Has man discovered all the species of animals in the world? You got it, no! Well then, here’s a question for you: how many species do you think still remain to be discovered? Not a few thousand, not a few hundred thousand. But probably over 10 million species are yet to be discovered, classified and described by scientists! And every year, we inch closer to understanding how diverse our planet is.

In 2010, we had a bunch of new discoveries. The top few have been presented here. Are you ready to go on a safari to see some of the most bizarre and fascinating creatures? Let’s buckle up and go!

1. 

   Courtesy PLoS ONE
   Cover up those openings in your body! Your eyes, ears, everything, for the Tyrannobdella rex is around! One single jaw, huge teeth and this leech will get into any opening it can reach and suck your blood! Over threee inches long, it inhabits the Peruvian Amazon and was discovered in 2010 attached to – get this –the  nasal passage of a little girl! Ouch? You bet!

    

2. 

   Photograph courtesy Prosanta Chakrabarty, Louisiana State University
   Imagine having your home in a small range of the ocean and then having an oil spill EXACTLY in that range! Ironical, but the Louisiana pancake batfish was discovered just before the Gulf oil spill and its whole home range is in the region of the spill. Apparently it hops on its arm-like fins, resembling a walking bat – hence its name!

    

3. 

   Photograph by Emory Kristof, National Geographic
   I grow on the most famous wreck in recent human history. The Titanic. And I eat rust (fancy name for rust, iron oxide). I am a microbe and my name is Halomonas Titanicae. How’s that for instant fame? Guess what, though. I eat rust right? Well I could eventually eat up the whole ship. Small I might be, but mighty I am.

    

4. 

   Photographs courtesy Cassius V. Stevani, University of São Paulo, Brazil
   Introducing the prettiest glow in the Atlantic Forests off the coast of Sao Paulo, Brazil. The gel on mushrooms in this forest glow 24 hours a day – the only all-day glow mushroom!  And it has a name to match: Mycena luxaeterna. There are only 71 known glow-shrooms of the estimated 1.5 million shrooms.

    

5. 

   Photograph courtesy Mike Picker, University of Cape Town
   A cockroach that can jump like a grasshopper? Well, the only known ones until now, were from the age of the dinosaurs. Now there’s a new species from a nature reserve in South Africa. The ability to jump so high and far comes from leg modifications – legs that are adapted for jumping.

    

6. 

   Photograph courtesy A.C. Diesmos, National Museum of the Phiippines
   Imagine “discovering” a huge, human sized monitor lizard in a very crowded (with humans) island! Sounds improbable? Yeah. But the Varanus bitatawa is exactly that. Humungous, fruit-eating and brightly colored. And how has it escaped scientists all this while? Well, they probably never looked in the right place – it lives on trees!  Local hunters, however, knew of its existence.

    

7. 

   Illustration courtesy Yann Le Bris
   Walter’s duiker, a small antelope, was first discovered in 1968. But was not described until 2010 when it was discovered for sale in a bushmeat market! So we’ve been eating this creature before naming it, studying it or knowing it.

    

8. 

   Photograph courtesy Sylvain Hugel, University of Strasbourg, France
   An endangered orchid on a remote island has just one pollinator.  Wow. It doesn’t get more rare than this. And this distinction goes to a raspy cricket called Glomeremus orchidophilus found on the Indian Oceanic island of Reunion.