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Little-known mammal believed alive and well in Vietnam
August 22, 1997
Web posted at: 10:58 p.m. EDT (0258 GMT)HANOI, Vietnam (Reuter) -- On Friday scientists displayed the remains of a previously unknown deer-like animal discovered in the jungles of central Vietnam. They said they believe the first live specimens would be found within months.
At a news conference in Hanoi, Pham Mong Giao, one of a team of Vietnamese and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) zoologists, held up skulls of the mammal, named the Truong Son muntjac, and said many could be alive.
The animal, whose remains were handed to scientists by forest dwelling hunters in mountains near the Laotian border, is one of only a handful of large mammals to be discovered this century.
"This is a lost world, a place we haven't ventured into in hundreds of years," he said. "We can confirm these animals are living. What we can't say yet is how big the population is."
It weighs only about 30 pounds, about half the size of the common muntjac, which inhabits the same area and has a black coat and very short antlers, about the size of a human thumbnail. "This is the third new large mammal species scientists have found in Vietnam in recent years," a WWF statement said. "This century, less than 10 new large mammal species have been found worldwide."
The region where the Truong Son muntjac was found lies on the slopes of the mountain spine between Vietnam and Laos, and is close to the demilitarized zone which separated North Vietnam from the South during the Vietnam War.
Despite extensive bombing during the 1960s and 1970s, it is considered a biodiversity hotspot, and has produced some of the most remarkable finds of this century, all within the last five years.
In 1992 scientists discovered the Sao La or Vu Quang ox in an area not far from the latest find. Two years later a giant muntjac was identified, although researchers have yet to see a live specimen.
The joint Vietnam-WWF team which made the latest discovery chanced on the find while talking to local hunters, who kept skulls displayed as trophies on the walls of their homes. "Do Tuoc, the Vietnamese zoologist, and I were looking at the skulls and saw a skull that had to be a muntjac," said WWF scientist Eric Wikramanayake. "We compared the skull to that of a common muntjac and realized it was different enough to belong to a different species."
Wikramanayake said subsequent DNA analysis of the skull and some 18 others handed to them by people living in the same area had confirmed the existence of a new species.
The animal is known among members of the local Ca Tu ethnic minority, who prize it for its meat, as Sam Soi Cacoong, meaning "the deer that lives in the deep thick forest."
The WWF is working with the governments of Vietnam and Laos to conserve the area, which is under threat from deforestation. Vast areas of jungle have disappeared from Indochina since the Vietnam War ended in 1975.
Scientists who discovered the new animal said the same expedition had also found several new plant species.
Copyright 1997 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
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