Rare mammal photographed for the first time in California

A group of young researchers captured and photographed a rare mammal in a three -day expedition to Serra Nevada East.

According to the high of Serra Nevada, the small MUSARINHO DO MONTE LYELL has been away from the chambers since it was first identified almost 100 years ago.

Despite being a documented species, it was the Only known mammal in California that had never been photographed.

To film the musara for the first time, Vishal subramanyan, Prakrit jain e harper forbes They planned a three -day expedition.

SubraManyan, who graduated at the University of California, in Berkeley, last year, is Wildlife photographer. Jain and Forbes, undergraduate students at UC Berkeley and the University of Arizona, respectively, were news in 2022 for having discovered two new species of scorpions.

After receiving authorizations from the California Wildlife and Wildlife Department, the trio went to the eastern mountain. Put 150 fall traps near habitats of streams and wet zones and controlled them every two hours.

The team planned to stay watchmannever sleeping for a long time, because animals have a metabolism so fast that they die quickly without food – and students didn’t want to leave their minguinhos trapped in the traps. They prepare them and then wait.

“I would love to say that we spent three days waiting and that the musara finally appeared in the last second,” says Subramanyan. “But we got Mount Lyell in the early two hours.”

“This shows that, in general, it is a Species little appreciated in a little appreciated ecosystemthat people did not devote time and were unable to focus on the hydans, ”he adds.

To photograph the muswins, the team had to work quickly. He continued to register more rodents, following his planned sleep time during the nights, when temperatures dropped to 15 degrees centigrade.

The investigators prepared a white background and a terrarium for the images. “We caught some muswins, photograph them, free them, and at that time there were more musaras. That’s why, It was a job to stop“, diz Subramanyan.

Os animals run a lot – and bite -Which makes it especially difficult to take good photographs. “For every photo we can focus on, we should have 10 or 20 photos in which the musara is running away from the frame,” says Jain.

They were collected samples of animals for genetic tests At the California Academy of Sciences to confirm that they had caught the right musara. The team caught Three other species of Museranhoo womb trampthe grave of the mountains and the Merriam.

Students expect their work to increase public recognition of muswins and other more charismatic animals.

“Many, many species of musaras are known only to one copy, or just a single locality, or have not seen for decades,” says Jain.

“Therefore, if we have difficulty finding a musura in a place like California – one of the best studied places in the world – we can imagine how the diversity of lows of places like Southeast Asia and Central Africa, for example, can be so little appreciated ”.

Os Mount Lyell Musirals are also extremely threatened by climate change-it is expected that 89% do habitat of this rodent is lost until the 2080saccording to one from the University of California in Berkeley.

Although the state does not consider that the musaranho is in danger of extinction, it is listed as a kind of special concern mammal.

“If we look at the extinction crisis and the types of animals it is affecting, many animals are disappearing without any documentation,” says SubraManyan. “An animal like the Mount of Mount Lyell, if it had not been photographed or investigated, could have disappeared silently due to And we would not have any idea of ​​that. ”