IT ALL DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU MEAN BY EQUUS CABALLUS

Record haul of 20,000 new species expected (Robin McKie and Zoe Corbyn, The Observer, September 25, 2005)

Wildlife on Earth has never looked so bountiful. Scientists believe that 2005 could be a record year for the discovery of new creatures.

A total of 20,000 new species, from beetles to dolphins, and from monkeys to birds, are expected to be uncovered by zoologists.

'The world may seem to get smaller, but we are finding more and more new animals on it every year,' said Andrew Polaszek, executive secretary of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. 'We could see a record haul in 2005.'

This year's discoveries include a new species of macaque monkey, Macaca munzala, in India and a new species of mangabey monkey in Tanzania. Other recent discoveries have included the Vietnamese striped rabbit, pinpointed from samples being sold in a local fair, and the discovery of a complete new species of extinct human being, Homo floresiensis - the so-called Hobbit people - in Indonesia.

spe-cies n. pl. species

Biology: A fundamental category of taxonomic classification, ranking below a genus or subgenus and consisting of related organisms capable of interbreeding.

An organism belonging to such a category, represented in binomial nomenclature by an uncapitalized Latin adjective or noun following a capitalized genus name, as in Ananas comosus, the pineapple, and Equus caballus, the horse.

When evolutionary biologists remind us how science is self-correcting, few of us suspect they mean they correct the language to substantiate their theories.