Since 2010, researchers deep in the Amazon have discovered and identified 258 species of plants, 84 fish, 22 reptiles, 18 birds and one mammal according to an exhaustive round-up from the World Wildlife Fund. The list, which doesn't even include new insects and invertebrates, features a monkey that purrs like a cat, a piranha that subsists only on plant life and a large number of orchids.
Most of the plants and animals are thought to only exist in small pockets of rainforest, and nowhere else in the world, making the particularly vulnerable to deforestation and other threats. Some are already so endangered that it's surprising researchers were able to spot them at all.
Below, some of the more fascinating finds:
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