Short Wave - How much of Earth's life is still undiscovered?

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

If you, like us, clicked on the cute cat photos posted everywhere recently, announcing the discovery of the first new cat species in more than a century, you might have wondered how rare it is to find a new species. Turns out, it’s not! We live in an era of “unprecedented” discovery, says John Wiens, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona. And scientists say we’re still just scratching at the surface of how much life exists on Earth.   Interested in more science in the news? Email us your question at [e-mail] public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Gina B. Hey. Hey, Nate. Hey. So, question. Yes. Did you just see this new cat species that was discovered? First one in over a hundred years?

Yes, yes. Everyone's talking about it. Like, at my hairdressers. Like, on the metro, yes. It's the buzz. It's super cute, like small and it has leopard spots kind of. Apparently somebody took this cat home after finding it in this, like, Bolivian. in cloud forest because they thought it was a kitten.

But after a year, it wasn't really growing. And they started to suspect it might not be a house cat. I love this story. Yeah, it ended up in Sendevereld a wildlife sanctuary where its DNA was sequenced. And lo and behold, yes, it was a new species. They named it Leopartis Tilkayo, which I hope I'm saying right. Yeah, I also heard there's this new penguin species that was discovered just recently. again, first one in like 100 years.

Yeah, that's right. So these penguins were found in the aptly named Desolation Islands in the sub-Antarctic region, very hard to get to, which kind of helps explain why it took so long for scientists to genetically test these animals. But they recently did. And yeah, again, they were, in fact, a new species. Yeah, learning about this new cat and this new penguin species, you know, the first of each in a century, it makes me feel like it's really rare to find new species. but I know that we've done stories, and Nate, you've been reporting on how it's actually more common than I thought, like how we're discovering new species all the time. Yeah, I mean, do you want a fun fact toy, Gina?

Yes, of course. For animals, about 15% of all-known species have been discovered in the past 20 years or so. What? That is a huge percentage. For 20 years? Yeah, it's very recent. So that's John Wienes. He's a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona.

And I interviewed him about a study he published that shows today, like right now, we are discovering and describing more species than at any time in human history. So like hundreds of new fish species, about 100 new amphibian species per year, and about 100 new reptile species per year, especially lizards and snakes. These numbers are like blowing my mind. Yeah. So in total, he says we discover about 16,000 new species every year. So insects, arthropods, plants, fungi. And we're just scratching the surface of how much life there is yet to be discovered on Earth. Just like tons of species out there.

We would say it's a poorly known planet that we live on. So today on the show, an effort to discover and genetically catalog every living thing on the planet. And why the discovery of a new cat or penguin or any species isn't just cool, but could have direct implications on your life. I'm Nate Rot. And I'm Regina Barber. You're listening to Shortwave. The Science Podcast from NPR.

Okay, Nate, I think I'm still trying to get my head around the fact we're discovering about 16,000 new species every year. Like, how is that even possible? I mean, well, look, Gina, like a lot of them aren't as photogenic as that, you know, spotted cat. So cute. That you and, you know, your hairdresser and lots of other people have seen on their social media feeds. Yes. They're insects or crustaceans, invertebrates that live in the oceans or under our feet. there are more than 350,000 describe species of beetles on the planet that we know of just alone.

And when you say described, you mean species that scientists have taxonomically categorized? Yeah, so back in the 1700s, a Swedish biologist named Carl Linnaeus, who had fantastically curly hair, Gina. It was probably a wig. Yeah. Created this system of classifying animals that we still use today. So anyone listening probably remembers it from their middle school or high school science classes. Domain, Kingdom, Philem, Gina, do you remember the rest? No.

Like, no, I'm terrible in biology. Okay, so class, order, family, genus species. And so using that system, scientists have described roughly two and a half million species on the planet so far. Two and a half million, that's so much. Yeah, I mean, that's roughly the number of people that live in Chicago or Houston. But obviously, there's a lot more out there if we're discovering 16,000 per year. Do they have an estimate on how many, like, more distinct species are there out there? I mean, so, Gina, that is a very good question.

And I can say that because I ask the exact same thing to John. Good. The range of estimates of how many species are out there are from the low millions to the low trillions. Trillions? Yes, T, trillions. And John says he personally thinks it's somewhere between the low hundreds of millions up to the low billions. And a lot of that diversity, we think, is associated with things. living inside of insects. So like your average insect is maybe walking around with its own mite

species and its own nematode species and its own species and its own unicellular fungus called a microsporidian and its own epicomplexin proteist. And then most importantly, like maybe around eight or so bacterial species. So if you kind of crunch those numbers and start with six million species, then you start getting up into these, you know, these ridiculous numbers in the hundreds of millions. I really, really like this. It's almost as if like every insect is a whole world unto itself. Yeah, totally. And, you know, when we're talking about microscopic life like bacteria, obviously that's not something a biologist like John can like easily find and describe, which is why a lot of scientists are increasingly using genetic data to tell species apart.

Like how the scientists determined this cat and like this penguin species were unique species. Yeah. And, you know, after I talked to John about this, I kind of went down this rabbit hole, Gina, because I don't know about you, but I just think it's like so cool that there's so much life on this planet that we haven't even discovered yet. Like, we spend all of this time talking about whether there's life in space when, you know, yeah, right? Like, I do too, because I'm curious. But based on some of these estimates, we've only discovered a fraction of what exists on Earth.

