Tube-nosed bat which bears striking resemblance to Yoda discovered

Tube-nosed bat which bears striking resemblance to Yoda discovered

Mtoday news

A tube-nosed fruit bat with an appearance reminiscent of the Star Wars Jedi Master Yoda has been discovered in a remote rainforest.

The bat, along with an orange spider and a yellow-spotted frog are among a host of new species found in a region of Papua New Guinea.

More than 200 animals and plants were revealed for the first time after two months of surveying in the rugged and little-explored Nakanai and Muller mountain ranges last year

A nyctimene tube-nosed fruit bat (left) is one of the exotic discoveries made by scientists in  Papua New Guinea

 

Looks familiar: The creature bears more than a passing resemblance to the Star Wars Jedi Master Yoda

The findings included two mammals, 24 species of frog, nine plants, nearly 100 new insects including damselflies, crickets and ants, and around 100 spiders.

A white tipped-tail mouse, at least one ant and several of the crickets, or katydids, are so different from other known species they each represent an entirely new genus, the scientists said.
They were uncovered by two scientific teams co-ordinated by Conservation International’s rapid assessment programme, in partnership with Papua New Guinea’s Institute for Biological Research and conservation organisation A Rocha International.

The teams explored different altitudes of the forest-cloaked Nakanai mountains, which host cave systems and some of the world’s largest underground rivers, and the Muller range, accessing the remote areas by plane, dinghy, on foot and even by helicopter.