Barely 14% of creatures on Earth have been logged in central databases – just 9% of those in the seas, the study noted. And, according to David Kavanaugh, a beetle expert at the California Academy of Science, funding and other resources fall short of the task as research institutions are cutting back, and governments are more preoccupied with finding life on Mars than on Earth.

"The most frustrating this is to realise how little resources go into answering this question," he said. "One of those flights to Mars would fund us for decades in exploring life on this planet," he said. "It is very hard to get any money at all to go out, and yet they can go and blow up a rocket on a launch pad that would have funded my career and that of 100 others."

Most of those species waiting to be discovered will be small, and they are likely to be concentrated in remote areas or the depths of the ocean. But the authors said: "Many could be found literally in our own backyards."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/aug/23/species-earth-estimate-scientists

Reiser was a fantastic cartoonist with a French sarcastic flair that my teutonic childish toons cannot match... I have already mentioned this particular cartoon on this site. One can see an irate Noah, uselessly chasing animals having it off with others species... See Reiser....

This drawing off course was done before GM (genetic manipulation)... Now, inter-breeding of species is done without the breeding... It's done by un-naturally splicing genes of one species with those of another, in test tubes...

Evolution is the correct scientific understanding, Noah's story in the bible was (is) but a grand lie to explain — in a very silly stupid way — something that people did not understand. the story had been verbally passed on, embelished, from generation to generation...

Her name is Iris, and with her straight, elegant, red-orange hair she is beyond dispute the prettiest orangutan at the National Zoo. She’s calm, quiet, unflappable. “Iris lives the life of a queen,” says great-ape keeper Amanda Bania.

On Tuesday afternoon, the queen lost her cool.

It happened a little before 2 p.m. Primate keeper K.C. Braesch was standing just a few feet away when Iris emitted a loud, guttural cry, known to scientists as belch-vocalizing. Iris then scrambled to the top of her enclosure.

Braesch stepped back and scanned the enclosure to see what might have agitated the ape. Was it Kiko, the male? Although generally a lump, Kiko can turn into a hothead and throw things. But no, Kiko was lounging.

Then — all this had happened within about five seconds — Braesch felt the earthquake.

“Animals seem to know,” she said Wednesday. “You always hear it anecdotally, but this is the first time I’ve seen it.”

Orangutans, gorillas, flamingos and red-ruffed lemurs acted strangely before humans detected the historic magnitude-5.8 earthquake. Now the question hovering over the zoo is: What did the animals know, and when did they know it?

Therein lies a scientific mystery, one in which hard facts and solid observations are entangled with lore and legend. There has been talk over the years about mysterious electromagnetic fields generated by rupturing faults. There has been speculation about sounds inaudible to humans, and subtle tilting in rock formations, and the release of vapors that people can’t smell.

But there also may be less to the mystery than meets the eye, with Tuesday’s zoo weirdness merely serving as a reminder that many wild animals are paying close attention to nature while humans are doing whatever it is that humans do.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/zoo-mystery-how-did-apes-and-birds-know-quake-was-coming/2011/08/24/gIQAZrXQcJ_print.html