ECHOES
THE RAREST ANIMAL IN THE WORLD

Naturalists have sometimes considered the echidna to be the rarest animal in the world.
However, it seems, if we are to believe an authoritative personality, Mr. Dubalen, director of the Natural History Museum of Mont-de-Marsan, that this title should go to another animal that has a name that is just as unfamiliar to laymen, the "mesoplodon sowerbyensis."
The Museum of Bordeaux has the privilege of possessing a skeleton of a mesoplodon, which is a marine mammal of the class of ziphoid cetaceans.
This cetacean was captured in 1888 in the Capbreton pit (Landes) and studied by Mr. Dubalen, who noted its characteristics: elongated body of four to five meters, head swollen in the fronto-nasal part by the presence of a considerable quantity of oily matter, lower jaw wider than the upper one which it overflows, so that the two large teeth implanted in the mandible come out of the mouth in the form of tusks on each side of the upper jaw; elongated rostrum.
The skeleton, which sits in a place of honor on a display case in the Museum of Bordeaux, is very well preserved: it is missing only two T-shaped bones with a bent branch representing the pelvis, which were located at the height of the fifth vertebra after the last rib.
Although the mesoplodon does not have a very modern appearance, it is however not a fossil animal. It still lives today and prefers to live in the Atlantic Ocean, the English Channel and the Mediterranean. But only four specimens have been captured on the English coast, at Ostend and at Cap-Breton.
Only, as we can see, the great sea serpent can compete in rarity with the mesoplodon, But the latter must be less clever than the former: it sometimes lets itself be caught. And this is probably what will prevent it from ever attaining a reputation comparable to that of its legendary rival.

H. H. B.