Sunday, September 17, 2006

How do you Classify a Kouprey?

The folks at cryptomundo.com provide a good summary of a new controversy in the mammal world.
One of the poster animals of cryptozoology is the Southeast Asian wild ox called the kouprey(Bos sauveli). It was described only in 1937, and no larger land mammal has been found since. (We'll set aside for the moment the debate over whether the African elephant is actually two species.) The kouprey has been on the edge of extinction almost since it was found, and there have occasionally been fears it was gone altogether, save for some hybrid animals that included domestic cattle blood.
Now three biologists have claimed that genetic analysis shows the kouprey was never anything but a hybrid between the banteng (Bos javanicus) and the zebu (Bos taurus indicus). Two French scientists immediately responded that, while "pure" koupreys may be hard to find, they do (or did) exist. The whole episode, which is far from resolved, is a reminder that taxonomy, even when it concerns creatures we know as well as we do our fellow mammals, is still not an exact science.

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