'Death ball' sponge, tiny opossum among cool new species of 2025
CBC
A spider with extra-long genitalia (for a good reason); a carnivorous caterpillar that wears its prey's body parts; and a tiny, mountain-dwelling opossum are among the cool new species described by science in 2025.
A new recent study reports that about 16,000 new species are "discovered" each year, a rate that is accelerating — 15 per cent of all known species have been newly described in just the past 20 years.
"Our good news is that this rate of new species discovery far outpaces the rate of species extinctions, which we calculated to about 10 per year," John Wiens, an ecology professor at the University of Arizona who co-authored the study, said in a news release.
Many aren't truly new discoveries. In many cases, they were known or photographed locally, or collected many years ago for museums. They were just never identified and described by science until now.
But scientists say this official documentation step is important. Wiens noted, "We can't safeguard a species from extinction if we don't know it exists."
It's also a great way for us to learn about some interesting and unique creatures that we've never seen or heard of before. Here's a closer look at some of them.
Four new tarantula species were discovered in the Horn of Africa and Arabian Peninsula. What's special about them? Well, their males have the longest genitalia among all known tarantulas.
The largest species, named Satyrex ferox, has a leg-span of 14 centimetres (about the width of a slice of bread). But if you're not impressed yet, males have genitalia called palps that measure five centimetres long; that's nearly as long as their longest legs.
Alireza Zamani, a researcher at the University of Turku who led the study describing the new tarantulas, suggests that the long palps "might allow the male to keep a safer distance during mating to help him avoid being attacked and devoured by the highly aggressive female."
Most caterpillars are vegetarians, but this year scientists in Hawaii found a caterpillar that lives in spider webs, eats prey trapped in the webs and then weaves their body parts into a coat or case around its body (that later becomes its cocoon).
The unique "bone collector" caterpillar, which turns into a moth with feathery wings, was described in Science in April. It's been found only in a small 15-square-kilometre patch of forest in the Wai'anae mountain range on O'ahu, suggesting that it's endangered.
The deep ocean is a part of the planet that humans have explored very little, and each expedition there turns up many new and amazing species. In October, the Nippon Foundation-Nekton Ocean Census announced 30 new species discovered in the Southern Ocean near Antarctica.
They include the "death-ball" sponge, which doesn't filter feed like most sponges, but instead has spheres covered in tiny hooks to trap prey. New sea star species and an armoured, iridescent scale worm are also on the list.
Shallower waters also yielded some beautiful and unique new species, including a sea slug that looks like it's covered in fried eggs, named Phyllidia ovata. It's one of two beautiful new species of wart sea slugs that prey on sponges and steal their toxins for self-defence.
