{"id":277554,"date":"2026-02-06T17:32:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T17:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/277554\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T17:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T17:32:09","slug":"never-seen-before-scientists-make-astounding-discovery-on-australian-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/277554\/","title":{"rendered":"“Never seen before.\u201d Scientists make astounding discovery on Australian island"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imagine adding several rings of pointed teeth to a vacuum hose and you’ve probably got a fairly good idea of what a lamprey looks like.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These ancient fish have been on the planet since before the time of the dinosaurs \u2013 but scientists in Australia just made an incredible new discovery when they found these fish in a totally unexpected place.<\/p>\n

Lampreys<\/a>\u00a0have an eel-like body with no scales or jaws. \u201cInstead of a \u2018normal\u2019 mouth they have a round, sucker-like disc lined with sharp little teeth, which many species use to feed on the blood and tissue of fish,\u201d says\u00a0Dr. Luke Carpenter-Bundhoo<\/a>, an aquatic ecologist at Griffith University. <\/p>\n

\u201cDespite looking like a little vampire, Australian brook lamprey are filter feeders as juveniles, then totally stop eating as adults.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carpenter-Bundhoo started noticing lampreys during surveys on K\u2019gari (formerly known as Fraser Island) off the east coast of Australia, much further north than the species had been recorded.<\/p>\n

\"DrLuke Carpenter-Bundhoo and fellow researcher Joshua Whiley sampling a crystal clear creek on the coast of K\u2019gari in Queensland. Credit: Sunny Yu<\/p>\n

Carpenter-Bundhoo was flabbergasted at what he found. \u201cAfter sampling this type of habitat for a few years, I was pretty confident in my knowledge of fish species on K\u2019gari, and then suddenly a species popped up that I had never seen before,\u201d he says. \u201cI knew it was a lamprey, but I had no idea what kind, or that they even occurred at these latitudes.\u201d<\/p>\n

He heard that another scientist, David Moffatt, had also found lampreys on the mainland in Queensland. They decided to team up and worked together to confirm their suspicion: this species of lamprey was living more than 860 miles further north than anyone had realised. Their discovery was published in\u00a0Endangered Species Research<\/a>\u00a0in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis didn\u2019t just contradict what we knew about the Australian brook lamprey, it contradicts what we knew about all lampreys,\u201d he says. \u201cPrior to this, lampreys were thought to be anti-tropical.\u201d<\/p>\n

A juvenile lamprey burrows into the stream bed at Water Park Creek, mainland Queensland. Credit: Luke Carpenter-Bundhoo<\/p>\n

The researchers hope that a better understanding of where the lampreys live will help protect the endangered species, particularly given that sea level rises might cause the coastal streams it lives in to become saltwater habitats.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAside from being the right thing to do, protecting lampreys also means protecting potential future discoveries in neuroscience and evolutionary biology,\u201d says Carpenter-Bundhoo. Studying these alien-looking creatures can help researchers understand the healing process and has even helped further research exploring\u00a0spinal cord regeneration<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Juvenile lampreys released after surveys at Water Park Creek. Credit: Luke Carpenter-Bundhoo<\/p>\n

There are five species of lamprey in the southern hemisphere and Australian brook lamprey (Mordacia praecox) are listed as endangered. \u201cIt is thought to be extinct in its originally discovered range [in southern New South Wales] from the 1960s, but now that we\u2019ve found them up here in the north, we have a second chance to save the species,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Carpenter-Bundhoo is excited by this second chance, adding: \u201cThis is not an opportunity we often get as conservationists, and certainly not one to be wasted.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"WaterA typical lamprey stream at Water Park Creek in Queensland. Credit: Luke Carpenter-Bundhoo<\/p>\n

Top image: K\u2019gari in Australia. Credit: Getty<\/p>\n

More wildlife stories from around the world<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Imagine adding several rings of pointed teeth to a vacuum hose and you’ve probably got a fairly good…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277555,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[85,46,141,386],"class_list":["post-277554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}