157 ’new’ Mekong species discovered
A bat that could be a member of an American boy band, a gibbon with a Star Wars name and a toad straight from Tolkien’s Middle Earth are among the 157 newly discovered species in the Greater Mekong region described by the world’s scientists in 2017. The New Species on the Block report describes three mammal, 23 fish, 14 amphibian, 26 reptile and 91 plant species discovered in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam by scientists who ventured into the region’s jungles, mountains, rivers and grasslands, often under punishing conditions.
