spiders. The scientists still must go through the peer review process to ensure these are indeed new species, so many of their scientific names have not yet been assigned.

Some of the critters discovered include the vegetarian, cat-sized rodent that Helgen has named the "Bosavi giant woolly rat" – one of the largest rats known in the world. It sowed no fear of humans. The team also found a new subspecies of tree-dwelling silky cuscus (Phalanger sericeus) – a marsupial that looks like a gray teddy bear with very small ears – plus a tree kangaroo, a pigmy parrot no larger than one’s hand, a fanged frog and the Henamo Grunter - a fish that grunts using its swim bladder. You can watch a video of the giant rat here. Amazing stuff! What do you think? Do you dream of going on an expedition like this? Or do you prefer to stay home and read about or watch others doing this stuff?

Comments

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