Category: amphibians

Readers’ wildlife photos

December 27, 2024 • 8:15 am

Send ’em in, folks! I’m running a bit low. . .

Today’s photos come from Mayaan Levy, whose captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Pacific crest trail animals

All photos were taken by my husband Micah on his Pacific crest trail (PCT) thru-hike last summer. Thru-hiking means having a continuous footpath, and hiking the trail in one go, and he had dreamt of achieving this impressive feat for about 12 years. This was his third attempt – the first was cut short due to work constraints and the second due to knee injury. But third time’s the charm – he walked from Mexico to Canada. Here you can read more about the PCT for those of you who are interested: https://www.pcta.org/

This will probably be a first batch out of three: animals, plants and views from the PCT. All photos were taken with a pixel 7 smartphone. Several quick notes before we begin:

The trail is not only for 20-somethings, and Micah noted how many people in their 50s and 60s he met along the way and how fit and fast they were. Just sayin’ – if that’s your dream – go for it!

I did the species identification and some might be wrong – please contribute the correct ID if you know it.Captions and text are written by me but are paraphrased from Micah’s stories about the trail.

The desert

Looks barren, but is full of life. The air is clear and crisp at sunrise then turns dusty and hazy with some warm winds from the east and the day’s heat. At sunset, reds and pinks give way to deep purple as hikers go to sleep at a billion-star hotel.

Sun spider of some type (order Solifugae) – it’s not a scorpion! And also not a spider! To the best of my understanding they don’t have any venom.

Pacific gopher snake (Pituophis catenifer):

Long-nosed leopard lizard (Gambelia wislizenii):

The Sierra Nevada

The mountains high in thin air, snow all around, gushing rivers and pine trees galore! The Sierras are considered the most difficult section of the PCT and also probably the most beautiful. I did the section too with Micah on his second attempt, including summiting Mt. Whitney on the summer solstice.

abiete coni figmentum imaginationis – some hikers having fun (and me getting to practice my Latin).

Sagebrush chekerspot (Chlosyne acastus):

Yellow-bellied marmot (Marmota flaviventer) – marmots are hilarious. They tend to not be scared of people, and instead will try to get into your bag and steal your food. Sometimes they also like to pose for photos, and sometimes they tan on the rocks looking stoned:

Speaking of food thieves, in the Sierra hikers are required to carry bear canisters, which you can imagine as a bucket-size child (bear)-proof pill bottles. Information boards for hikers in Yosemite national park read: “if you have too much food and not all of it fits in the canister, stop! Sit and eat! Then try again.” In northern California most hikers ship their heavy bear canister back home. However, bears are clever animals and they have learned that food can be had at this location. Micah has set up his tent about 10 miles after shipping out his canister, only to have a bear circle his tent all night.

Another food thief, and the most dexterous one (I’ve seen them open zippers): the common raccoon (Procyon lotor), aka trash panda. They like to hang out around campgrounds, steal food and then act all innocent and go wash their hands:

Yes, there’s a lot of talk about food on trail – it’s probably the number one conversation topic.

Oregon and Washington

Yay Volcanos! The cascade range is magical in its deep, dark colors. And despite last year being extremely dry, you can tell that this environment is water-rich.

Cascades frog (Rana cascadae) – I think their skin is somewhat toxic to the touch, but I might be wrong:

This is a “find the animal” photo – there are actually two mammals here, sharing a habitat in the fog that’s so frequent in Washington’s mountains:

Pika (family Ochotonidea) – and the cutest animal on the PCT award goes to the pikas. They chirp (not sure that’s the right descriptor for their calls) saying “pet me!”, “adopt me!”. Unlike marmots which hibernate for the majority of the year, pikas run around in their rocky castles and continue to be cute throughout the winter:

Spruce grouse (Canachites Canadensis) spotted less than 10 miles from Canada:

Homo sapiens (I’m sure about this ID) – this is me in the photo. I joined Micah for Washington (Bridge of the Gods to the US-Canada border):

Readers’ wildlife photos

September 21, 2024 • 8:15 am

Today we have Part One of reader Chris Taylor’s photos from Queensland. His captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

After having been unable to travel for the last five years, I was at last able to get away again, so my partner and I decided to escape the cold of Canberra’s winter and travel up to tropical North Queensland. We had arranged to go out to the Bush Heritage Australia reserve at Yourka again, but before going there we had some time to visit the rainforest near the coast. After flying in to Cairns, we drove up to our first campsite in Mossman.

