Vampire Hedgehog Among 234 Newly Discovered Species in Greater Mekong
On December 16, 2024, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) released a comprehensive 74-page report highlighting 234 new species discoveries in the biodiverse Greater Mekong region.
This vast, water-rich area, spanning Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam, is renowned for its ecological diversity and is home to some of the world’s most endangered species, including tigers, Asian elephants, Mekong dolphins, and long-horned saolas. The report, a culmination of hundreds of scientific studies, sheds light on additional vulnerable creatures that have only recently been given their scientific names.
Among the 173 species of vascular plants, 26 reptiles, 17 amphibians, 15 fishes, and three mammals documented, one peculiar creature stood out—the “vampire hedgehog.”
The Rediscovery of the Vampire Hedgehog
The vampire hedgehog (Hylomys macarong), a member of the gymnure family, also known as “moonrats” or “soft-furred hedgehogs,” earned its name from the Vietnamese word macarong, meaning vampire, due to its prominent fangs.
Unlike traditional hedgehogs, this solitary creature has bristly fur instead of spikes and resembles a cross between a shrew and a rat. Despite its appearance, it is more closely related to hedgehogs than rodents. The vampire hedgehog plays a vital ecological role by foraging at twilight for worms, mollusks, pests, and small reptiles, helping to maintain its local ecosystem.
Ironically, despite its vampire-inspired name, gymnures like the vampire hedgehog are infamous for their pungent, rancid garlic-like scent, which they use to mark their territory.
An 83-Year-Old Mystery Resolved
Though recently identified in the southern Annamites of Vietnam, the vampire hedgehog was not entirely new to science. A specimen of the same species had been stored at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History since 1961, long forgotten in a drawer.
Thanks to an international effort to revise the taxonomy of lesser gymnures, researchers revisited museum collections dating back to the 1930s. This initiative led to the rediscovery of the vampire hedgehog.
“The specimens that led to the description of Hylomys macarong had been housed in the Smithsonian since the 1960s, highlighting the potential of ‘mining’ museums for new species,” explained Arlo Hinckley, a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian. “The advent of museum genomics in Greater Mekong countries will accelerate species discoveries, particularly in regions like Thailand and Vietnam, which have extensive natural history collections.”
A Decade of Scientific Progress
The vampire hedgehog was first encountered again in southern Vietnam during a 2009 expedition, but it took over a decade of exhaustive examination to formally classify it as a new species.
“We found this distinct species in Vietnam more than 10 years ago, but we took too long to describe it and were too late,” lamented Alexei V. Abramov, a researcher at the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Despite the delays, researchers celebrated the rediscovery as a monumental achievement.
“Identifying a new mammal species that is just known from the southern Annamites and the result of millions of years of evolution is akin to finding a Picasso in an art gallery or uncovering an archaeological site in a city,” Hinckley said.
“This discovery adds immense value to the region and underscores the importance of funding to protect such remarkable natural heritage.”