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Asked by anon-370633 on 13 Nov 2023.
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Octavia Brayley answered on 13 Nov 2023: last edited 13 Nov 2023 5:05 pm
Not yet! My research is looking at how an insect species is impacting the soil nutrients and other plant/animal species on an island in Antarctica. The insect is really really tiny and I often have to look under a microscope to find the larvae (the babies of the insect). A few weeks ago, I found a tiny bright orange ‘bug’ in the soil that kind of looked like a cross between a crab and a spider. I got really excited because I thought I had found a new species! But I sent a video to one of my supervisors/bosses and they confirmed that it was already a species that we know about 🙁 But maybe one day I’ll find something new! New species are being found in the oceans, particularly the deep ocean, all the time. Here’s a really cool documentary about the deep ocean if you’re interested!
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Amy Stockwell answered on 13 Nov 2023: last edited 13 Nov 2023 7:37 pm
I haven’t – animals are not my area of expertise. But I do remember a QI episode a few years ago where they said that the place you are most likely to find a new species is your own back garden…. if you look hard enough. Are you up to the challenge?
Here is the clip
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Ian McKinley answered on 14 Nov 2023:
Not an animal, but some of my work 40 years ago involved looking for microbes that could live under extreme conditions. At that time, we thought that there could be no life deep underground where we wanted to dispose of radioactive waste. In particular, we wanted to see if microbes could live in the very alkaline conditions found in concrete. To everyone’s surprise, when we sampled groundwaters that naturally had such conditions, we found a wide range of organisms. Nowadays, this is well understood and there is an entire field of “geomicrobiology” that studies the important impacts of such microbes.
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Jonathan Allen answered on 14 Nov 2023:
I have not ever found any undiscovered animals, but I have had some surprises when working at a nuclear power station because it uses water from the sea and we often get animals like seals and starfish surprising us by accidentally getting stuck in the water we use. We carefully look out for them then very carefully rescue them so they can be released back into the sea. But it’s always a nice surprise to meet a seal while at work!
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Paula McMahon answered on 14 Nov 2023:
Not undiscovered – but before we start construction works we always find out what animals on a site to ensure no harm comes to them
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Andrew Lyon answered on 14 Nov 2023:
I don’t tend to work with animals so unfortunately not. The nearest example I can think of is once when I was walking through a field to take a sample of groundwater. There was an ‘undiscovered’ hare in the hedge, undiscovered to me because I hadn’t seen it.
It made me jump because it was big and ran out of the hedge right in front of me very quickly but it was great to see one so close up.
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