Above the town, the pristine Mossman River flows through a steep sided gorge.

The rainforest here is said to be the oldest on earth. Many ancient plant families are preserved here, including cycads, ferns and primitive conifers. We had a couple of short walks along the paths into the rainforest.

Our campground was on the banks of the Mossman River. A sign in the site was slightly alarming!

I’m not sure how often the crocodiles get up into the town.

But a few days later we travelled the few kilometres further north to the Daintree River, and there were plenty of crocodiles to be seen. There are two species of crocodile found in Australia, the smaller Freshwater Crocodile, and the larger Saltwater species.

This is a Saltwater Crocodile, Crocodylus porosus:

On the Daintree River, a dominant male will rule a territory of many kilometres of the river, and will keep a harem of females. The male will also tolerate a number of juvenile males until they are three or four years old, at which time they will be driven out of the area. Once fully grown they may return to the river to challenge the resident male for his territory and females.

This is a young male. He was only about 2.5m in length.

This is a female of breeding age. She is regulating her body temperature by entering the water, and gaping her mouth to the wind. There are many blood vessels in the roof of the mouth and this cools the blood going to her brain.

There is some concern in Queensland that climate change is having a big adverse effect on the crocodiles. The sex of the hatchling is determined by the temperature:  less than 32oC produces males, but over 34oC the litter is predominantly female. This warming, together with the effects of the flooding caused by Tropical Cyclone Jasper, has led to no young crocodiles surviving in the Daintree for two years.

We also saw the dominant male of this part of the river, a 5m long, 500kg animal known as Scarface.

He is thought to be at least 70 years old, and carries witness to many fights he has had to retain his kingdom. He has lost most if not all of his teeth, but is still able to feed, often on carrion that is carried down the river.

Lining the river banks are stands of Mangrove trees of different species. Here the mangroves are combining to form an island in the river. There are three different forms that the roots take to enable the tree to live in the brackish water.  All three can be seen in this picture.  Most obvious is the prop or stilt root system, where many roots branch off from the trunk of the tree and spread out to form a strong supporting network.  Then there are some that have Buttress roots flaring out from the trunk. These sometimes bend up above the surface before returning to the mud, and are called knee roots. Lastly there are the roots that stick up pencil-like structures known as pneumatophores. All of these are mechanisms that help the plant to regulate oxygen, salt and water intake and removal, and all help to stabilise the mud around the plant, as well as providing a habitat for fish and invertebrates to breed.

In amongst the mangroves were other creatures. This is a Little Pied Cormorant, Microcarbo melanoleucos, a very common bird around Australia.

Further upstream in one of mangroves was a Scrub Python, Simalia kinghorni:

This is Australia’s largest snake, growing to 5m and 20kg., but it is quite at home in the trees. It was resting in the sun when we first encountered it, but soon began to move around in the tree tops. This one was probably approaching the 3m mark. It was fascinating to see how it was able to span the gaps in the branches.

Back at Daintree we saw this White-Lipped Tree Frog, Litoria infrafrenata. This is the largest tree frog in the world. There are other larger frogs but these are unable to climb:

Back at Mossman, we photographed a Giant Orb Weaving spider, Nephila pilipes. This individual had a span across her legs of about 150mm, and a body of 25mm. Her web was rather more that 1m across!

