I am particularly fond of the snakes known as hognose snakes, and my reasons are both understandable and correct.
This is a hognose snake:
(They received their name by having the sweetest lil snoot to ever require a boop – image source)
They use these adorable snoots to burrow under sandy soil using a sort of nuzzle-y motion. They then use these burrows as a place to sleep at night, hibernate in the winter, and lay their eggs.
(you could say they’re into... the Underground Scene! ...ok yeah i’ll show myself out – image source)
Plus, they come in a variety of delightful colours!
(pretty sneks! – Here’s all the image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
And, to be clear, the snakes pictured above are wild snakes. No selective breeding by humans in these noodly bois! At least, not in these specific individuals. probably. I guess a few of them could be escapees...
But most importantly: These snakes know the true meaning of DRAMA
Hognose snakes are actors, first and foremost. When they feel threatened, the first thing they do is puff out their neck into a hood.
(like cobras, this hood is made by FLEXING THEIR NECK RIBS. which: gross – image source x)
This superficially makes them look like a cobra, but what they’re actually trying to do is make themselves seem bigger, and therefore scarier. Possibly those dark spots on their neck helps with that!
Any resemblance to real-life Eurasian cobras, real or fictional, is purely coincidental
Also, it makes its mouth do this:
(Snakes that SCREAAAAAAAM. – image source)
honestly, if I didn’t already know that hognose snakes were harmless, this would ABSOLUTELY make me leave it the hell alone
But if all of that^ is unsuccessful at scaring away the predator, the hognose snake pulls its signature move: playing dead
If you think that is a lame signature move, then you are wrong, because hognose snakes put EVERYTHING into their performance and I love them for it.
(they’re serious, they’ll do it! – image source)
((I’m actually going to stick the rest of this under a read-more, bc the pictures of the alive-and-physically-fine hognose snakes do kind of look like a legitimately-dead hognose snake, if you don’t know what to look for.
So, uh: cw for a snake being too good at pretending to be dead))
Behold: a series of completely healthy, unharmed snakes!!!
(to help with their self-esteem, we ask that you at least pretend to believe that they are dead – image sources 1, 2, 3, 4)
Honestly, the photos don’t do it justice. Here’s my favourite video of the whole wonderous performance:
But to review:
There's writhing! There's dramatic noises! There's flipping onto their back and opening their mouth wide and letting their tongue hang out! There's excreting a combination of intentionally smelly substances!!! Truly a master of the art of being left the hell alone (*^▽^*)
(yep. deeeeefinitely dead. not just faking it. nothing worth eating here! – image source)
Personally, my favourite part of this is how they insist on rolling onto their back, even when they are rolled back onto their stomach.
Seriously, if you try to roll them right-side-up, they will flip back over. It's as though they believe that a good, proper dead snek MUST be on its back, obviously.
(truly fearsome – image source)
Sadly, the hognose snake may have made itself too scary, according to humans.
Out of fear, these snakes are commonly killed on sight 😔. I once heard someone proudly brag about how they’d killed a dozen cobras! In southern Ontario! Where cobras do not live! This is both extremely frustrating and deeply sad.
So just to highlight: hognose snakes are completely harmless. They’re just pretending to be fearsome!
(not that people should be killing venomous snakes either, imo. Let the danger noodles LIVE THEIR LIVES)
(i is baybee, pls do not hurt me – image source)
And now some bonus facts to help raise us out of that downer:
Hognose snakes are toad specialists! Their favourite food is toads, which is unusual, because toads are poisonous. Hognose snakes deal with this by force of will and also, at least two amino acid substitutions, maybe (Mohammadi et al. 2016). Possibly a few other things help with this, also (Feldman et al. 2016).
(is snek eat toad? or does toad wearing cape of snek? impossible to tell, really – image source)
Also, I have a confession: hognose snakes... are venomous. Technically.
(itty bitty little fangs at the veeeeery back of their mouth! – image source)
They are known as rear-fanged snakes, which means they have fangs aaaall the way at the back of their mouth. The venom they produce seems to be toad-specific, and is considered to be harmless to humans unless you happen to have an allergy but that's the exception rather than the rule
(the two hognose species. They are both baybee, but in different ways actually there might be more than two species but these are the two i’ve actually learned about so ALL WELL – image source)
Also, hognose snakes are big cowards NOT aggressive and I've never even heard of anyone getting bit by a one (outside of one feeding mishap, which we can all agree was an ACCIDENT).
