Striped rabbits, bright pink millipedes laced with cyanide and a spider bigger than a dinner plate are among a host of new species discovered in a remote wildlife hotspot.

The Greater Mekong is described as one of the last scientifically unexplored regions of the world and it abounds in life seen nowhere else in the world.

So little is known about the ecology of the region that previously unknown animals and plants have been turning up at a rate of two a week for a decade. At least 1,068 new species were identified in the Greater Mekong from 1997 to 2007 along with several thousand tiny invertebrates.

Annamite striped rabbits, Nesolagus timminsi, with black and brown fur, were discovered in Vietnam and Laos in 2000 and are only the second species of striped rabbit to be identified. The other is in Sumatra, the two sharing a common ancestor that lived several million years ago.

Among the most bizarre to be discovered was a hot-pink, spiny dragon millipede, Desmoxytes purpurosea. Several were found simultaneously in Thailand as they crawled over limestone rocks and palm leaves.

To defend themselves from predators the millipedes have glands that produce cyanide. Scientists believe that the shocking pink colouration is to signal to predators that they would make a fatal snack. “They would do well to heed this warning,” concluded a WWF report on the Greater Mekong discoveries.

A huntsman spider, named Heteropoda maxima, measured 12in (30cm) across and was found in caves in Laos. It was described as the “most remarkable” of 88 new species of spider located in Laos, Thailand and the Yunnan province of China. The Greater Mekong comprises 232,000 square miles (600,000 square kilometres ) of wetlands and rainforest along 2,800 miles of the Mekong River in Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam and China.

Wars, internal problems and the remoteness of the region kept most international scientists away for decades but in the 1990s it began to be surveyed extensively for its wildlife.

Thomas Ziegler, curator at Cologne Zoo, was among the researchers to explore the Greater Mekong. “It is a great feeling being in an unexplored area and to document its biodiversity for the first time, both enigmatic and beautiful,” he said.

The discoveries documented in the WWF report First Contact in the Greater Mekong, published today, include 519 plants, 15 mammals, 89 frogs, 279 fish, 46 lizards, 22 snakes, 4 birds, 4 turtles and 2 salamanders.

Stuart Chapman, the director of WWF's Greater Mekong programme, said: “We thought discoveries of this scale were confined to the history books. This reaffirms the Greater Mekong's place on the world map of conservation priorities.”

Among the 15 mammals discovered in the region was the Laotian rock rat, Laonastes aenigmamus. It was thought to have been extinct for 11 million years but a researcher spotted the corpse of one on sale in a food market in Laos in 2005. While unknown to scientists, the rock rat was known to locals as kha-nyou and was enjoyed roasted and served whole on a skewer.

Two of the biggest surprises were the discoveries of two types of muntjac deer. One, the dark Annamite muntjac, Muntiacus truongsonensis, was identified in Vietnam from skulls and descriptions by local people who knew it as samsoi cacoong - “the deer that lives in the deep, thick forest”. Live specimens still elude researchers.

One new snake - the Siamese Peninsula pit viper, Trimeresurus fucatus - was spotted slithering through the rafters of a restaurant in Thailand.

There are estimated to be 20,000 different types of plant, 1,200 species of bird, 430 mammals, 800 reptiles and amphibians, and 1,300 fish in the Greater Mekong. Among the mammals is one of the two remaining populations of the critically endangered Javan rhino.

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