ARMADILLOS CAUSES LEPROSY

A latest study had showed that a strain of leprosy found in humans in the southern U.S. was identical to a strain commonly found in a 9-banded armadillo found in the area. DNA tests show a match in the leprosy strain between some patients and these prehistoric-looking critters - a connection scientists had suspected but until now couldn't pin down. The results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine and also suggest that various species of armadillo all around the world could also be a source of leprosy. Armadillos are commonly found in the southern states of U.S.A, specifically in dry open desserts in Texas and Arizona and Louisiana.

Leprosy is a rare and mysterious disease. Among the symptoms of leprosy include slow-growing skin lesions. The condition also affects the eyes, peripheral nerves and upper respiratory system of the body. Leprosy experts have known for a long time that armadillos are capable of carrying the disease, and there have been studies that random cases of leprosy in the United States often occur in the southern states where armadillos are common.



Researchers in the study believe that the leprosy bacterium grows in armadillos, and not with any other animal, because armadillos have low body temperatures, around 32 degrees C or 89 degrees F. The findings discouraged people from repeated exposure from armadillos as well as discouraged cooking and eating their meat

Miniature frog

A new species of miniature frog has been found by Japanese biologist in the Malaysian part of Borneo Island. The new species is named as Microhyla Malang by Masafumi Matsui, who has been conducting fieldwork in Borneo. Microhyla has narrow-mouth described by Matsui which has been reported in the latest edition of the academic journal Zootaxa. Microhyla resides in the western part of Sarawak state and Sabah state.

Matsui while refuting the discovery of a pea-size new species last year that was billed as "the Old World's smallest frog," according to a recently published scientific paper. In that report, he given detailed scientific evidence to cancel the widely reported finding of the Old World's smallest frog, named M. nepenthicola, viewing that it is in reality M. borneensis, a previously described species of Microhyla frog has unique habit of breeding in pitcher plants on the forest floor.






Matsui said M. Malang and M. Borneensis, are very similar in appearance but can be distinguished by body size, color pattern and extent of toe webbing. Previous year, Indraneil Das, a Malaysian scientist at University Malaysia Sarawak, and his German colleague, Alexander Haas from Hamburg University's Zoological Museum, published a paper in Zootaxa in which they explained the smaller form of what had long been regarded by taxonomists as M. Borneensis as a new species, considering the larger form to be true M. Borneensis.

Dragonfly found in vietnam

The new dragon-fly species, the Aethriamanta aethra, has been found in Vietnam during the survey done by WAR at U Minh Thuong National Park in March 2011. The species, found in the National Park, has different colors according to its age and gender.

The male and female aethriamanta aethra are different in colors as said before. The male looks light yellow when it’s small and turns into violet as the animal grows up. The female is yellow with black spots.
According to WAR, there could be many new species of dragonfly in the wetland area in southern Vietnam. So WAR will continue their research in order to find more species in Vietnam and verify all dragonfly taxonomy at the U Minh Thuong National Park.




This dragonfly is named as Chuon chuon tram in Vietnamese. Dragonfly has been found before in other countries such as Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia but has no English name.

Do Manh Cuong, a dragon-fly conservation specialist and Bui Huu Manh, a biologist from WAR, found the species in March.The natural vegetation consists of four main classes and it has been classified into ten types. Melaleuca forests, seasonally inundated grasslands, permanent swamps and vegetation along canals and streams. The forest at U Minh Thuong contains many rare animal and bird species.

new species

The new species—named Tarsius sirindhornae—lived about 13 million years ago. Chaimanee and her team recently found 18 jawbone fossils from the new species in an old coal. Each jaw holds one to four tiny teeth.
Tarsiers are primates that share a common ancestor with monkeys and humans. The big-eyed, nocturnal animals are today found mostly in Southeast Asia.

We know living tarsiers eat insects or small mammals. We expect sirindhornae ate something different but the team will need to do more research to discover what that might be, Chaimanee said.