The series of events that would need to occur for you to be envenomated are so unlikely and bizarre that I assume you would have to be TRYING to get bit.
This has been Fun Fact Friday, bringing you the forbidden noodly boys to try and keep them a little more safe!
Averill-Murray, R. C. (2006). Natural history of the western hog-nosed snake (Heterodon nasicus) with notes on envenomation. Sonoran Herpetologist, 19(9), 98-101.
Buchanan, Scott W.; Timm, Brad C.; Cook, Robert P.; Couse, Richard; Hazard, Lisa C. (2017). Spatial ecology and habitat selection of eastern hognose snakes. The Journal of Wildlife Management, 81(3), 509–520. doi:10.1002/jwmg.21218
CHS: Canadian Herpetological Society https://canadianherpetology.ca/species/species_page.html?cname=Eastern%20Hog-nosed%20Snake
COSEWIC. 2021. COSEWIC assessment and status report on the Eastern Hog-nosed Snake Heterodon platirhinos in Canada. Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. Ottawa. xi + 45 pp. https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/species-risk-public-registry/cosewic-assessments-status-reports/eastern-hog-nosed-snake-2021.html
Cunnington, G. M., & Cebek, J. E. (2005). Mating and nesting behavior of the eastern hognose snake (Heterodon platirhinos) in the northern portion of its range. The American midland naturalist, 154(2), 474-478.
Feldman, C. R., Durso, A. M., Hanifin, C. T., Pfrender, M. E., Ducey, P. K., Stokes, A. N., ... & Brodie Jr, E. D. (2016). Is there more than one way to skin a newt? Convergent toxin resistance in snakes is not due to a common genetic mechanism. Heredity, 116(1), 84-91.
Jared, C., Luiz Mailho‐Fontana, P., & Maria Antoniazzi, M. (2021). Differences between poison and venom: An attempt at an integrative biological approach. Acta Zoologica, 102(4), 337-350.
Liu, C., Chen, Y., Zheng, Y., Bo, J., Yang, C., Xu, S., & Zhang, S. (2022). Wear Resistance Improvement of Keeled Structure and Overlapped Distribution of Snake Scales. Journal of Bionic Engineering, 1-11. Citing abstract.
Mohammadi, S., Gompert, Z., Gonzalez, J., Takeuchi, H., Mori, A., & Savitzky, A. H. (2016). Toxin-resistant isoforms of Na+/K+-ATPase in snakes do not closely track dietary specialization on toads. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 283(1842), 20162111.
Nature Conservancy of Canada: https://www.natureconservancy.ca/en/what-we-do/resource-centre/featured-species/reptiles-and-amphibians/eastern-hog-nosed-snake.html
Plummer, M. V., & Mills, N. E. (1996). Observations on trailing and mating behaviors in hognose snakes (Heterodon platirhinos). Journal of Herpetology, 30(1), 80-82.
Rouse, Jeremy D.; Willson, Robert J.; Black, Ron; Brooks, Ronald J. (2011). Movement and Spatial Dispersion of Sistrurus catenatus and Heterodon platirhinos: Implications for Interactions with Roads. Copeia, 2011(3), 443–456. doi:10.1643/ce-09-036
Seburn, D. 2008. Recovery Strategy for the Eastern Hog-nosed Snake (Heterodon platirhinos) in Canada. Species at Risk Act Recovery Strategy Series. Parks Canada Agency, Ottawa. vi + 24pp.
Schwartz, V. & D. Golden (2002). Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians of New Jersey. New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife
VHS: Virginia herpetological society http://www.virginiaherpetologicalsociety.com/reptiles/snakes/eastern-hog-nosed-snake/eastern_hognose_snake.php#:~:text=Heterodon%20is%20derived%20from%20the%20Greek%20words%20heteros,meaning%20%22broad%20or%20flat%22%20and%20rhinos%20meaning%20%22snout%22
Young, R. A. (1992). Effects of Duvernoy's gland secretions from the eastern hognose snake, Heterodon platirhinos, on smooth muscle and neuromuscular junction. Toxicon, 30(7), 775-779. https://doi.org/10.1016/0041-0101(92)90013-U
Young, B. A., & Morain, M. (2003). Vertical burrowing in the Saharan sand vipers (Cerastes). Copeia, 2003(1), 131-137.
