IT'S THE FUTURE - Wired magazine's top 10 new species discovered in 2010

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/wp-content/gallery/2010-top-species/flatfish.jpg

Louisiana Pancake Batfish
Scientifc Name: Halieutichthys intermedius

How it made the Top 10: This species was discovered just before the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010 and its entire known distribution is in the region of the spill. It is also a remarkably hideous -- in a good way -- animal. It is flat like a pancake, spikey, hops on its fins and has huge bulging eyes. Its discovery and precarious existence due to the oil spill was the lead article on CNN's website and a number of other outlets.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/wp-content/gallery/2010-top-species/spider.jpg

Darwin's Black Spider - This orb-weaving spider builds the largest orb-style webs that are known to science. Webs of this species have been found spanning rivers, streams and lakes with “bridgelines” reaching up to 25 meters (82 feet) in length and total web size reaching up to 2.8 square meters (30 square feet).

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/wp-content/gallery/2010-top-species/t-rex.jpg

^^^ Awwwww. "This T. rex leech was discovered feeding from the nasal mucous membrane of a little girl in Perú. It is unusual because it is the only known species of leech with a “single armed jaw with such large teeth.”"

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/wp-content/gallery/2010-top-species/leaproach1.jpg

Leaproach - its like a cockroach that jumps like a grasshopper. Who doesn't love that idea?

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/wp-content/gallery/2010-top-species/mycena_lum.jpg

"Eternal Light Mushroom - This new species, collected from some of the last remaining Atlantic forest habitat near São Paulo, Brazil, emits very bright yellowish green light 24 hours per day from its gel-covered stems"

Pretty sure there's one in Zelda as well.

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2011/05/titanic1.jpg

"This new species of iron-oxide consuming bacteria was discovered on a rusticle from the RMS Titanic. Studies show that it sticks to steel surfaces creating knob-like mounds of corrosion products that have contributed, along with other microorganisms, to the deterioration process of the Titanic's metal. This will eventually lead to the Titanic's disappearance."

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/wp-content/gallery/2010-top-species/cricket.jpg

^^^ Actually kinda cute.

Orchid-Pollinating Cricket - This species is the only pollinator of the rare/endangered orchid Angraecum cadetii on Réunion island in the southwestern Indian Ocean, representing the first clearly supported case of orthopteran-mediated pollination in flowering plants.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/wp-content/gallery/2010-top-species/duiker.png

is new duiker from West Africa was first encountered at a bushmeat market. It is a surprising find because the “discovery of a new species from a well-studied group of animals in the context of bushmeat exploitation is a sobering reminder of the mammalian species that remain to be described, even within those that are being exploited on a daily basis for food or ritual activities.”

How do you just find a completely new species hanging on a stall on a meat market?

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/wp-content/gallery/2010-top-species/mushroom.jpg

Underwater Mushroom
Scientific Name: Psathyrella aquatica
How it made the Top 10: This is the first report of a mushroom species fruiting underwater

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/wp-content/gallery/2010-top-species/varanus-holotype_joseph-brown_.jpg

Golden Spotted Monitor

This is a large arboreal frugivorous lizard of the genus Varanus and can only be found in the Northern Sierra Madre Forest, Luzon Island, Philippines. The forest monitor lizard can grow to more than 2 meters (6.6 feet) in length but weighs only about 10 kilograms (22 pounds). It is brightly colored with stripes of gold flecks. Its scaly body and legs are a blue-black mottled with pale yellow-green dots and its tail is marked in alternating segments of black and green.

It is quite astounding to think that something this size has eluded biologists that surveyed the area possibly because it spent most of its time in trees. However, it was known to the local hunters and is already a flagship for conservation in the Philippines.

Eternal Light Mushroom killed it at Terrastock iirc

Torn between the cute deer thing and the huge fuckoff lizard but the ludicrous sci-fi premise of the bacteria that will eventually eat the entire Titanic is sort of amusing.

Eternal Light Mushroom killed it at Terrastock iirc

Louisiana Pancake Batfish are supporting the Arcade Fire at the moment I believe.

world's largest metaphor to be eaten by world's newest metaphor

feel a kind of dork solidarity with the pancake fish

how does the spider that spins the largest orb webs ever escape detection for hundreds of years

any excuse to post a picture of a leech in an eye, eh

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2010/04/membraneleeches.jpg

leaproach is kind of a terrifying name in general.

Digging how the pancake batfish already looks like it's been battered and deep fried.

Eternal Light Mushroom - I think I went to that rave in ´92.

how does the spider that spins the largest orb webs ever escape detection for hundreds of years

Presumably by doing it way way deep in some rainforest somewhere?

Um, did no one else notice that that spider can self-castrate, and that the webs it spins are bulletproof? I vote spider. Thank god there must be so few of them that its 3o square foot webs can escape detection for eons.

animals are weird as aliens

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I love the eternal light mushroom! If there was a religion devoted to worshiping it, I would definitely appreciate that religion.

Underwater mushroom is great, too!
Respect the insane kingdom of fungi!

Are there really no mushrooms at all that grow under the sea, apart from this one?

Darwin's Bark Spider

assuming this is a typo cause it also appears as "black spider" but LOL "barking spiders" is an old euphemism for fart sounds

q: eww who did THAT

a: must be barking spiders

potential band names abound

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

the first time i ever saw wired magazine was freshman year of college. my roommate had a couple of issues. this was pre-internet. i asked him what it was and i've never forgotten his answer: "it's like mondo 2000 for businessmen"

"The Darwin's bark spider exhibits a rich repertoire of sexual behaviors that include sexual cannibalism, binding the mate with silk, genital mutilation, plugging of female genitalia by the male, and self-emasculation. Non-typically, males engage in oral sexual encounters, rarely reported outside mammals. Irrespective of female's age or mating status males salivate onto female genitalia pre-, during, and post-copulation."

I had never associated spiders with oral sex, but you learn something every day. Sometimes the things you learn stick with you, even if you don't want to remember them.

I also discovered Wired in the 1990s. The first thing that struck me was that it had five pages of adverts before the magazine began. I remember during the dot.com crash it was hype-hype-hype-slightly subdued issue-hype-hype-hype as if nothing had happened, which was hilarious and sad at the same time. I often wonder if the newscaster AI in Deus Ex: Human Revolution was based on it, e.g. literate but with the mind of a child.

There was a chap who used to cycle across the United States with a laptop wired up to his bicycle. He was a digital nomad. Except that he filed all his copy from hotel rooms. I remember at the time wondering why he bothered. Obviously in 2022 if you cycle somewhere with a laptop in your bag that isn't news, but in 1993 it was way hot.