Also in the campground were a number of Orange-footed Scrub Fowl, Megapodius reinwardt. These birds belong to the Megapodidae, along with the Brush Turkey that I will describe later:

There were also Olive-backed Sunbirds, Cinnyris jugularis, flying around the site. This one is a female emerging from the hanging nest made from woven grasses fibres and bark. It is the female who does most of the work of raising the two eggs laid in the nest:

There was also a spectacular display of Red Jade Vine, Mucuna bennettii. Introduced into Australia, this member of the Legume family is a native of Papua New Guinea:

Returning to Cairns for a night we were able to go for a swim in a nearby rainforest stream at the (crocodile free) Crystal Cascades:

Next morning, while waiting to board the bus to Atherton, we went to a café for breakfast. A cheeky Willie Wagtail, Rhipidura leucophrys, decided to join us in the hope of getting crumbs of food from the table.

Continued in Part 2.

 

Readers’ wildlife photos

July 10, 2024 • 8:45 am

I have about three batches left, so if you have wildlife photos, please send them in.

Today’s photos is the second installment of photos from Texas contributed by Damon Williford (part 1 is here).  Damon’s narrative and captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them. Here’s his introduction to the set.

I took these photos at Brazos Bend State Park on June 23 of this year. Brazos Bend State Park is located about 45 miles south of central Houston and 45 miles north of Bay City where I live. The park contains a variety of habitats, including prairie, woodlands, marshes, swamps, and lakes. The Brazos River forms the eastern boundary of the park.

Eastern Cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus):

A juvenile American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) hanging out near a footbridge:

Blanchard’s Cricket Frog (Acris blanchardi):

A male Eastern Pondhawk (Erythemis simplicicollis):

A Question Mark Butterfly (Polygonia interrogationis) feeding on a severed crayfish claw. I was aware that some species of butterflies will feed on carrion, but this was the first time I have personally observed it:

Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta):

Violet Ruellia (Ruellia nudiflora):

American Lotus (Nelumbo lutea):

American Lotus:

Water Hyacinth (Pontederia crassipes):

Mushrooms in the genus Chlorophyllum (maybe). That is the best I could do with the identification:

I used iNaturalist to help me identify the organisms in photos 14-22 because my ID skills become progressively worse as the list moves from amphibian (average) to plants (poor) to fungi (non-existent).

Camera information: I used a Canon EOS R7 mirrorless camera body for all photographs. I used the Canon RF800mm f/11 IS USM lens for photos 1-8, and the Canon RF100-400mm f/5.6-8 IS USM lens for the remaining photos.

Fossil of giant fanged salamander found in Namibia

July 7, 2024 • 9:30 am

A giant salamander—and by “giant” I mean about 2.5-4 meters long—equipped with teeth and wicked fangs was found in Namibia, dated at about 270 million years ago, and just reported in Nature.  Its significance is that it is early, but is considered a “stem” tetrapod, meaning that it has some of the characteristics of modern amphibians, which are tetrapods (four-legged animals that could move around on land).  The authors, according to this CBS News story, suremise that it “was considerably longer than a person, and it probably hung out near the bottom of swamps and lakes”.  It was also an apex predator, meaning that it ate other animals, but there was nothing around that could eat it.

Its was found in an area that, 270 million years ago, was at high latitude, ergo cold and partly glaciated. This beast is the first suggestion that there was a tetrapod fauna in cold-ish climates at that time.

Click below to see the article, or download the pdf here:

The researchers recovered a skull that was about 60 cm (2 feet long), as well as the front part of the postcranial skeleton. The authors don’t give a size estimate, but with a two-foot head it was probably large, and could have been 12 feet long: the longest salamander known yet. (The largest living salamander, the Japanese giant salamander (Andrias japonicus), can attain a length of about 5 feet.  This puppy could have been twice as long.

