Dracula fish, bald bird among strange new species

From AFP (article) - 

Dracula fish, a bald songbird and a seven-metre (23 feet) tall carnivorous plant are among several unusual new species found in the Greater Mekong region last year, researchers said Wednesday.

Other new finds among the 145 new species include a frog that sounds like a cricket and a "sucker fish", which uses its body to stick to rocks in fast flowing waters to move upstream, according to conservation group WWF.

With fangs at the front of each jaw, the "dracula minnow" is one of the more bizarre new species found in 2009 in the Mekong River region, which comprises Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and China's Yunnan Province.

Discovered in a small stream in Myanmar, it is largely translucent and measures up to 1.7 centimetres long.

It is not yet known whether the species is endemic to a single ecosystem within Myanmar, or spread throughout the region as a whole.

Other bizarre discoveries include the Bare-Faced Bulbul bird, which is bereft of feathers on the face and side of the head and has pale blue skin on the rear of the head and around the eyes. It lives in sparse forest on limestone karsts in central Laos.

Among newly recorded plants, the Nepenthes bokorensis plant, found in southern Cambodia, has a climbing length of up to seven metres, with pitchers that trap ants and other insects for food.

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