Discoveries , just like inspiration , can take place in the most strange of places . Some accredit their time on the toilet for certain stroke of brain . Discoveries on the stool are perhaps rarer but not impossible . For example , Juan de Roux ( likely ) involve the first ever picture of a living Colombian weasel , just as the little mammalian roost on a toilet seat .
The mental picture was taken in 2011 , but the discovery only fall out last twelvemonth when de Roux , who is an designer / designer and a professor at the Pontifical Xavierian University in Colombia , uploaded the image to the citizen science projectiNaturalistand labeled it as a long - dock weasel ( Mustelafrenata ) . He was n’t confident about his identification of the fauna and consulted papers on a potential good categorisation .
A paper , publish inMammalian Speciesin 2014 by Hector Ramirez and Bruce Patterson , describes the Colombian weasel ( Mustela felipei ) , who up to that breaker point had never been photographed alert . Ramirez together with de Roux have now publishedanother paperbased on the new effigy .
“ At first I was a bit skeptical , reading that this is a rare species . But could see in the type specimen ’s pelt a black oval spot in the ventral part that simply made this specie unmistakable , so I corrected my i d in iNat , and then the observation lead off getting asterisk , ” de Roux said in aniNaturalistblog .
footling is known about this animal . It ’s possibly one of the smallest carnivores in the populace at only 22 centimetre ( 8.7 inches ) in distance , not including the tail . It is South America ’s smallest weasel and it is endemical to the Andes . All that is love about the metal money come in from just six dead specimens found in five locations in Colombia and Ecuador . No surprise , it is consider the continent ’s rare carnivore .
“ I still can not conceive I was favorable to see this animal and take these pics , ” de Roux allege . “ gratuitous to say , I never understand one of these again . But at least I can gladly assure that this area has remained essentially unchanged for the past decade , so it has to be out there . Perhaps this brute is not so rare , but the want of cognition about it , mix with its closemouthed nature , kick in to its rarity . ”
This story once again reveals the power and grandness of citizen science in making new discoveries .
