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Life

Meet the world’s cutest and most endangered animals

Earth’s continents and oceans are full of endangered animals that deserve your attention. This week New Scientist brings you the story of the Hainan gibbon, the world’s rarest mammal. Here are another six animals under threat – picked solely by the very subjective cuteness metric

By Catherine Brahic

6 July 2016

 

Hainan Gibbon female with young

Jessica Bryant

Hainan crested gibbon (Nomascus hainanus)
Hainan, China

Seeing the Hainan crested gibbon is a rare privilege. First you have to be invited to camp in Bawanglang nature reserve on the Chinese island of Hainan. Then you have to wake long before dawn, climb the steep mountain slopes to a high listening post, and wait. If you’re lucky, you will hear a haunting dawn chorus coming from the treetops you can follow to its source. There are only about 25 or so Hainan gibbons left, in just four surviving families, so cherish the moment.

Pangolin on a tree branch

Michael Pitts/Naturepl.com

Sunda pangolin (Manis javanica)
Komodo Island, Indonesia

Where the Americas have anteaters, Asia has pangolins – although maybe not for much longer. Both animals are equipped to hunt ants and termites, with long sticky tongues that slurp up their prey. But that’s where the similarities end. The Sunda pangolin has been hunted to near-extinction for its meat – considered a delicacy – and its scales and skin, which are used in Chinese traditional medicine.

Amur leopard

Amur Leopard-WWF Russia/ISUNR/www.wwf.org.uk

Amur leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis)
Russia and China

The Amur leopard is one of 10 subspecies of leopard, with just 35 or 70 left in the wild, depending on who you ask. Either way, they are one of the world’s rarest cats. They all live in a small area that hugs Russia’s far eastern border with China.

Javan rhino

Mike Griffths/WWF-Canon/www.wwf.org.uk

Javan rhinoceros (Rhinoceros sondaicus)
Indonesia and Vietnam

Once widespread in South-East Asia, the Javan rhino is now restricted to two national wildlife parks, one on the Indonesian island of Java, the other in Vietnam. Only about 60 individuals are thought to remain. Even though they live in a protected area, they are still threatened by the illegal rhino horn trade. To make matters worse, the Vietnamese population is thought to be exclusively female. In 2000, camera traps installed in the Indonesian park captured the portraits of two calves. DNA and footprints suggested there were another two youngsters plodding around.

Golden bamboo lemur

MintImages/Rex/Shutterstock

Golden bamboo lemur (Hapalemur aureus)
Southeastern Madagascar

Everybody loves a lemur. Like China’s giant pandas, the golden bamboo lemur feeds almost exclusively on bamboo shoots. The shoots are laced with cyanide and no one knows how the lemurs survive their poisonous diet – every day they eat 12 times the lethal cyanide dose for most mammals.

Saola

David Hulse/WWF/www.wwf.org.uk

Saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis)
Laos and Vietnam

The saola, or “Asian unicorn” as it is sometimes called, was first spotted in 1992 in the Annamite mountains of Laos and Vietnam. Its discovery made quite a stir, as it was the first new mammal to be found in over 50 years. Scientists have only spotted members of the species three times since, but reports from local villagers suggest it is a solitary creature. Its slender, pointy horns can be up to 50 centimetres long, and animals have distinctive splashes of white on their faces.

vaquita

Thomas A Jefferson/WWF/www.wwf.org.uk

Vaquita (Phocoena sinus)
Mexico

The world’s smallest cetacean and most endangered marine mammal may be on its way out. Researchers estimate there are fewer than 100 left, perhaps just 60, and the species could be gone by 2022. It’s a porpoise, not a dolphin, distinct for its shorter, rounder body and black eye ring and mouth. The vaquita lives exclusively in the warm waters of the Gulf of California, where it has few predators but ends up being accidentally caught in fishing nets used to seek another endangered animal: the totoaba fish whose swim bladders are sold in China for a small fortune, to make soup.

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