“I vont to spike your neck” is what you might imagine a new species identified as a vampire hedgehog might say if you met it on a dark night… although apart from having razor sharp fangs the little critter doesn’t actually have any spines.
A hedgehog might not be the first animal we think of when conjuring up classic images of Dracula played by the likes of Christopher Lee in the iconic Hammer Horror films of the 50s and 60s.
But a little creature of the night from the hedgehog family, called hylomys macarong, has been discovered wondering the wilds of the Greater Mekong region that includes Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.
Luckily the ferocious predator is only about five inches long and it also doesn’t suck blood, having been given its name Ma cà rồng, which means “vampire” in Vietnamese, because of its long “fang-like” teeth.
The BBC reports what “purpose the long fangs serve is still something of a mystery, however, but they appear to be larger in males, which suggests they may play a role in sexual selection”.
Speaking previously to discoverwildlife.com, Mark Wright, the World Wildlife Fund-UK’s special advisor, said: “These new findings remind us of the extraordinary diversity and inventiveness of nature which can provoke a childish wonder and delight in us all.
“Sadly, it is also a timely reminder of the extreme jeopardy that so many of these species and habitats face, and what we risk losing if urgent and committed action is not taken.”
Across last year, researchers at the California Academy of Sciences described 138 new animals and scientists at the Natural History Museum in London added 190 new species to their records, including a new species of piranha, three dinosaurs and a pterosaur found in Scotland.
Geneticists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries also discovered that two distinct populations of killer whale in the North Pacific Ocean are separate species.
On the British Overseas Territory of St Helena in the middle of the southern Atlantic Ocean, two new species of spider were discovered.
St Helena has a long maritime history as a refuelling station used during the height of global naval exploration of the world in the last two centuries.
And in a nod to that past researchers from the Natural History Museum and the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Belgium have named two arachnids with a “habit of violently taking over the webs of other spiders and killing the occupants”
Ero lizae and Ero natashae are known as pirate spiders for their tactics used against other types of their kind and measure around 4mm long.
