快猫短视频

A CELEBRATED discovery of a mysterious new mammal in South-East Asia is
nothing more than an elaborate fake, say French zoologists.

In 1993, scientists collected several unusual-shaped horns from markets in
Vietnam and Cambodia. Local hunters claimed that the horns came from a
mysterious beast in the forest. The Vietnamese call it 鈥渓inh duong鈥�, which means
mountain goat. In Khmer, its name is 鈥渒hting vor鈥濃�攖he wild cow with
liana-like horns.

Biologists thought they had stumbled across an entirely new large, living
mammal鈥攕omething that has only happened a few times in the past few
decades. The horns looked unlike any seen before, ringed with ridges and curling
backwards towards the tip. They were taken as evidence of a new genus and
species, named Pseudonovibos spiralis. The animal was added to
the World Conservation Union red list of endangered species in the region while
taxonomists debated whether it was a close relative of gazelles, wild cattle or
sheep and goats.

Now, however, Alexandre Hassanin of the Pierre and Marie Curie University in
Paris and his colleagues say that biologists have been hoodwinked by an
80-year-old fraud. Genetic and morphological tests reveal that the horns are
simply cow horns that have been carved and twisted by local people.

The tests are 鈥渧ery convincing鈥�, says Franz Suchentrunk of the Veterinary
University of Vienna. 鈥淚t is astonishing that no one has realised they are the
same.鈥� Suchentrunk has previously examined mitochondrial DNA from the horns. At
first he suggested that the linh duong was related to the chamois. But later he
realised that this was the result of contamination from chamois DNA in the
laboratory.

To settle the debate over whether the linh duong was related to a sheep,
goat, gazelle or buffalo, Hassanin and his team sequenced two genetic markers
from the bony core of the horns to compare it with other species. To their
surprise, they found that one of the closest matches was the domestic cow,
Bos taurus.

The researchers checked their results by sequencing the same markers from the
blood of Vietnamese domestic cattle and found a perfect match. Furthermore, the
ratio of carbon isotopes in the horns鈥攚hich reveals the type of plants the
animal ate鈥攕uggest that the linh duong grazed in grassland, not in the
forest where it was supposed to live.

A close examination of the horns showed that their rings cut across different
layers of keratin, which would not be possible if they had grown naturally.
Rubber casts of the inside of the horns also indicate that they have been
heated, squeezed and bent by some kind of tool. The researchers conclude that
the horns were carved and twisted from those of ordinary cattle.

But the researchers don鈥檛 think this was deliberate scientific fraud. Rather,
the horns appear to be the product of a folk industry. Another name for the
animal in Khmer is 鈥渒hting sipuoh鈥濃�攖he wild cow that eats snakes鈥攁nd
people believe that the horns provide an antidote for snakebite. This tradition
may be so strong that even some hunters believe the animal is real.

Some of the South-East Asian horns were collected in the 1920s and later
recognised as P. spiralis, and in other parts of the world the
practice of making them may date back even further. Alistair Macdonald of the
University of Edinburgh has found an illustration closely resembling the
distinctive horns in a Chinese encyclopedia from 1607.

New species of mammal are rare, but last week biologists suggested that China
may have a new type of salt-tolerant Bactrian camel living in remote mountains
in Xinjiang province. Despite the forgery of the horns,
P. spiralis was described in good faith. 鈥淭he name still remains taxonomically
valid,鈥� says Hassanin, 鈥淗owever, our study indicates that it should be
synonymous with Bos taurus.鈥