An extraordinary 234 new species were described by scientists in the Greater Mekong region of South-East Asia in 2023. The finds, announced in , include 173 species of plants, 26 reptiles, 17 amphibians, 15 fish and three mammals.

Since 1997, more than 3500 new plant and vertebrate animal species have been identified in the area the report covers, which includes Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam – an average of 130 a year.

Here are six of the new species, including a furry hedgehog named after vampires, an almost invisible dragon lizard and a leafless orchid on the verge of extinction.

Hylomys macarong

The furry member of the hedgehog family pictured above is endemic to Vietnam. Hylomys macarong may look innocuous, but its name macarong means vampire in Vietnamese. It got its moniker thanks to its long, pointed fangs, which remain hidden in this picture.

Hipposideros kingstonae

This tiny leaf-nosed bat can be found from Thailand to Borneo. DNA analysis confirmed that Hipposideros kingstonae was a new species in 2023.

It isn’t known where the diminutive bat, which weighs between just 4.9 and 7 grams, roosts. It has been sighted near large limestone caves, suggesting it could shelter inside them, but also in areas far away from any known caves, so it could roost in tree hollows.

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Laodracon carsticola

Sharp eyesight is required to spot this tiny lizard (Laodracon carsticola) high on the rugged karst pinnacles of Laos, which may explain why the species has been overlooked by scientists until now. One of the earliest known sightings of this lizard was by a guide on a zipline tour.

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The lizard is a member of the Agamidae (dragon lizard) family and has only been seen 50 to 70 metres high on limestone pinnacles. It is likely to have evolved unique traits to help it survive in its eroded, rocky microhabitat.

Zhangixalus melanoleucus

This lime-green tree frog (Zhangixalus melanoleucus) was discovered 2000 metres above sea level in the evergreen forests of Phou Samsoum mountain in northern Laos. The area is home to many other endemic species, yet is one of the least studied parts of Asia.

Trimeresurus uetzi

This vibrant snake was believed to be Trimeresurus albolabris, one of the most common species of pit viper in Asia, which is found from Nepal to Indonesia.

But DNA studies of 25 specimens collected in Myanmar have revealed that it is a different species, now named Trimeresurus uetzi, that has so far only been seen in central and southern Myanmar.

Chiloschista quangdangii

This leafless orchid of the Chiloschista genus, members of which are known as starfish orchids, has only ever been found at a single location near Lung Muoi, a tiny remote village in northern Vietnam. It is thought to be extremely rare.

Yet the orchid is now sometimes found in the local plant market, which suggests that the local population of Chiloschista quangdangii is being depleted by the wildlife trade.

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The first-ever footage of a blue whale calf suckling, filmed by a snorkeller in East Timor in South-East Asia, has been released.

“It is certainly not a newborn calf,” says  at the Australian National University in Darwin, “but it’s clearly still suckling.”

Edyvane says capturing the footage was an extraordinary achievement that had never been managed before anywhere. The behaviour was filmed by a snorkeller on an eco-tourism voyage in 2022 who was swimming with pygmy blue whales off the coast of the nation’s capital, Dili, but has only been released now.

(Balaenoptera musculus) are the largest known animal to have ever lived on Earth and can reach lengths of over 30 metres and a weight of almost 200 tonnes. The subspecies of pygmy blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus brevicauda) found off East Timor are marginally smaller, reaching maximum lengths of 24 metres.

Blue whales calves don’t attach to their mother when they feed – she releases oily milk into the water, which is then swallowed by the calf.

The feeding calf in the video is large, says Edyvane, and probably in its second year with its mother – blue whales wean at three years.

Other key blue whale behaviour has been glimpsed and filmed in the area as part of a decade-long research and . Edyvane, who leads the project, says that a database of 2700 pygmy blue whales has been collected since 2014, revealing that East Timor may host one of the world’s biggest migrations of the creatures.

Newborn calves, courtship and pre-mating and feeding behaviour have all been confirmed.

