‘Giant’ creature found after 126 years

  Lost creature for 126 years found in Madagascar

When a new species is discovered in the depths of the rainforest or on top of a mountain, it can be years before the creature is cataloged again. Separated from science by elevation, water or tangled branches, the species lives undisturbed, its populations existing in an almost-separate world. Sometimes, so much time passes, scientists can’t be sure whether the animals still exist. That’s when they send out an expedition. Re:wild, a project funded by anti-extinction laboratory Colossal, is working to rediscover these species “lost to science,” according to a 17 July news release. In the largest rainforest in Madagascar, a research team searched for “lost” species. This includes species that aren’t extinct and may have been observed by local communities, but they have not been identified in a scientific study for an extended period of time. Following are the the some of the important points of this expedition:-

An estimated 4,300 species are missing to science, meaning that they haven’t been seen in the wild for decades, but they’re likely not extinct.

Eager to rediscover some of these species, an expedition led by the conservation organization Re:Wild explored Makira Natural Park in Madagascar, one of the most biodiverse places on the planet.

Over the course of a few weeks (followed by months of data analysis), the team discovered 21 previously “missing” species, including a 10.8-inch long millipede which hadn’t been spotted by a scientist in decades.

Makira Natural Park is a 930,000-acre ecological wonder in a country already known for being basically an explosion of biodiversity. Seventeen of the island nation’s endemic lemurs call this forest home, along with 50 % of the country’s floral species. In a recent expedition to Makira, the largest rainforest in Madagascar, researchers, entomologists and trail guides searched the trees, ground and rivers for 30 different “lost” species, according to the release. The researchers were armed with a list of 30 species they hoped to find. And it was also in this forest that entomologist Henri de Saussure and naturalist Leo Zehntner first described Spirostreptus sculptus, a dark-brown giant millipede that’d likely earn the starring role in an old-fashion, bug-based horror flick, 126 years ago.

“In the past the Search for Lost Species has primarily looked for one or two species on each expedition, but there are now 4,300 species that we know of around the world that have not been documented in a decade or more,” Christina Biggs, a Re:wild officer, said. “Madagascar is a biodiversity hotspot and Makira is an underexplored area within the country, so we decided to pilot a new model for lost species searches there. We convened a group of scientists to search for as many species as possible, and it proved successful.”

Then, the species was lost to science. While that’s not to say locals didn’t see this many-legged, (nearly) foot-long millipede milling about, scientists searching for the specimen never found it again. That is, until Re:Wild, a conservation organization founded by scientists and, of all people, Leonardo DiCaprio, trekked into the forest in September 2023. The organization’s Search for Lost Species program (including both experts from a variety of institutions and local guides) was in search of the millipede and many other animal species that have been lost to science. The team spent weeks in the jungle, followed by several months of data analysis, searching for these missing creatures. 

And on this expedition, luck was on their side. Not only did the team find a particularly large S. sculptus specimen stretching some 10.8 inches in total, but they also rediscovered 20 other species of spiders, beetles, fish, snails, and weevils. Although the giant millipede was the longest lost species, many other animals rediscovered during the expedition had pulled off a similar vanishing act for more than a century. For example, a species of jumping spider, identified as Tomocyrba decollata, hadn’t been seen since 1900. Echinussa vibrabunda, a spider of the non-jumping variety, has been MIA since 1901. Of the 30 species on the need-to-find list, there were three mammals, three fish, seven reptiles, 12 insects and five spiders, according to the release. 

They searched for five days before local guides and fishers helped to identify all three fish species. The guides walked for days to local communities and discovered a Makira rainbow fish that was brought back to camp, as well as photos of a fish with “iridescent scales and red highlights,” according to the release. The team also rediscovered several species of insects, some of which weren’t on the initial list, before something “most unexpected” caught their eye. But this expedition wasn’t one of just rediscovery. The Re:Wild team also stumbled across something quite unexpected, a never-before-seen species of zebra spider. This is a particularly exciting find, as zebra spiders (named for their zebra-like markings) weren’t thought to exist in Madagascar’s rainforest. “I immediately recognized them as something special,” said Brogan Pett, director of the SpiDiverse working group at Biodiversity Inventory for Conservation (BINCO), said. “Pendulous egg sacs is one of the characteristics of the family of zebra spiders this new species belongs to. I crawled a short way inside the cave and saw a few adult spiders guarding egg sacs, they were quite large spiders and it was remarkable that they had gone unrecognized for so long.”

Spirostreptus species can live up to five years and regularly reach longer than 6 inches, according to Ant’s Kingdom. They are also called “olive-striped” millipedes. The millipede was nearly 11 inches long and has been missing for more than a century, researchers said. “I personally was most surprised and pleased by the fact that the giant millipede Spirostreptus sculptus, not uncommon in Makira Forest, appeared to be another lost species known only from the type specimen described in 1897,” entomologist Dmitry Telnov said. “The longest specimen of this species we observed in Makia was a really gigantic female measuring (10.8 inches) long.” 

Despite 21 species being rediscovered, many couldn’t be confirmed. The Masoala fork-marked lemur, not documented since 2004, evaded the research team, as well as a large chameleon species missing since 2006, according to the release. A dusky tetraka, a type of bird rediscovered on another expedition in December 2022, lives on both sides of Makira, and researchers were hoping to find it in the forest, but were unsuccessful, researchers said.      Though Makira is the largest forest in Madagascar, it is still facing pressure from agriculture,” Re:wild said. “The expedition team worries that species in the underexplored forest could face steep population declines before scientists have an opportunity to study them.” The Makira forest is in northeastern Madagascar, an island nation off the east coast of Mozambique.

While these expeditions and rediscoveries are a nice reprieve from the bad news deluge that defines our lives during Earth’s sixth mass extinction, they only remind us how important it is to protect wild spaces and work to preserve the planet for all species. But thankfully, these 21 species weren’t gone forever, only hidden within one of the world’s most magical natural spaces.