Indonesian Bird

Indonesian bird newly discovered by scientists.

The Togian white-eye was first spotted by scientist in 1996. Recently the scientific community has recognized it as a "new species". I found the use of the word "new" to be very interesting. The bird has been there for a long time. It's not like one day in 2006 the sun rose and POOF there was a new green bird that had never existed before. The species has been there for a long time, however scientist have adopted a "new to me" kind of attitude when it comes to scientific discoveries. While I agree that it is very cool to find something that no one has seen or understood before, it doesn't mean the thing didn't exist. Gravity was always there, Newton just recognized it as an entity and gave it a name. Ok, so that may be stretching it a bit, but the concept is the same. instead of saying things like "the new Togian white-eye" how about we just say "the Togian white-eye". Or we need a word to describe something that is "new to me" but not really new at all. Does anyone know if there is a word for that?