German Scientist Discovers New Insect Order 23
iphayd writes: "An entomologist in Germany has discovered the first species in a new order of insects. National Geographic News has a story here. The new species, called 'the gladiator,' is a 'cross between a stick insect, a mantid, and a grasshopper.'"
Food? (Score:2, Funny)
Are they poisonous? Do they taste nice?
Major Tiny... (Score:4, Interesting)
"This discovery is comparable to finding a mastodon or saber-toothed tiger," said Piotr Naskrecki, director of Conservation International's new Invertebrate Diversity Initiative
Yes, except either of those animals could a) smush you, or b) gore you... this little guy will just creep-you-out! "Ew, get it off! get it off!"
Software needs to deal with unexpected events (Score:2, Interesting)
The occasional reminder from the natural world about the strange things that actually happen in defiance of all the best theoretical simplifications is never a bad thing.
For the record, this new class of insect ranks somewhere between the Coelacanth [umich.edu] and the Wollemi Pine [nsw.gov.au] on at least a couple of measures of significance. In both those cases the media got quite excited.
On the Linnaean kingdom-phylum-class-order-family-genus-species scale, the Coelacanth ranks as the only living member of class actinistia which shares a closer common ancestor with the tetrapods (including us) than does any other fish in the ocean. However the Woolemi Pine only ranks as a new genus of the Araucariaceae family, and any common ancestor with us is clearly much further in the past than that of this new insect "gladiator".
Seeing as the Linnaean txonomy project has been ongoing since Carl Linnaeus [linnean.org] published his Systema Naturae in 1735, the illusion of completeness at higher levels ensures newsworthiness when something is discovered for which the closest related fossils known are tens of millions of years old.
So I really do see a similarities between finding a new bug in the Brandberg Mountains of Namibia and finding a new bug in software that had been running successfully for years.
BTW, I have no idea how anybody could imagine that calling a story "homosexual" would deter many Slashdot readers.
Re:Software needs to deal with unexpected events (Score:2)
What are we -- blind? (Score:2, Funny)
On the plus side, I wonder if these things might make good pets, cleaning up all those icky spiders in our houses . . . but do they bite!? Maybe it's a good thing these things don't live all over the face of the Earth.
Re:What are we -- blind? (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand, there are several species that are know from the fossil record but are presumed to be extinct (like this insect.)
The most notable one is the Celocanth (Ancient Fish) which is almost unchanged from it's fossil records (70 million years old) but was "first" found in the ocean in the 1930's.
Re:What are we -- blind? (Score:1)
Who knows -- maybe there are mastodons living in rock crevices somewhere, and we're too moronic to find them.
Moronic?? That is hardly the fitting word. Intelligence levels have nothing to do with finding a new species. Some factors that influence finding a species are:
1) How well the organism hides
2) Where is actually lives (we dont even know about 10% of all the species living in the water... the bottom of the ocean is still a huge mystery to us)
3) When it is most active
4) IF someone is actually looking out for new species
5) Our own patience in that search...
...how many of the known organisims on this planet do you see in a day?
you overestimate the human race's sum knowledge about the universe... or even our own backyard for that matter...
What about the Nambians? (Score:2, Interesting)
Tastes like chicken (Score:2)
One scientist was overheard to remark, "Mmmmph. Needs salt."