You win some, you lose some

It’s always wincingly amusing when scientists show up in the media saying, “We’ve got good news and bad news.” That’s in effect what happened the other day when, simultaneously, Arizona State University’s International Institute for Species Exploration unveiled its top-10 list of newly discovered species and ScienceDaily.com announced that the Caribbean monk seal is no longer with us.
One species extinct and 10 new ones found doesn’t seem like a bad deal, but of course that’s just the way the news bubbled up. In fact far more species are being lost every year than are discovered.
And a lot of people will wonder if the 10 “new” species are really that much of a boon to life on earth when they include a duck-billed dinosaur that’s been dead for 75 million years, a frog that doesn’t look too healthy either, other weird creatures like a bat, a ray and a rhinoceros beetle and the jazzy specimen pictured above, Thailand’s very own “shocking pink dragon millipede”.
Desmoxytes purpurosea, to give the millipede its Sunday-go-to-meeting moniker, “sits openly on the ground and vegetation during the day”, probably indicating that it’s toxic if eaten. That, its colour and its “common name” were enough to get it on the top-10 list.
The list is designed to thrill, with animals selected from among thousands of nominees based on unique or surprising attributes, the intent being to promote biodiversity awareness.
The Bangkok Post on June 11 quoted Somsak Panha as saying his “animal systematics research unit” from Chulalongkorn University determined that Shocking Pink — up to seven centimetres long and with 88 legs (one for every key on the piano, in case anyone wants to try training them) — lives primarily among the limestone mountains of northern and central Thailand. Despite its surmised toxicity, the beast regularly appears on rat and squirrel menus. There’s more!




For simple-minded giggles, the award goes to the gleeful baby at
And in terms of outright ingenuity,
Among the Java-driven visual treats are world leaders who are “rubberised” (a stunt you can also do with your own photo) and a squad of “economists” who can’t take their eyes off the stock market graph, plus “Hunt the Lawyer with Dick Cheney”, a Bush to whom you can feed words to mangle (”pre-dorseylandificate” is how he pronounces this blog) and a couple of adults-only-style recent additions.

The Nation’s Kitchana Lersakvanitchakul managed to round up a few pertinent facts for
Ae Wizard listed himself, Pop the Sun, Moo Kaleidoscope, Olarn Phromjai and Or Inca among the sidemen in the jam session. Page took a break, Ae said, and the guys treated him to a medley of Carabao songs, including “Refugee”.















