Spotted: One of the rarest mammals on Earth

Chances are good no one will be celebrating if you decide to step out for a walk through the forest and happen to get captured on camera.

But you are a human. If, on the other hand, you're a long-horned ox called the saola, expect some serious chatter on a global scale.

So why all the buzz about a grainy image? Well, this rare mammal was only just discovered in 1992, thanks to a skull with unusual horns found in the mountains that separate Laos from Vietnam. Since then, the saola has been seen only once in the wild, in 1998.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

With so little known about the beautiful creature, the photograph understandably excited scientists, who believe there may be only a couple hundred saolas left.

It's not the only rare animal sighting of late. Scientists in January reveled in their filming of the elusive giant squid in its natural habitat — the Pacific Ocean — for the first time ever.

And after its first brush with a camera lens in 2006, the Sumatran rhinoceros made just its second on-screen appearance the following year, when the rhino investigated a camera set up on the island of Borneo, in Malaysia.