Two skull fragments were known of this animal before, but it hadn’t been named and there were no remains of the skeleton. The authors named this one Gaiasia jennyae, after the Gai-As formation in which it was found, and also after Jenny Clack (1947-2020), who studied early tetrapods. (This, of course, will anger the pecksniffs who think that animals shouldn’t be named after people, but they can jump in the lake.) It is the only species in the genus Gaiasia.

The sample in the field (from the Supplementary information):

(From paper): B. Reassembling the ex situ type specimen of Gaiasia jennyae (F 1528)– a dorsal up skull with lower jaw and most of the articulated axial skeleton. C. In situ dorsal-up Gaiasia jennyae skull (F 1522) at locality shown in A. panorama. D. Type specimen of Gaiasia jennyae (F 1528) shown in B. after preparation. Note the differential compression of the skull roof. There is no evidence of pre-burial breakage or subaerial weathering. Scale bar =10cm.

Here’s the skull in dorsal (a,b) and ventral (c,d) views, and reconstructions.

From the paper: a,b, Skull in dorsal view. a, Photograph. b, Interpretative drawing. c,d, Skull in ventral view. c, Photograph. d, Interpretative drawing. e, Reconstruction of the articulated specimen in lateral view showing preserved elements of the skeleton. adsym, adsymphysial bone; an, angular; anf, angular fenestra; c1, anterior coronoid; c2, middle coronoid; caf, carotid artery foramen; chf, chordatympanic foramen; d, dentary; ept, ectopterygoid; exo, exoccipital; f, frontal; it, intertemporal; j, jugal; l, lacrimal; mx, maxilla; n, nasal; p, parietal; par, prearticular; pfr, prefrontal; pl, palatine; po, postorbital; pof, postfrontal; pp, postparietal; pospl, postsplenial; psph, parasphenoid; pt, pterygoid; qj, quadratojugal; sa, surangular; spl, splenial; sq, squamosal; st, supratemporal; t, tabular; v, vomer. Scale bars, 50 mm (a,c).

And a reconstruction of the skull and postcranial skeleton they found. Because we don’t have the posterior skeleton, length estimates are guesses.

Here are photos and a reconstruction of the lower jaw. The white circles show the fangs, which are indicated in the upper drawing. There were three on each side, and interlocking fangs on the top mandible as well. It ate by both suction and biting:

(From the paper): e, f. Photographs of the right hemimandible. e, Ventral view of the posterior half. f, Dorsal view of the symphyseal area. adsym, adsymphysial plate; an, angular; anf, angular fenestra; c1, anterior coronoid; c2, middle coronoid; chf, chordatympanic foramen; d, dentary; par, prearticular; pospl, postsplenial; sa, surangular; spl, splenial. Dotted white circles show the position of the symphysial fangs. Scale bar, 50 mm.

. . . and a reconstruction of the front of the animal from the paper. Remember, that fearsome head was about two feet long!

(From the paper): c, Artistic reconstruction of Gaiasia in lateral view; artwork by Gabriel Lio.

Now this is unlikely to be any kind of ancestor of reptiles, but it’s likely that this is one of several species occurring when tetrapods had already evolved from fish and one of its relatives probably gave rise to modern amphibians, while another gave rise to all modern reptiles (and after followed the evolution of birds and mammals). Its importance is not only the “gee whiz” factor, but also the indication that there was a thriving ecosystem at high latitudes about 270 myr ago. After all, this is an apex predator, and it had to eat something aquatic (fish or, perhaps, other early amphibians).  So if these creatures existed, there must also have been many other animals living at high latitudes at that time.

Happy World Frog Day!

March 20, 2024 • 9:40 am

by Greg Mayer

It’s World Frog Day! Give some love to our slimy green friends! World Frog Day celebrates all anurans, so toads are included. Here’s a nice big American Toad (Bufo americanus) from Will County, Illinois.

American Toad (Bufo americanus), front, Will County, IL, July 13, 2023.

 

American Toad (Bufo americanus), back, Will County, IL, July 13, 2023.

