Early spring is a wonderfully unique time of year to go for a walk in the woods. The landscape is still mostly draped in browns and grays, but here and then, little blushes of green glow from thickets and undergrowth while fat little buds tentatively wait to burst from the ends of tree branches. Last weekend, we went on such a walk at a nearby park, just to see the magic in progress, and we were not disappointed!
It may be a brown hillside now, but soon it will be a bright, vibrant green.
If you can’t handle the cuteness of little bear cubs – look out! The Pennsylvania Game Commission has a live-stream camera on a female black bear (called a sow) denning for the winter. This sow picked a spot under a house deck in Monroe County, PA as it’s cozy den to hibernate for the winter. We’ve been able to watch her and her new cub napping, nursing, and the mom just trying to keep the little one out of trouble. Continue reading →
Most of the content below was from a post I originally shared in 2016. The gorilla in focus passed away earlier last year, and the foundation where she lived has been embroiled in legal battles over their remaining gorilla ever since. Those human squabbles have kept the gorillas in my mind, though, and I wanted to bring up these ideas again. We share this planet with these magnificent creatures, and we have so much power over what happens to them and their homes, we at least owe them this sheer wonder!
Well, ladies and gentlemen, we did indeed find wildlife on my trail camera! It was mostly deer, but I still think it’s a great way to visualize the natural world around even a suburban area.
Nice young buck, velvet still on his antlers.
Just a little fawn, still adorable with her spots 🙂
Think she spotted the camera?
Gettin in that Saturday morning jog!
Bonus Footage: I think a train went by. Or did the neighbors leave their fire-breathing dragon out again?
Bonus Footage: This must be from when I dropped the camera during the set-up process. Looks like swirly fun in an impressionistic dream kind of way.
I’m going to leave the camera out for a bit longer, and I can keep you updated if I find anything else exciting!
In the meanwhile, if you are interested in some hands-on field work, but with the help of naturalists and scientists, the National Park Service is holding a series of BioBlitzes across the country this year in honor of 100 years of parks. BioBlitzes are a citizen science effort of conducting biological surveys in a short period of time. They are a great way to go on a guided exploration of biodiversity, plus they can be a huge help to keeping inventory of all living things in the focus area–from animals to plants to fungi, everything! Many of the BioBlitzes occurred in May, but different parks around the country are hosting their events all the way until later in the year. The map on the NPS page will help you search for BioBlitzes near you.
Over the weekend, the hubby and I had a few minutes to take a walk around my parents’ neighborhood in central Ohio. Though firmly rooted in the suburbs, we came across the tiny remainders of a wetland (presumably drained) at the edge of the neighborhood. Cattails grew on both sides of what had turned into something a drainage ditch, and duckweed and some sort of potamogeton floated here and there in the shallow water. What we enjoyed best though–frogs! It may have been a small space, but this little patch of habitat was crowded with green frogs. I only had my phone on me, but I snapped a few pictures that I thought would be fun to share. Can you find the frogs in the pictures below?
One frog here…not too hard to find.
A little tougher…
Oh that camouflage…
Found the frogs? Excellent! Now, while I have the floor, I do want to highlight a few things about frogs that are super important.
Frogs, along with other amphibians, are invaluable as indicator species. If there is a problem with a habitat, frogs and salamanders are among the first kind of living things to struggle because of their thin semi-permeable or permeable skin. And this is very important: if there is a problem with a wetland or a waterway, it’s not just a problem for “nature.” It’s a problem for us as well.
Amphibian populations around the world are declining. There are a number of speculated causes, but high on the list are habitat loss and the spread of the chytrid fungus.
Why are frogs helpful for you? For one thing, their diet includes a number of pesty insects including (wait for it)…mosquitoes. So, if you’re not a fan of getting bitten by creepy crawlies, you like frogs.
Why else are frogs helpful for you? A looming medical disaster is the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Countless numbers of human lives have been saved over the past several decades through the use of antibiotics, but a shadow is falling over that triumph as bacteria have begun developing resistance to what used to be effective treatments. However, antimicrobial peptides from frogs’ skin secretions may be one of the hopes for the future of bacterial infection treatment. If we keep our frogs safe, we might also be safeguarding medicines for the next generation. (P.S. This is for another post, but I can’t help it: you can help slow the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria. If you are prescribed an antibiotic, be sure you use the medication only as directed by your doctor. Please do not Google “Do I have to finish my antibiotics.” Your doctor examined you; a blogger with an opinion did not. That includes me! Also, be aware that antibiotics are useless against viral infections, so don’t pressure your doctor if they say you’ll just have to wait it out. Most importantly: never share medication. Now back to frogs!)
