Discovery and Description
Although the servaline was known to rural Zanzibaris, zoologists remained unaware of its existence until the last decade of the 20th century. In 1995 Tony Archer, a wildlife consultant working in Zanzibar, acquired a dried skin and skull in the village of Kitogani, in south-central Unguja. This specimen was subsequently described as a new subspecies of servaline genet (G. s. archeri), named in honour of Archer.
In January 2003 live Zanzibar servaline genets were photographed for the first time in nearby Jozani-Chwaka Bay National Park. Camera traps yielded pictures of servalines at four locations, two in groundwater forest in the heart of the park and two in dry scrub to the north-east. These photographs provided new information about the distribution of the genet and its physical characteristics.
Read more about this topic: Zanzibar Servaline Genet
Famous quotes containing the words discovery and, discovery and/or description:
“The new supplants the old. Yet men’s minds are stuffed with outworn bunk. Educating the young in the latest findings of authorities and scholars in the social sciences is important. It is equally important to devise ways and means for aiding the middle-aged and old to reexamine hang-over unscientific doctrines and ideas in the light of recent discovery and research.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“However backwards the world has been in former ages in the discovery of such points as GOD never meant us to know,—we have been more successful in our own days:Mthousands can trace out now the impressions of this divine intercourse in themselves, from the first moment they received it, and with such distinct intelligence of its progress and workings, as to require no evidence of its truth.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“It is possible—indeed possible even according to the old conception of logic—to give in advance a description of all ‘true’ logical propositions. Hence there can never be surprises in logic.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)