New civet species in Borneo?

[Geoff Read]

>   Occam's razor surely requires that the obvious be eliminated before the
>   astonishing is proposed. I am very happy to be slapped down as to why the
>   above suggestions are wrong, but the new species of cat-fox hype rather
>   reminds me of the sasquat footage (1976), not to mention Peter Scott and the
>   Loch Ness Monster "Nessiteras rhombopteryx" episode (1972), which did science
>   no favours.

Yep, given the facts it's hard to understand why the media have seized on this
so gleefully.

There is a Telegraph UK feature article which was published in my local paper
here in NZ which begins with " The world has been astounded" and "mysterious
"new" mammal discovered in Indonesia has the scientific world agog."  Oh
really?

The article does sober up, and uses the WWF publicity release as an intro to a
good background story on new species & the Catalogue of Life project:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2005/12/08/ecmam
mal08.xml

--
  Geoff Read <g.read at niwa.co.nz>
  http://www.annelida.net/