Almost 20% of Earth’s Mammal Species Could Be Undiscovered!

And the only way to protect them is to first discover them.

Transcript

00:00Mammals are a particularly interesting study for a lot of scientists.

00:08After all, they're cute, and we sort of have a vested interest, being of the same group

00:11of vertebrates.

00:12But now, ScientAlert reports, according to a new study, there might still be hundreds

00:16more out there in the wild we have yet to discover.

00:19Experts say that without direct study, it's easy to see a creature, especially a small

00:22one, and simply file it under the classification of another species.

00:26In fact, researchers in Indonesia found 14 new species of shrew during a single study.

00:31But now, researchers have used machine learning and predictive modeling to make estimates about

00:35how many undiscovered mammals there likely still are, finding there may be more than 1,000

00:40mammal species that haven't been formally identified.

00:42That's around 20% of all mammal species ever discovered.

00:46Most of the creatures are likely small, probably of the rodent family and living in predictable

00:50places around the world.

00:51Predictable places like tropical rainforests, which are often hubs for a wealth of species

00:56diversity.

00:57Experts say we now need to invest in finding and describing these unknown species because

01:01it's difficult to protect something if we don't even know it exists.