Science
Related: About this forumThe find of a lifetime: Bizarre 'panda bat' discovered in South Sudan
Researchers have hailed a bat that looks uncannily like a panda bear as 'the find of a lifetime'.
The bat, discovered in South Sudan, is so rare researchers believe it is an entirely new genus.
'My attention was immediately drawn to the bat's strikingly beautiful and distinct pattern of spots and stripes,' said Bucknell Associate Professor of Biology DeeAnn Reeder, who made the discovery.
'It was clearly a very extraordinary animal, one that I had never seen before - I knew the second I saw it that it was the find of a lifetime.'
Reeder spotted the animal in Bangangai Game Reserve.
After returning to the United States, Reeder determined the bat was the same as one originally captured in nearby Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1939 and named Glauconycteris superba, but she and colleagues did not believe that it fit with other bats in the genus Glauconycteris
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2306798/The-lifetime-Bizarre-striped-Panda-bat-South-Sudan.html
xchrom
(108,903 posts)GiveMeFreedom
(976 posts)thereismore
(13,326 posts)Shankapotomus
(4,840 posts)Why would a bat develop multiple colors?
SunSeeker
(51,726 posts)Voice for Peace
(13,141 posts)Shankapotomus
(4,840 posts)maybe he has a bat wedding to go to?
valerief
(53,235 posts)shenmue
(38,506 posts)Squeee!
Voice for Peace
(13,141 posts)so cute
juajen
(8,515 posts)are remarkable. Did ya'll see those adorable mollusks with beautiful blue eyes and orange and white stripes, some type of hermit crab, I believe. The photo was on yahoo news a couple of days ago. So adorable. I hope Pixar puts them in the "Finding Dora" movie that will be filmed with Ellen Degeneras in 2014. These have not been seen since 1937 or something like that. Honest, they looked just like a cartoon. I think they thought that they were extinct. I know something wonderful happened somehow to create the wonders on this planet, and, honestly, I will name it God.
IrishAyes
(6,151 posts)But I think a lot of people miss out on the pleasure of God because they try to impose human limitations. I like how you think. Nothing in science contradicts a reasonable human concept of God, after all. Nature is the great cathedral.
emmadoggy
(2,142 posts)IrishAyes
(6,151 posts)It's beautiful. Always before, I thought bat faces resembled chihuahuas, which I also like. But they're mud hens next to the panda bat.
That's one of the few things I really loved where I retired - the county and state offices are located in a beautiful old building on the public square, and the belfry houses a huge population of bats which fan out all over town every evening. So we have fewer bad bugs than we would otherwise. Nobody else seems to love them, but I do. The bats, that is, not the bugs.
Thank you for this wonderful post.