Of all the organs in my body, the one that I would be most reluctant to part with (perhaps with the exception of my eyes) are the lungs. It seems that we need them more than anything else. True, we need all the other bits, but lungs seem particularly useful. Without them the brain stops working in…
Category: Amphibians
Uo, the rain caller
We climbed deeper into the cave, approaching a site of a Mayan ritual. Here – Abel, our half Mayan guide explained – in this pitch-black underground chamber in one of Belize’s countless limestone caves, ancient Mayans performed gruesome bloodletting rituals, slicing women’s tongues and men’s genitals to entice gods to relieve dry, parched fields with…
Sapo
It may seem counterintuitive, but many small, cryptic animals, those that blend perfectly into their environment, are much easier to find at night than during the day. Katydids, walking sticks, snakes – these animals usually spend their days absolutely still, but at night they feed and court, making their presence known through their movement. Others,…
My crumbling beliefs
I always assumed that there existed at least a few immutable truths about the natural world, dogmas that had no exceptions, no matter how hard you looked for them. One of them, I thought, was the rule that flies, which cartoons and children books made me believe were the favorite food of frogs, should be…
The miracle of parallel evolution
I have been going through photos taken during a recent trip to Mozambique, and every now and then I am struck by the similarity of some of the African organisms to their counterparts on other continents. One of the best such examples is that of Neotropical glass frogs (Centrolenidae) and some African reed frogs (Hyperoliidae)….
Mozambique Diary: The Abominable Frogman
If frogs tell their children scary stories, one of them certainly must be about the Abominable Frogman, a strange, giant creature that comes in the middle of the night to snatch unsuspecting frogs and take them away. And, like so many scary stories, this one would have a kernel of truth in it, for the…
The Smaller Majority 