The smallest animal with a backbone  known to science, a fish from the carp family, has been discovered in the peat swamps  of Indonesia. Mature females of the fish species  Paedocypris reach just 7.9mm in length. The species was discovered in the highly acidic   peat swamps of the Indonesian island of Sumatra by a team led by Ralf Britz, a zoologist at the Natural History Museum in London. "This is one of the strangest fish that I've seen in my whole career," Dr Britz said. "It's tiny, and it lives in acid. I hope that we'll have time to find out more about them before their habitat disappears completely." The species lives in dark tea-colored swamp waters, which are 100 times more acidic than rainwater. Although these swamps were once thought to be inhabited by very few animals, recent research has shown that they are home to a highly different range of species that occur nowhere else. The peat swamps were damaged by forest fires in 1997, and are also threatened by agriculture. The scientists behind the discovery said that several populations of Paedocypris had already been lost. "Many of the peat swamps we surveyed throughout South-East Asia no longer exist," Dr Britz said. "Populations of all the miniature fish of peat swamps have decreased or disappeared." Details of the discovery are published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B. 65.Where does the smallest backbone animal live?
It lives in highly acidic rainwater. The species lives in the acidic waters of dark tea-coloured swamps. It was put in the Natural History Museum in London. Its habitat disappears completely.