Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson today adds his views to the world of science.
Explorers - many of them extravagantly bearded - have discovered more than a thousand new species in south east Asia.
Many of these creatures are so dangerous it's probably worth just leaving them alone - such as the millipede that squirts cyanide in your face.
When it comes to dangerous animals, it seems the only other place on Earth more dangerous is Australia - it's no wonder that the only way the British would go there was on convict ships....
Weirdy beardies can keep
creepy crawlies
Legs just leave it ... Clarkson wants explorers to find a useful creature
Jeremy Clarkson
The Sun
21st December 2008
WEIRD-beard explorers working in south east Asia’s Mekong region have discovered more than a thousand different types of animal that no one knew existed.
And now they are saying all of them are under threat because of Man’s relentless need for more space, more cities and more farmland.
What’s more, they say there are likely to be thousands more new animals in the area which could well be wiped out before they are even discovered.
That’s a good one. We’re now supposed to feel guilty about killing a creature we didn’t even know existed.
I could understand the weird-beards’ concern if the animals they’d found tasted like honey and had the visual appeal of a Steiff teddy bear.
I too would be upset if humankind accidentally wiped out a creature that could speak, sew and looked like a cross between a baby labrador and Angelina Jolie.
But having studied their findings in some depth I’m able to report that every single one of the new species is either extremely ugly or very dangerous — or both. And that the world would be a little bit better if they were all wiped out as soon as possible.
There’s a millipede, for instance, called the spiky bastard — actually, it’s not called that but it should be — which is bright pink and squirts cyanide in your face when you go near it.
Then there’s a spider which is more than a foot across and is covered in hair.
Described as extremely aggressive, it can almost certainly pull a grown man’s arm right out of its socket, which is why it’s been called Heteropoda Dagmarae — Latin for “If you find one of these in the bath, you’ll make a big mess in your pants”.
My particular favourite is a lime-green snake with yellow eyes which produces a venom which the weird-beards say is “medically significant” to humans.
Medically significant? As in, your eyes burst out of your head, your arms shrivel up and your heart swells to the size of a watermelon?
I don’t much care for their new gekko either, which looks like something which comes out of your bottom after a particularly fiery curry.
And nor would I want to keep, as a pet, the exciting new tree frog which has green blood and turquoise bones. That’s just showing off.
The only remotely cuddly and agreeable thing they’ve found is a rat. But it’s still pretty horrid, mainly because if you actually give it a cuddle, what it will give you in return is a nasty dose of the bubonic plague.
Conservationists are doubtless hoping that the looming financial crisis will bring to an end Man’s greed for land and that their new poisonous collection of ugliness can continue to creep and slither about in the woods unmolested . . . not that I can see too many people voluntarily moving to an area so densely populated with peril.
The only other place with so much danger in the bushes is Australia. And the only way we could get people to move there was on convict ships.
I’m hoping, however, that the financial crisis doesn’t hit the World Wildlife Fund too hard because I want the explorers to keep going.
Who knows? With a bit of luck they even may find the creature that begat Jade Goody.
thesun.co.uk