 

American Toad (Bufo americanus), habitat, Will County, IL, July 13, 2023.

The Wildlife Conservation Society (aka the Bronx Zoo) is celebrating with fascinating frogs and a fine gallery of frog photos; you can also contribute to frog conservation. And don’t forget to celebrate Coyne’s Harlequin Toad (Atelopus coynei) here and here!

JAC: and HERE!. What a beaut!

Readers’ wildlife photos

November 4, 2023 • 8:30 am

Today we’ll have a mélange of photos that have accumulated over the past months from readers who sent in just a couple of pix. The captions are indented, and click on the photos to enlarge them.

From Jon Alexandr:

I’m not a biologist, but I do occasionally like to take photos of plants and animals, including “bugs.” Because I favor its handy small size, I’m still using an old, first-generation iPhone SE (2016 or 2017), so it’s not “professional” photography. Still, I think the attached impromptu photo of a “grasshopper” in a wood pile next to my house has a certain presence, which is maybe amplified by the lighting, shapes, and textures.
The grasshopper’s body was just slightly more than an inch long, I estimate, not counting the extremities. Location is San Francisco East Bay, Contra Costa County.

From Bryan Lepore, sent October 29:

 I spotted what I think is a tree frog, genus Dryophytes, today. Middlesex county, MA.She is about the size of my thumbnail and has a very long jump span. Usually, I see what I think are Leopard frogs (genus Lithobates) jump like that but they’re green. Maybe she’s a brown variant, or a differeny frog.

Two animals photos and an architecture photo from reader joolz:

 Two of my photographs from the Oceanographic Museum, Monaco 2023.  Taken through glass.
Lion fish [Pterois sp.]. Oceanographic Museum, Monaco 2023. Didn’t take a photo of the info.
Longspined Porcupine Fish – Diodon holocanthus. Info on sign: “At the slightest danger it inflates its body, pushing its spines outwards to protect itself. The fish of the Diodontidae family are toxic and unfit for human consumption. In Japan, where they are eaten in sushi, a special licence is needed to cook them.”

Queen Hatshepsut‘s Temple at Deir El Bahri, Egypt. Taken from a hot air balloon decades ago.

Hatshepsut was very powerful and took on the role of Pharoah. She wore the pharaonic regalia, which includes a false beard, so trans activists claim she was transgender, but there is no basis for this assertion. She just wore the standard regalia that all pharaohs wore. Her stepson Thutmose III had her name erased from monuments and she was unknown for centuries. Thankfully her legacy as a female Pharoah was restored when the hieroglyphs at this temple were translated in the 1800s.

Photos of the solar eclipse that occurred on October 14. The first is from Don McCrady:

Thought I’d send you a hot-off-the-press shot of this year’s annular solar eclipse, this one from Winnemucca, Nevada.An annular solar eclipse is a total eclipse of the sun by the moon, where the moon is far enough away from the earth that its disk does not fully cover the sun’s, creating a “ring of fire” effect such as this one.  I took this with a Canon EOS R5 with an RF 100-500 x1.4 extender, for a total focal length of 700mm.

From Avis James:

Bill and I went to a field half way between Ruidoso and Roswell New Mexico in the path of the annular eclipse this morning.  We took a colander- it is has the Star of David pattern:
Here is the shadow it made at full angularity!  The dot in the middle of each circle is the moon in the middle of the sun!

From John Runnels, “Unknown mushroom species, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.” (Readers: can you ID?)

Finally, a weird giraffe from Bob Wooley of Asheville, NC:

I know you don’t usually do zoo photos, but if you feel like making an exception for an exceptional animal, you’re welcome to use these. You featured a story about this amazing unspotted baby giraffe the other day. I live about 90 minutes from Brights Zoo in eastern Tennessee, where she was born, so today I went there to see her for myself. It’s very difficult to get good pictures of her because her enclosure has a tight-mesh fence that you have to shoot through (unless you have a 12-foot-long photo stick). That’s why most of the news stories just use pictures and videos given to them by the zoo. But I got several that I think are worth sharing, and hold up to on-screen embiggening. She’s a seriously beautiful creature.

