Wow. This line from the article is exciting/disturbing: "Such acidic
swamps was once thought to harbor few animals, but recent research has
revealed that they are highly diverse and home to many unique species."
Exciting because it continues to show we know next to nothing about life
on our own planet, disturbing because such discoveries are almost always
accompanied by the realization that said life is endangered.
Scientists Discover World's Smallest Fish
Scientists say they have discovered the world's smallest known fish in
threatened swampland in Indonesia.The fish, a member of the carp family,
has a translucent body and a head unprotected by a skeleton. Mature
females grow to less than a third of an inch long. The males have
enlarged pelvic fins and muscles that may be used in reproduction,
researchers wrote in a report published Wednesday by the Royal Society
in London.
"This is one of the strangest fish that I've seen in my whole career,'
said Ralf Britz, a zoologist at the Natural History Museum in London.
"It's tiny, it lives in acid and it has these bizarre grasping fins. I
hope we'll have time to find out more about them before their habitat
disappears completely."
The fish are found in an acidic peat swamp on the Indonesian island of
Sumatra. Indonesian peat swamps are under threat from fires lit by
plantation owners and farmers as well as unchecked development and
farming. Researchers say several populations of the tiny fish,
Paedocypris progenetica, have already been lost, according to the
Natural History Museum. The previous record for world's smallest fish,
according to the Natural History Museum, was held by a species of
Indo-Pacific goby one-tenth of a millimeter longer.
"You don't wake up in the morning and think, 'Today we will find the
smallest fish in the world,'" Swiss fish expert Maurice Kottelat, who
helped discover the fish, said in a telephone interview from his home in
Switzerland. According to researchers, the little fish live in dark,
tea-colored water at least 100 times more acidic than rainwater. Such
acidic swamps was once thought to harbor few animals, but recent
research has revealed that they are highly diverse and home to many
unique species.
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