Orange cave crocodiles may be mutating into new species
by Jeremy Hance from on (#3EHMN)
In 2008 an archaeologist discovered crocodiles living in remote caves in Gabon. Now, genetics hint that these weird cave crocodilians may be in the process of evolving into a new species.
It sounds like something out of a children's book: it's orange, it dwells in a cave and it lives on bats and crickets. But this isn't some fairy story about a lonely troll - it's the much weirder tale of a group of African dwarf crocodiles that are adapting to life in pitch-darkness.
"We could say that we have a mutating species, because [the cave crocodile] already has a different [genetic] haplotype," said Richard Oslisly, who first discovered the cave crocs in 2008. "Its diet is different and it is a species that has adapted to the underground world."