I love them. I mean, look at their big, shiny eyes! NO ONE can say that they aren’t cute as hell!
The other reason I love these animals is because they’re basically what happens when evolution tries to make a bat out of a bird.
These little guys are known as oilbirds (Steatornis caripensis), and are also called guácharo (and also several other things, because they are found in South America, plus Trinidad & Tobago, which all have INCREDIBLE language diversity).
Oilbirds are nocturnal, flying around the forests of South America at night looking for fruit to eat. They also live colonially in caves, which they navigate using echolocation.
So, to review:
(I’m making my Generic Bats a very generic fruit bat, for the record).
Oilbirds are the only birds with this combination of traits, which I think is pretty cool of them! Why are they so much like bats? Basically, when different types of animals evolve under similar selective pressures, they often evolve the same features! This is called convergent evolution, and wow I talk about it a lot on this blog! It turns out that nocturnal animals that live in caves and eat fruit can sometimes benefit from traits like these!
(they’re, like... spooky-cute. Cute-spooky? Either way, I like them a lot)
So, if these birds are flying around at night, how do they stop themselves from flying into things while searching for that tasty, tasty fruit?
Well, in the forest, they mostly rely on their AMAZING night vision (which is another trait they share with bats, fyi). That is why they have such big, adorable eyes, which has a lot of light-sensing cells called rods. They actually hold a record for the density of the rods in their eyes: one million per square millimetre. That is the highest density of any known vertebrate. It’s about 6x denser than the rods found in human eyes!
...still cute
Their amazing vision allows them to see very well in low light, which is how they navigate the South American jungles at night, searching for food under the moon and stars. That said, their vision just doesn’t cut it when it comes to flying in the caves they call home. Why? Well, caves are dark as hell, and even the best night-vision can’t do anything for you when there’s no light at all. Plus, flying into cave walls/ cliff faces hurts, so it’s good to be extra sure you’re not flying into solid rock!
So how do they find their way around these dark caves? Well, they use something very unusual for birds: echolocation!
Oilbirds are one of only a few species of birds that are known to use echolocation (the others are a few species of the closely-related swiflets (Collocaliini), but I HAVE DECIDED TODAY IS FOR THE OILBIRDS im sorry, swiflets, ilu2).
Look at them, not flying into rocks! I’m so proud (˃̣̣̥ ◡ ˂̣̣̥)
Also, a bonus fact, because idk where to fit this but I MUST mention it:
They have little whiskers around their beaks (which are technically called “rictal bristles”, but I’m going to call them “whiskers” because I like that word better). These whiskers are basically used to feel things that they have in and around their mouth, helping them find, manipulate, and eat their tasty fruit!
Fun Fact: Many Frogs get through Winter... Underwater
Many people have heard of the legendary frogs that are able to freeze solid and survive the winter. (if not, I did write a whole post about it. so.)
This post is not about those frogs. Though amazing, they are the exception rather than the rule. It is much more common for frogs to overwinter in other ways!
The most common strategy to survive winter is to simply live somewhere that does not have winter!
(you’ll notice there are more species of frog closer to the equator. this is not a coincidence. image source)
But some frogs don’t HAVE that luxury! SOME frogs have to deal with a winter that lasts close to 6 entire months!
(im suffering)
The majority of frogs that face this threat survive by either digging underground, or by finding a permanent body of water and just... chilling 🥶😎.
(I will not apologise for my excellent jokes. image source)
Ice is less dense than water, which is why ice burgs exist, among other things. Water is at its densest around 4°Celcius. The 4°C sinks, which means that, in the wintertime, the unfrozen bottom of the pond will (generally) not get colder than 4°C.
Additionally, frogs are ectotherms, aka “cold-blooded”, and as their body temperature drops, so too does their metabolism. This makes it so the frogs can go a long time without food, and also allows them to get by without much oxygen.