“We haven’t seen a penis yet, but we have seen some very amorous adults getting very funky with each other,” says Edyvane.

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at Western Australia’s Department of Water and Environmental Regulation, says until recently no one realised just how many blue whales were migrating off East Timor.

Capturing the footage was incredibly fortuitous, she says. Blue whales are often far offshore in areas that are hard to get to, says Beck. “To even be able to be in the water with blue whales is incredibly rare, let alone to be in the water at the right time and the right place to film a calf suckling.”

Male frogs commonly coerce female frogs into mating, but some females have come up with ways to avoid harassment – including playing dead.

Many frog species, including the (Rana temporaria), only have a short window of a few weeks each year to mate. This means that lots of males simultaneously compete for the attention of females, sometimes leading to deadly clashes as individuals are submerged under a competing group of males.

“It could be that there are several males clinging to one female, which often leads to the death of the female,” says at the Natural History Museum in Berlin, Germany.

Now, Dittrich and her colleagues have found that female common frogs employ a few different tactics to evade males.

The team collected common frogs during the breeding season – 96 females and 48 males  – and placed one male and two differently sized females in a box filled with 5 centimetres of water. The frogs were then allowed to move freely for 1 hour while the team recorded their behaviour.

Of the 54 female frogs that were embraced by a male as part of the mating process, 83 per cent rotated away, making it the most common escape tactic.

Many used more than one technique. Another popular avoidance measure was to make what is known as a release call, which was observed in 48 per cent of females.

“Males typically use release calls to signal other males that they are a male, so to let them go,” says Dittrich, and the females seem to mimic this call to convince males to let free them too.

Thirty-three per cent of clasped females exhibited “tonic immobility”, otherwise known as playing dead.

In 46 per cent of the cases, the females evaded the male’s attention, with higher rates of success for smaller females, which are more easily able to escape from a male’s grip.

Although this study was done in a lab, Dittrich thinks female frogs would exhibit similar behaviour in the wild.

“Usually, it is seen that females are helpless,” she says. “But this study shows that they are not as passive as previously thought.”

Zebrafish eggs contain a sunscreen called gadusol that protects the growing embryo from harmful rays.

The ultraviolet rays in sunlight are damaging. To shield against this, vertebrates produce a pigment called melanin. In aquatic vertebrates, like fish, melanin is produced by cells called melanophores. But melanophores appear late in embryonic development, so it wasn’t known what protects vulnerable fish embryos before this point.

To investigate, at the University of Utah and his colleagues looked at zebrafish, which live and spawn in shallow, sunlit waters, and have transparent larvae, so have no obvious shielding from UV light.

In particular, they looked at a substance called gadusol, which is found in the eggs of these fish, and many other fish species, and is known to absorb UV light.

The researchers genetically modified zebrafish so they lacked a gene called eevs that is involved in producing gadusol. They bred these specimens with wild zebrafish, which all had the gene, and then examined the resultant offspring.

Only when mother zebrafish had the eevs gene did eggs, embryos and larvae have gadusol, showing that the mother made and deposited the gadusol inside the egg she produced.

When Gagnon and his colleagues exposed embryos and larvae to UV light, embryos of mothers lacking the eevs gene failed to develop and only 2 per cent of their already hatched larvae survived.

Embryos exposed to UV light that didn’t have gadusol protection also showed high levels of compounds called cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers, a marker of DNA damage.

“It illustrates to what length organisms go to protect their genome,” says at the University of Basel in Switzerland. “The mother synthesises and deposits a sunscreen-like compound that protects her eggs and embryos from UV damage. It is a very elegant mechanism to protect transparent animals.”

Gagnon and his colleagues also looked at the genomes of 136 fish species and discovered that genes for gadusol production are found widely, but have been lost in some species, like deep-sea fish or electric eels, that live in dark or murky water, meaning they are already protected from UV rays so don’t need the eevs gene.