New endemic mammal found in Sri Lanka
Mountain Mouse - Deer in Horton Plains
One of Sri Lanka 's least known mammals, the mouse-deer found in the highlands of Sri Lanka has been photographed in the wild. This may well be the only occasion in which it has been photographed to a 'publishable standard' under truly wild conditions. . For many years it was believed that Sri Lanka had one species of Mouse-deer, which was shared with Southern India . Colin Groves a British Taxonomist in June 2005 published a paper in a special supplement (No 12) of The Raffles Bulletin of Zoology whereby he distinguished three species of* Mouse-deer from Sri Lanka and India. The Indian Mouse-deer (Moschiola indica) was, split, as a new species and is now- considered .endemic to the Eastern Ghats of India. The Mouse deer found in Sri Lanka was split in to two new species. The White spotted Mouse-deer found (Moshiola meeminna) in the dry zone of Sri Lanka and the Yellow-striped: Mouse-deer (Moschiola kathygre) found in the wet zone of Sri Lanka. Both species are endemic to SriLanka. Presently this raises the number of endemic mammals found in Sri Lanka to eighteen species.
Colin Groves in his paper on mouse-deer from India and Sri Lanka also stated that 'a single skull from Sri Lanka 's Hill Zone may prove to represent a fourth species'. The 'Mountain Mouse-deer' is evidently a very scarce animal. Many of the field staff Horton Plains National Park had not seen one although they regularly encounter other nocturnal mammals including leopard.
A Mountain Mouse-deer was seen under quite dramatic circumstances on Monday 25th February by wildlife populariser Gehan de Silva Wijerathne & Nadeera Weerasinghe Naturalist St Andrew's Hotel. With the permission from WLDC it was temporally held captive for research and observation purposes and released back in to the wild on the 27 th February. |