Readers’ wildlife photos

August 29, 2023 • 8:15 am

Today we have insect photos by regular Mark Sturtevant. Mark’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Here are more pictures from the previous summer. All were photographed near where I live in eastern Michigan, and most come from a single park about a two-0hour drive to the south of me.

In the woods of this park, there were many of these interesting caterpillars on the ground vegetation. I believe they are the larvae of the Red Admiral Butterfly (Vanessa atalanta), which has been a challenging species to photograph. On a return visit, I would like to bring some back to raise since I’ve never been completely satisfied with my pictures of the adults:

The woodland trail followed a lovely river, and periodically the woods would open up into a meadow. At one such riverside meadow was a stand of interesting flowers (maybe wild mint?) being worked over by the large black butterfly shown in the next 2 pictures. This was for me one of the most exciting finds of the whole summer! This, people, is the melanistic form of the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly (Papillio glaucus). I swear this is the same species as the familiar black and yellow swallowtail! This dark form is always female, identified by the splash of blue on the hind wings. The melanistic Tiger Swallowtail is not recorded where I live, but it becomes more common to the south, via natural selection, because there it starts to overlap with the toxic Pipevine Swallowtail which it resembles. But only females can pull off the mimicry trick for some reason. Anyway, I was pretty much hyperventilating while taking these pictures. From the ventral view you can still see the faint Tiger Swallowtail stripes:

JAC: Species in which females mimic another toxic form but males keep the ancestral pattern are far more common than the reverse. Can you guess why males don’t evolve to change their pattern? I’ll put the answer in the comments later.

Turning up tree leaves hanging over a forest trail will commonly reveal something of interest. One leaf along this riverside trail had this weird Derbid Planthopper (Anotia uhleri). I am sometimes asked about the yellow thingies below the eyes of this insect. Those are the antennae, which tend to be oddly distinct in this group of planthoppers:

Another thing that one can find under leaves are insect eggs or recently hatched insects. Here is a group of Leaf-footed Bug hatchlings (Acanthocephala sp.), staying close together to amplify their colorful advertisement that they are chemically protected. Whenever I find these groups, I have to take a deep breath and just do my best. Step to one side, prepare the camera for an extreme close-up, and do some test shots on a random leaf to figure out the correct exposure. Then lift up the leaf again and frantically fire away as the nymphs scamper off:

Along the river bank of the park were some sandy areas, and on the sand were quite a few of these well camouflaged insects. This is a young Big-eyed Toad Bug (Gelastocoris oculatus), which are aptly named predatory Hemipterans that are entirely invisible until they hop:

Here are a couple more finds. This tiny beetle, about the size of a sesame seed, is the Basswood Leaf Miner, Baliosus nervosus:

And the unsavory face in the next picture actually belongs to a rather cute and mild-mannered Two-spotted Tree Cricket, Neoxabea bipunctata:

I’m not always sure which critter in this set was from that distant park that I mentioned. But this one sure was! There, I was delighted to find this large katydid known as the Common True Katydid (Pterophylla camellifolia), which is another insect that does not occur in my area. Despite their large wings, True Katydids are flightless. At dusk, this male will begin its song; with some imagination, it is described as sounding like: “Katy did! Katy did !! She didn’t! She did !!!” Readers who live in its range will know it well, as they can be fairly deafening. Here is one singing. If it doesn’t hurt your ears a little, you aren’t playing it loud enough:

And finally, for the heck of it, here is what I believe is a Northern Leopard Frog (Lithobates pipiens) although there is also the similar species called the Pickerel Frog. The two differ in the form of their spots plus some other details. We see some colorful frogs from far-off places on this website, but this domestic one is still quite lovely, I think: