The Guardian reports today that lurking beneath the dark, acidic waters of south-east Asia’s peat swamps lies a strange creature with a slender body, beady eyes and muscular fins that can grab unsuspecting passersby. And measuring no longer than a fingernail, it is officially the world’s smallest vertebrate.

Paedocypris progenetica, just discovered, is a member of the carp family and was netted as it sheltered beneath trees bordering a flooded forest area on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Scientists had always suspected that life could not flourish there. The fully grown creature is no more than 1cm long.

Ralf Britz, an expert in fish anatomy at the Natural History Museum in London, said, “This is one of the strangest fish I’ve seen in my whole career, it’s tiny, it lives in acid and it has these bizarre grasping fins.”

The male, reaching a typical 1cm in length, is an extraordinary creature. Its over-sized dorsal fins are beefed up with hard pads of skin and a hook that can be forced forward by powerful muscles in a grasping action. Until scientists can retrieve live samples to observe, they can only speculate on the fins’ purpose.

The female of the species is less deadly than the male. Its head, which is wider than any part of its body, is not quite a millimetre across and from head to tail it measures 7.9mm (0.3in) when fully mature. In the battle of the smallest of fry, it only just beats the previous record holder, the 8mm Indo-Pacific goby.

“I hope we’ll have time to find out more about them before their habitat disappears completely,” said Dr Britz.

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