Thursday 1 April 2010

Question for April 1st, 2010

What connects -

Musendrophilus, a night-singing tree mouse discovered by the famous naturalist David Attenborough in 1975 in Sheba Islands, a cluster of islands in the Pacific.

and

Kwotes, a seabird belonging to the guillemet family, found only in two islands of the Indian ocean, Caissa Superiore in the north and Caissa Inferiore in the south.

5 comments:

truce said...

The fictional island San Serriffe

anuj said...

Both are April fools day's things, non-real

Dev said...

Sheba Islands aren't real. I guess the two animals are April fool's day hoaxes!

Rahul said...

They were both later recognised as species sighted and recorded by Charles Darwin in his travels?

The Answer said...

Since the date was 1st April, I just couldn't let it pass without a prank-y question :-)

These two "news pieces" were published in BBC and Guardian on 1st April, 1975 and 1977, respectively.

In fact, the Guardian article gave a detailed 7 page description of semi-colon shaped islands of San Serriffe - with its Caissa Superiore (Upper Case) and Caissa Inferiore (Lower Case) Islands, its capital Bodoni, and its ruler, Dr. Pica. Computer and printing terminology was only known to a few people then ;-)