(i love them. image source)
Frogs still need some oxygen, though, so it’s a good thing that frogs are able to absorb oxygen through their skin, just like most amphibians (all amphibians? i can’t think of an exception, but there are so many frog species that I don’t want to commit to a big word like “all”).
Generally, they’ll stay at the bottom of the pond, in a spot that has enough water flow to provide sufficient oxygen for the frogs’ diminished metabolic needs! They generally don’t bury themselves in the mud, though. That part of the pond is nearly devoid of oxygen, and also where the turtles are hibernating!
Here are some pictures of frogs overwinter underwater:
(image sources, in order: mink frog, Green Frog, Bull Frog, fire-bellied toad, marsh frog, siberian wood frog, northern Leopard Frog.)
was this an excuse to show y’all a bunch of pictures of frogs that I like? Yes.
(also please note: second last frog is a siberian wood frog, NOT an american wood frog, and they DO overwinter underwater (Berman et al. 2019). They’re special because they can survive months with very little oxygen, or maybe even no oxygen at all! Good for them 😊)
This has been Fun Fact Friday, letting you know that when the frog gets cold, the frog goes to bed for 6 months. Honestly same.
Sources under the cut!
Berman, D. I., Bulakhova, N. A., & Meshcheryakova, E. N. (2019). The Siberian wood frog survives for months underwater without oxygen. Scientific reports, 9(1), 1-7. [PDF]
Jenkins, C. N., Pimm, S. L., & Joppa, L. N. (2013). Global patterns of terrestrial vertebrate diversity and conservation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(28), E2602-E2610. [PDF]
How do frogs survive winter? Why don't they freeze to death? Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-frogs-survive-wint/
Fun Fact: Hagfish Suffocate their Predators with a Cloud of Slime!
(This week featuring my own art, bc I got a new thing and I wanna USE IT)
Sometimes, I come across an animal that makes me go: “Huh. That seems like a fictional monstrosity, fit only for tabletop roleplaying games and fantasy novels. Except I guess this one is real! Weird!”
The hagfish is one of those animals.
Hagfish are quite spooky to behold: Rather than looking like a fish, hagfish look more like scaleless, leathery-skinned worms with little tentacle-like things called barbells around what appears to be their mouth.
Except the polite little opening that you can see in the drawing above is not its mouth. That’s its nostril.
This is its mouth:
**SCREAM**
(ok that’s technically a tongue that has teeth on it, but it’s mouth-adjacent so I STAND BY MY STATEMENT). (drawing based on this picture from this paper)
THIS IS THE STUFF THAT NIGHTMARES ARE MADE OF (and I, for one, love it!)
You don’t need to worry too much about the hagfish’s nightmare mouth, though, since hagfish are pretty much only interested in eating things that are already dead (except maybe a few fish, so if you’re a fish, watch out, I guess).
Plus, they can go more than 6 months without eating and can survive without oxygen for 36 hours, so that’s nice.
(it’s hard to tell, but this is 2 hagfish eating a dead rockfish, plus a third hagfish possibly taking a nap. They’re having a lovely time!)
These guys love a good whale carcass.
Hagfish are a type of jawless fish which are categorised into the class Myxini. They are the only known animals with a skull but no vertebral column and possess 4 “hearts”: a systemic heart in the usual place, a portal heart that’s beside the 1st heart, a cardinal heart in the head, and a caudal heart near the tail. Technically, only the first 2 are considered “true hearts”, but Whatever! x
All of these things are very strange and wonderful, but the weirdest thing about hagfish, in my opinion, is possibly their most distinct feature.
They possess weaponized slime.
Remember that time a bunch of hagfish stole a car were dumped onto a highway in 2017? Everyone (human) was fine, but the slime was REAL (source: x).
This slimey car crash occurred because hagfish excrete slime when disturbed (they caused the slime part, I mean. The crash itself was something else’s fault). Considering the fact that a single hagfish can excrete a maximum of 24 litres of slime (given ideal circumstances) and that there were roughly *checks notes* 13′000 hagfish in the truck, you could end up with around *does some math*... 312’000 litres of slime!
For reference, that’s equivalent to approximately 1’560 bathtubs full of slime.
(my rough math can be found at the bottom of the post, if you’re curious).
