Plate-sized spiders have been discovered in the Mekong Delta!

So little is known about the ecology of the region that previously unknown animals and plants have been turning up at a rate of two a week for a decade. At least 1,068 new species were identified in the Greater Mekong from 1997 to 2007 along with several thousand tiny invertebrates.

Annamite striped rabbits, Nesolagus timminsi, with black and brown fur, were discovered in Vietnam and Laos in 2000 and are only the second species of striped rabbit to be identified. The other is in Sumatra, the two sharing a common ancestor that lived several million years ago.

Among the most bizarre to be discovered was a hot-pink, spiny dragon millipede, Desmoxytes purpurosea. Several were found simultaneously in Thailand as they crawled over limestone rocks and palm leaves.

To defend themselves from predators the millipedes have glands that produce cyanide. Scientists believe that the shocking-pink colouration is to signal to predators that they would make a fatal snack. "They would do well to heed this warning," concluded a WWF report on the Greater Mekong discoveries.

A huntsman spider, named Heteropoda maxima, measured 30cm across and was found in caves in Laos. It was described as the "most remarkable" of 88 new species of spider located in Laos, Thailand and the Yunnan province of China.

The Greater Mekong comprises 600,000 square kilometres of wetlands and rainforest along 4,500km of the Mekong River in Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam and China.

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