The scientific community is all atwitter today, after a small group of intrepid explorers and adventurers working in the Amazon delta discovered a new species for humankind to slowly but inevitably force into extinction.
“It’s amazing,” said leader of the French and German led expedition, Klein Match-Aange. “To be a part of the ceaseless quest to expand our knowledge of the world’s soon-to-be-naught-but-a-distant-memory-and-a-picture-in-a-yellowing-history-book species is a privilege that can we barely describe.”
The animal is reportedly a “very rare” but “equally delicate and vulnerable” sub species of distant cousins the once plentiful Howling Silver-top Lemur, which not so long ago freely roamed the extensive cattle farms and slashed-and-burned corn fields of the Amazon Farmlands.
“This little guy – which we’ve called the Blue-tipped Howling Lemur, or Marsuplius Genocidus Extinctia - is a shy, shy creature,” explained Match-Aange, recalling the difficult task of finding the elusive ‘Blue Ghost’. “Nocturnal and very skittish, finding him was a real challenge. You won’t believe how many trees we had to cut down just to get a pic of him. All that foliage, dense undergrowth and rare orchids make modern scientific endeavours like these a real nightmare.”
Our knowledge of these elusive creatures, however, is now vastly improved.
“According to preliminary scientific observations on the animal, we can say that it’s not very different from other classic species of lemur,” said the team’s sixty-page report. “While looking somewhat different to other species in this genus, it shares a very similar diet, social behaviourisms, mating habits and vulnerability to stab wounds as its other lemur brethren.”
The report added that this “probably mean[t] a shared similarity in terms of organisational hierarchy, territorial behaviour and susceptibility to broken bones, third-degree burns and bleach poisoning.”
“Whatever their exact species, these animals tend to share a few fundamental characteristics,” the report explained, “such as how thin and easily crushable its skull is, how - much like other lemurs, small apes and some similar species of exotic cats - it dies after only one or two well-aimed 9mm slugs to the back of the head, or how valuable its bones and fur are on the traditional medicines and exotic goods black markets.”
This species of lemur is now the third animal to be added this year to our list of species we’re going to utterly eradicate one by one from the surface of the planet, just after the Java Tiger (Leo Pantherus Coati Expensivus) and the White Rhino (Bohne Maykmii Erectus).
"We're a tenacious bunch, us humans, but we need to keep up the hard work," said the report. "Even now, there are probably hundreds of rare, undiscovered species out there just waiting to be decimated into total disappearance."
Pic: by Rachel Kramer licenced under CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
