The Giant Tadpole That Never Got Its Legs
By Katie L. Burke
A record-breaking, 10-inch-long whopper of a bullfrog tadpole was discovered by a crew of ecologists in a pond in Arizona.
The biggest tadpole ever foundāat a whopping 10 inches longāwas discovered by a crew of ecologists in a pond in the Chiricahua Mountains ofĀ Arizona. Alina Downer, an intern at the American Museum of Natural Historyās Southwestern Research Station, came across the monster bullfrog tadpole as her crew was draining a manmade pond as part of a habitat restoration project for the endangered Chiricahua leopard frog.
As the water level lowered, Ā Downer and her colleagues were assessing what organisms were left in the muddy shallows that she likened to āchocolate soup.ā Downer says, āI Ā was fishing around with my hands while walking in the water, and I felt Ā something large, smooth, and wrigglyāwhich was unexpected, since the only other fish in the pond were about an inch long.ā
As Ā an avid naturalist, Downerās first instinct was curiosity. āAt first I thought it was a giant catfish,ā she says, grinning at the uncanny memory. āWhatever it was, I knew I had to grab it.ā She herded theĀ slippery creature into shallower water until she could capture it. To her surprise, it turned out to be āan enormous monster of a tadpoleāāso big she had to hold it with two handsā¦
Read more: American Scientist
Not to undervalue at all the coolness of this discovery but I feel like the above quote is a valuable supporting evidence of field biologists intrinsically possessing diminished survival instincts and higher numbers of cool scar stories.
āWhatever it was, I had to grab it.ā
Fucking superb, you funky little naturalist.