And this rabbit hole brought me to a genomic scientist named Harris Lewin, who's the former co-chair of something called the Earth Biogenome. project. That totally sounds like something out of a sci-fi novel. Well, Harris himself described it as a biological moonshot. The goal of this project is to sequence catalog and characterize the genomes, the biological blueprints of every known single and multi-celled organism on Earth. We think that that archive of life, sort of a, you know, a Noah's arc of genomes, collecting all this information will be useful for future generations. And what does he mean by useful? Does he mean like bringing animals back from extinction?

I mean, maybe you could bring something back from extinction, right? But it could also be used to help prevent an animal or a plant from even getting to that point. So, you know, scientists are already using genetics to clone federally endangered blackfooted ferrets. They're using genetics to identify corals. It can better survive warmer oceans. And they're using it to discover that some species that look very much alike are actually genetically distinct. like what happened with this new cat species. Maybe the biggest example of this are African elephants, which we long assumed were one species, but have since found are actually two forest elephants and savannah. I did not know that. Okay, let's like zoom out in general. So if you're like thinking a population or a species is like doing fine because there's a good amount of them, and then suddenly you realize they're actually smaller populations of multiple species,

things are not maybe fine. Exactly. So it can be a tool for species conservation because, yeah, a lot of species are at risk of extinction right now from habitat loss over exploitation and, you know, increasingly climate change. Yeah. And, you know, we've seen these periods in Earth's history where climate has caused these mass extinctions. So we know that this is not far-fetched possibility. And so we want to first, you know, make sure we have a digital archive of everything that, you know, alive on this planet today. because it's the product of several billion years of evolution, of life on Earth. I find this like a really interesting way to look at it. Like what we have right now is actually a record of billions of years of evolution. Yeah, I mean, and you know this, Gina, like species evolve to adapt to problems, right? So they grow bigger beaks to break bigger nuts.

They adapt to use echolocation to hunt for bugs at night. They adapt to pathogens and temperatures and limited resources. So, you know, if you extend that idea outwards and think of some of the challenges that we are facing as humans, Harris would argue. All the solutions are out there somewhere for most of the problems that we have. Oh, my gosh. That's so hopeful. Oh, my God. They're just waiting to be discovered. Yeah, that's right. So, you know, think about medicine. 80% of our pharmaceuticals have origins in natural products. And, you know, we've only sequenced a little bit more than one percent of biocels. biodiversity. There's a whole pharmacopia out there. Wow. GLP ones, the weight loss drugs at scientists are

finding have all kinds of other potential benefits. Those can be traced back to the venom and saliva of Gila monsters. Wow, I had no idea. Yeah. So, you know, having the whole genome of different animals and bacteria could help scientists better identify the sources of new diseases and could also allow them to more quickly come up with cures like antitoxin and antidotes also exist in nature. Then there's agriculture, you know, Jena, feeding the world, which is already a problem in some parts, as you know. And there's a lot of people to feed. Yeah. And Harris says, you know, getting the whole genome sequences of different plants and pests could help us find wild variants of existing crops that are, you know, more resistant to drought or heat or ones that have natural defenses against diseases

or pests. And those genes could then be spliced into our foods. Which we already have been doing for a long time. Yeah, exactly. Okay. So can I ask, how feasible is this? I mean, we've been talking about how we've only been scratching the surface of how much life is on Earth. How can we possibly genetically sequence all of it? I mean, it's a great question. And, you know, Harris is optimistic, in part because technology is advancing so fast. And, you know, because the cost of doing full reference genomes, which are, you know, the complete genetic sequence of an organism, those have come down so much.

Like, Gina, do you remember the human genome project? Yeah, I totally do. This was this huge scientific effort to make the first genetic map of us, you know, of people. Yeah, and it took more than a decade and was completed in 2003, and it cost $3 billion to do this. Harris says the reference genomes they're able to make today are so much better and so much cheaper. So we're producing now genomes for tens of thousands of dollars that it costs $3 billion and is nowhere near the quality of what we produce today. This makes me feel like it's an exciting time to be a geneticist. I mean, certainly, yeah, if you're looking at genetics, this is a very exciting time.

And I've heard a lot of optimism from people I've talked to, not just Harris. But there are also a lot of challenges here. You know, a lot of scientific funding in the U.S. has gotten cut in the last couple of years. Harris says there's a big question around equity, which I thought was really interesting. So, like, if scientists find the genetics of some salamander in Central America, there's a way to regenerate human limbs. How do you make sure that the country it's discovered in shares in the economic gains from that discovery? And we're very constrained by all this nationalism, which is going on now around the world, there are countries that are saying nothing leaves, you know.

And nothing is not just the sample. Nothing means no digital sequence information unless we can guarantee that we're going to benefit in some way. Yeah, these are really important things to think about. Totally. And then, you know, probably, Gina, the most obvious challenge to this whole thing is just the scale of it. After you've done genetically mapping all the stuff we can find in our backyards or by doing some fishing, you know, there's still a lot of stuff out there. In the depths of the ocean and the reaches of some, you know, peak in Afghanistan somewhere, an endemic species in Uzbekistan or an Antarctica, these are hard things. And, you know, to get to every last one is going to take. a really robust strategy and significant funding. Nate, thank you so much for taking us on this rabbit hole with you.

And I never thought, like, clicking on a picture of this new cute cat and reading about it would open up such a world of animal discovery. Well, Gina, it is a wild world out there. So next time, can we agree that we're going to just tag along with some of those scientists in Uzbekistan and find some rare DNA? Yes, I can promise that. Now we have to find the money. This episode was produced by Bertha McCoy and edited by Lauren Gonzalez. Tyler Jones checked the facts.

Jimmy Keely was the audio engineer. I'm Regina Barber. And I'm Nate Rod. Thank you for listening to Shorewave from NPR.