Five new species of soft-furred hedgehogs have been discovered in Southeast Asia, including a completely new species known as the ‘Vampire’ hedgehog with exceptionally long fangs.
Scientists have identified five new species of soft-furred hedgehogs from Southeast Asia.
Among these five species, two are entirely new to science, while three others have been reclassified at the subspecies level.
Soft-furred hedgehogs in Southeast Asia – (Photo: GUARDIAN).
The two completely new species include one with particularly long fangs named H. macarong, which translates to ‘Vampire’ in Vietnamese. This species has dark brown fur, measures about 14 cm in length, and is endemic to southern Vietnam.
The second species, named H. vorax, is slightly smaller, measuring 12 cm in length, with dark brown fur, a black tail, and a very narrow snout. This species is found only in the Leuser Mountains, northern Sumatra, Indonesia.
During the research, scientists collected 232 specimens for observation and 85 tissue samples for genetic analysis. These were gathered from the field and subsequently compared with 14 historical natural history collections across Asia, Europe, and the Americas.
Previously, only two species of soft-furred hedgehogs were known, but the study published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society (which specializes in the study of flora and fauna) has increased the total to seven species.
This research is a collaborative international effort involving researchers from the University of Seville and the Doñana Biological Station in Spain, George Mason University, the Institute of Conservation Biology, and the Smithsonian National Zoo in the United States, the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum in Singapore, the Natural History Museum of Geneva in Switzerland, and the University of Malaya in Malaysia.
