Mysterious 200-year-old mammal that lays EGGS & is named after David Attenborough is NOT extinct, footage proves
Groundbreaking footage of a strange mammal named after David Attenborough that was thought to be extinct has been revealed.
Scientists had previously feared that the 200-year-old creature was extinct, but the new images prove otherwise.
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An expedition to Indonesia led by researchers at Oxford University recorded four three-second clips of Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna.
The video, taken at night, shows the bizarre-looking creature waddling through the undergrowth in search of its next snack.
It has a spiny body, a long snout and flat feet that give it a strange waddling motion.
Until now, the only evidence of the existence of this particular species, Zaglossus attenboroughi, was a decades-old museum specimen of a dead animal.
Dr. James Kempton, a biologist from the University of Oxford, told BBC News about the moment he discovered footage of the creature: “I was euphoric, the whole team was euphoric,” he said.
He added: “I’m not kidding when I say it came down to the very last SD card we looked at, from the very last camera we collected on the very last day of our expedition.”
Dr. Kempton said he had corresponded with Sir David about the rediscovery and was “absolutely delighted”.
The biologist led a multinational team on the month-long expedition into unexplored stretches of the Cyclops Mountains – a rainforest habitat 2,000m above sea level.
The so-called “living fossils” migrated across the earth at the same time as the dinosaurs.
They are the only mammals in the world that lay eggs, and they have another bizarre trait.
According to Smithsonian Magazine, they have one of the “strangest penises in the animal kingdom.”
It is a bright red appendage with four heads.
In addition to discovering Attenborough’s “lost echidna,” the expedition discovered new species of insects and frogs and observed healthy populations of tree kangaroos and birds of paradise.
Previous expeditions to the Cyclops Mountains had discovered traces of the mammal, including “nose bites” in the ground, but had failed to prove its existence.
This means that for the past 62 years, the only evidence that the Attenborough echidna ever existed was a specimen kept under strict security in the treasury of Naturalis, the natural history museum of the Netherlands.
This isn’t the only creature recently discovered.
In April, we reported on a creepy 24-eyed sea creature found in Chinese waters that scientists believe is related to one of the most dangerous creatures known to man.
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