My wife mentioned that I should clarify something. That bat I dissected yesterday was already dead. It died in the night and was put in the fridge for me. I'm not some pregnant-bat-killing monster.
7/3/2013
I'm too excited to start at the beginning. I have to jump straight to the end of the day.
We saw an ocelot! Such a bitchin' animal. Sorry Rebel, you're not the king of this jungle (although I still think he's cuter)
Leopardus pardalis (Ocelot) They're also known as the dwarf leopard, which only makes them that much cooler. I did not take this photo, the most we saw was it's face and shoulders. It was checking us out pretty thoroughly... I want one.
Okay, back to the beginning.
I tried to catch more of those damn lizards in the morning, but I think the ones from yesterday spread the word to stay away from the wierd bearded man holding a long stick with string on the end.
I couldn't even get close!
I had to keep myself busy somehow, so I just started grabbing a new species, Rhaebo haematiticus. They're not terribly exciting, small, brown, ground-dwelling toads.
Hopefully I'll get a picture worth showing tomorrow.
Most of the day was pretty work-heavy though, 124/140.
At night, I went out with my mentor, Steven, to see what we could grab and think about adding some more new species to the study.
That doesn't mean I didn't see some other awesome critters in the process.
Morpho peleides (Blue Morpho) When these things are resting on leaves they're nothing special. But the inner surface of their wings is a magnificent blue. When they fly and the sun hits them it looks like blue diamonds floating in the sky. I've been tying to get a photo of one in flight, but this is the best I could do.
(Unknown devil hornets) I was minding my own business, sort of, taking picture of this nest...but I forgot to turn the flash off...they didn't like that. Luckily I was only bitten a few times, none of them stung me. I had my epi-pen ready just in case. Lesson learned. Rule #6 - Don't take pictures of wasps/hornets/demons.
Amastridium veliferum (Ridge-nose Snake) There's an important jungle lesson that, luckily, I learned back in SLO. Rule #7 - If you don't know what it is, don't touch it! My advisor back at home, Dr. Taylor, has apparently engrained in my psyche to never touch snakes I'm unsure about. I've met 'snakers' who love to hand grab venomous animals...aww, hell no! I saw it on the path, couldn't ID it, so I let it go on it's way. Turns out it was harmless frog eater.
Dendrobates auratus (Green and Black Poison Frog) This picture does little justice to unreal these frogs are. The colors are ridiculously vivid. Space-black and Slimer-green (My fellow REU's didn't know who Slimer was, most of them had never seen Ghostbusters. Well... I'm too old and they all suck). It's really the only way to describe the colors. Beautiful frog, and hard to find too, glad I finally got a photo.
Another Caiman, this one was below the bridge. It's hard to tell size from the photo, probably about 1.5m. Not a giant, but you better believe I wasn't going to try to catch this one.
Choloepus hoffmanni (Two-toed sloth) You've got to be kidding me. That's the most adorable thing I've ever seen. It sat there for a few minutes just staring at us. "My entire life, has been waiting for this moment". There's another species here called the three-toed sloth. And guess what? They both have three toes! It's the fingers that are different. I know, that ruined my day too.
You might have to click on this picture to zoom in. There were thousands and thousands of little froggie metamorphs. So cute. They all had a hefty portion of tail and must of just moved from the water. One of the reasons frogs are so sensitive (and normally the first organism to die-off in an environment), is that half of their life is entirely in water, and the other half partially on land. Meaning if there are any pollutants or habitat change, chances are, it's going to mess with these cuties.
Umm, I'm not even going to pretend to know what kind of animal this is. Uhh... I think it's an insect?! It had four giant eyes and six legs, but then it had these weird feather like appendages trailing behind it. And when it flew, it sprinkled some kind of white dust everywhere...eggs maybe? I just hope in a few weeks my chest doesn't explode, releasing millions of little baby insect/spider/alien/monsters.
And of course, the end of the night had an ocelot in store for us....so awesome!
We ended up grabbing 26 frogs and 1 salamander from the swamp. I think we have a total of 13 new species. I'll have a final count tomorrow.
It should be a busy day.
Back to work!
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