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Science behind 'Astonish Me'

In this short companion video, WWF conservation science adviser Mark Wright talks about recent discoveries, as well as the very real possibility of finding new species here in the UK.

While some aspects of our 'Astonish Me' film are fictional, the truly astonishing thing is that all of the species shown are real species! Putting these real species into a fictional film raises a number of questions - which we can hopefully clarify here. For example...

What do we mean by the word 'discovered'?

In the film the word ‘discovered’ could mean any of the following:

• when a species that is totally new to science is found (like Chan’s megastick – the giant insect shown in the film)
• when a new discovery is made as a result of capturing a species on film for the first time (like the incredible barreleye fish)
• or when it is found out that something we already knew about was actually a different species (like the Diard’s clouded leopard)

We thought long and hard (probably too long and hard) about whether 'dicovered' was the right word to use and in the end decided that the fascinating thing about all these species is that in the last few years something remarkable and totally new has been discovered about them.

Everything that’s shown in the final film montage was either a totally newly discovered species or one that further analysis had revealed to be a different species than we had previously thought.

What do we mean by 'just been discovered'?

At the end of the film, Bill Nighy’s character says "Everything you’re seeing has just been discovered?" But how recently is "just..."?

For the purpose of the film we decided that discoveries made since the year 2000 would classify as "just discovered". It’s important to remember that in a geological timeframe 12 years is nothing at all, although for a six-year-old viewer, it probably seems forever!

The barreleye and colossal squid aren’t newly discovered, are they?

You know your stuff, don't you? Yes, both of these species have been known to science for many years. But in the last few years new and exciting discoveries about them have been made as a result of filming them for the first time.

Click here for more information and to see the original footage.

What is WWF's role in finding new species?

WWF staff don't go out specifically to find new species. We certainly get just as excited about any new discoveries as anyone, but this is simply a reflection of our fascination with the natural world.

But what we do spend a lot of time doing, or supporting, is the protection of some of the most dramatic and important parts of the planet, whether that be the mountains of the Himalayas or the forests of the Amazon.

As our regular ‘New Species’ reports clearly show, these relatively unexplored areas continue to throw up new surprises - and will probably do so for many years to come.

Many of our teams are, of course, based in the field and, in carrying our their monitoring activities, could well be in the right place at the right time to be one of the lucky few who stumble across a species entirely unknown to science.

Is there really the "possibility of a bear new to science living in the forests of the Himalayas? Does that mean the Yeti?

Despite the fact that most people have heard of the Himalayas, their rugged terrain, changeable weather and huge size mean they are still relatively unexplored.

We’ve all heard the stories of a large, unknown animal derived from the region’s folklore, and even well-respected mountaineers have recorded footprints at extreme altitudes from a creature that has yet to be identified.

In a way it would be surprising if there wasn’t a new species waiting to be discovered in these vast, sparsely populated mountain regions. Is it a Yeti or a bear or a monkey... who knows? But yes, there is a possibility of such an animal living in these remote places.

Is there really an organisation that collects images of all these species?

Although in 'Astonish Me' the young boy goes into the depths of a fictional museum to find out about new species discoveries, there is not an organisation currently doing this. If anything the film is trying to represent ‘science as a whole.’

But several organisations are doing great work towards cataloguing life on earth.

One of our partners in ‘Astonish Me’ - ARKive - has built an amazing online collection of the images of the natural world, and it’s growing all the time. Find out more at www.arkive.org.

The Catalogue of Life (www.catalogueoflife.org) is run by Species 2000 and is in the process of building an online database of all the species scientifically classified to date.