If you still don’t believe me about how crazy cool frogs are, trust the experts at the Smithsonian! If anyone has fun facts, they do 🙂
Oh, you lucky duck, you! Here’s your one-stop shopping for all your mind-blowing, legless Squamate factoids for the day! (Except legless lizards…those kind of creep me out. Eep.) I wasn’t feeling a hard-science post, but there’s always fun to be had in the biology world! As a disclaimer, there isn’t a lot of rhyme or reason to today’s spewing of info, I just had a lot of fun snake tidbits in mind that I wanted to share. So look at today’s thought-process grandeur as a snapshot of what it’s kind of like to be in my brain. Except my brain is more glittery.
Credit: National Geographic
General Overview: Snakes are a group of long-bodied, legless* reptiles. (*I say “leg-less” with the quick caveat that some snakes do have teeny-tiny vestigial “leg” nubs.) As reptiles, they’re ectothermic, or “cold-blooded,” which means they can’t regulate their body temperature they way we can and instead rely on their environment and behavioral modifications (e.g., basking on a rock in the sun on a warm day.) Hand-in-hand with the energy conservation involved in their thermal regulation, snakes also have some amazing metabolic adaptations. Snakes can lower their metabolic rates, delaying the need for food. In fact, some snakes can go months without eating, and sea snakes can go up to seven months without drinking! (But don’t use that as an excuse not to feed/water your pet snake, please and thank you 🙂 In other snakey fast-facts, our vertically-challenged, slithery friends don’t have eyelids, but they do have protective brilles–a clear scale over each eye. Snakes also regularly undergo ecdysis–the shedding of their skin (including the brilles). Also, snake diets depend on the species but range from ants and termites to small rodents and reptiles to larger mammals, birds, and other snakes. How’s that for a carnivore?
Now the title of this post is “Snakey Superlatives”…so naturally, I have included some snakey superlatives. Ready?
Your Worst Nightmare Snake
Titanoboa cerrejonensis may be long-extinct, but it’s still a wonder to hear about. This monster could be as much as 40 feet long, weigh over a ton, and at its widest point, its body could be 3-4 feet high. The largest known snake in history, the species could probably send shivers up the spine of even today’s bravest herpetologist. Simultaneously awesome and terrifying.
The Biggest Extant Species of Snake
Kind of depends on what we count as biggest. The green anaconda (Eunectes murinus) typically goes down on record with the reticulated python (Python reticulates) as being the largest snake in the world, but it depends on whether length or mass is considered. Green anacondas are the most massive, weighing in at up 550 lbs when 20-30 feet long, but reticulated pythons can be longest with a record length of 32 feet and weighing ~350 lbs.
Green Anaconda, credit Arkive
Smallest Snake in the World
Maybe the big boys aren’t quite your thing, so what about the smallest snake in the world? The Barbados threadsnake (Leptotyphlops carlae) grows to only about 10 cm long and it subsists on ants and termites. How cute is that?
Barbados Threadsnake, credit National Geographic
Prettiest Snake in the World
Perhaps a slightly subjective assessment, I’ll admit, but the emerald tree boa (Corallus caninus) is a gorgeous green to blend in its South American forest home.
Emerald Tree Boa, credit National Aquarium
World’s Largest Gathering of Snakes
Yeah, you’re just gonna have to watch this one.
While I have your attention, though, I think it would be best if I dispelled a few myths about snakes. Out of casual observation, I would say this group of animals gets the most undeserved fear of most taxa.
Myth: Snakes are highly aggressive and should always be “taken care of,” mob style
As a good rule of thumb, if you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you. As predators, snakes are incredibly important members of their communities, and minimizing the disruption of food webs is a noteworthy goal on our part. That being said, if you do see a rattlesnake–please walk away and take your dog and small children with you. Big children, too, probably. (This safety page was directed at Florida residents, but it’s fairly reasonable for anyone–though I admit even I raised an eyebrow at the trash can method.)
Myth: Snakes unhinge their jaws to eat.
They’re not really unhinging their jaws. Snakes just have a much more kinetic skull than we do—they have a greater number of movable joints. If you feel your lower jaw, it’s one solid bone. When you were much younger, though, you used to have a “joint” down the midline of your jaw (think of an invisible line extending straight down from below your two middle front teeth). This was never a movable joint, though since we don’t particularly need a joint there, and the two halves of your jaw fused together as you progressed in development, forming the mandibular symphysis.
On the other hand, snakes have several kinetic points in their jaws that allow them to open their mouths multiple times as large as their head normally appears when resting. Since snakes don’t chew their food, they need to able to swallow their dinner whole.
Myth: Snakes are poisonous.
Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope…wait for it…nope! (Ok, there is one genus of legitimately poisonous snakes in the world.) But copperheads, rattlesnakes, cobras, bushmasters, vipers, etc—not poisonous!
However, there are plenty of venomous snakes in the world.
What’s the difference you say? Well, poisons are secreted, generally somewhere on the surface of an animal’s body. Animals like toads and newts can be poisonous. If you try to eat them, you could get very sick, have a very “strange” evening, or both. A way to remember, poison is ingested, venom is injected.
So snakes are pretty awesome, are you convinced yet? If not, don’t worry, I can post lots more snakey things to change your mind.
Linnaeus and the Lamppost 