Extraordinary animals discovered in Mekong river basin

A colour-changing fish, a fat thumb bat, and a venomous snake. These animals are three of the 380 new plant and animal species discovered by scientists in Southeast Asia in 2021 and 2022.

The plants and animals live in the Mekong river basin. It involves 290 plants, 19 fish, 24 amphibians, 46 reptiles and one mammal, according to a new report from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

The species have been discovered by a team of hundreds of scientists from universities, conservation organizations and research institutes from around the world. They have explored the Mekong area that stretches across Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

Some species are new and some had been previously discovered but not yet spotted in the Mekong area.

“These remarkable species may be new to science, but they have survived and evolved over millions of years in the Mekong region,” the WWF writes in a press release.

The new species have survived deforestation, road construction, loss of rivers, and the illegal trade in wild animals and plants by humans.

WWF works with other organizations to protect the animals in the Mekong area. Important wildlife such as Asian elephants, Irrawaddy dolphins and tigers, and also the forests, rivers and oceans on which they depend, are already protected.