That said, this crash probably didn’t feature 312′000 litres of actual slime. What the hagfish excretes is a relatively small amount of a substance which is a combination of mucus and long, thin proteins reminiscent of super-fine silk threads.
When this substance is mixed with water, it immediately expands 10′000 times its original volume!
The resulting slime is 99.996% water (source x). So, unless the truck was also carrying 312′000 litres of water to transport the hagfish in (which is doubtful), the slime probably wouldn’t have been able to reach that volume. (assuming they didn’t try to clean the mess up with water, which is... fully possible)
For my favourite demonstration of this, here’s an (admittedly old & grainy) video of someone transforming a beaker of water into a beaker of slime using a itty bit of mucus scraped from a hagfish.
(it’s cooler in the video, tbh)
What is all this slime even for? Well, mostly to protect the hagfish from predators!
Imagine if you bit into a sandwich and then 24 litres of slime suddenly exploded into your mouth. That would suck. A lot. You probably wouldn’t even finish the sandwich! Probably. I don’t know your life.
Understandably, predatory fish also hate to have a mouthful of slime, except it’s even worse for them, because the slime quickly gets tangled in the fish’s gills, which are important for gas exchange (aka being alive). It is for this reason that hagfish generally don’t get eaten, it seems!
(Ha! That’ll teach you to try to eat in the ocean! i love this paper tbh)
As far as I have been able to research, there are no recorded instances of hagfish being successfully eaten in the wild (though we have seen predators make unsuccessful attempts, resulting in them having an extremely bad time!)
(Thriving. Moisturised. In their lane. x)
While the slime sticks to the predator, the hagfish has an easy way to get the slime off its own body: they simply tie themself into a knot, wiping away the slime, and then goes about their day, unphased.
This has been Fun Fact Friday, bringing you nightmare fuel in this, the fine season of Halloween!
I know that it’s September, but if the dollar store can say that it’s already Halloween season THEN SO CAN I DANG NABBIT.
(bonus of that fish getting pwned, just bc I LOVE those pictures:
(Corrected) math under the cut:
3′400kg of hagfish in the truck (source)
each adult hagfish is around 180-260g (source)
3′400 kg/0.260 kg = ~13′000 hagfish
one hagfish can produce “a teaspoon” of slime (~5 mL), which can expand “10′000 times” its original size when it hits water (~50′000 mL -> 50 L) (source)
This^ is wrong! It’s actually 24 L, max (new source x)
one average bathtub can hold ~200 L of water (source)
Spooky Fact: The Worm that is ACTUALLY an Amphibian!
That^ is not a worm. It’s an amphibian.
Known as caecilians (pronounced seh-SILL-yens), these critters are unfamiliar to most people, and are also an excellent example of evolution trying to create ANOTHER worm (move over, crabs, worms are the REAL final form of evolution 😉).
These guys have SO MANY SPOOKY TRAITS! There’s slime, there’s scary teeth, and there’s even cannibalistic babies!
But let’s start with some decidedly un-spooky information. There are approximately 200 species of caecilians, all in the Order Gymnophiona, and all live in tropical and sub-tropical habitats around the world. That said, people don’t see them very often, because they spend most of their time hiding underground or in other seldom-seen locations. They range in size from ~9 cm to 1.5 m, and honestly, I like them so much.
(Handsome baby! from Stuart et al. 2008)
Reportedly, their smooth, slimey skin makes them extremely hard to catch, and researchers have compared handling them to trying to handle a wet bar of soap (sources 1, 2).
(the most slippy boi in the whole world probably <3)
Even though the word caecilians means “the blind ones”, they’re not actually blind (source x); they can differentiate light and dark, which COUNTS as sight (although if we’re defining blindness by “legal” blindness in humans, then… yeah, they would qualify as blind, I guess).
its eyes are small, but I PROMISE they work. they don’t work well, but they’re good enough for the caecilian’s needs.
Before I get to the spooky bit, I want to say that I find them to be quite lovely. They come in many colours, and I think they’re very sweet with their derpy sock puppet faces. Some species also have poisonous skin, which I, personally, respect so much (source of info: 3, source of respect: I’m happy for them).
Caecilians have such goofy faces.
that said, I have thus far been using images that purposefully highlight their cuteness and charm. There are other pictures which are... less flattering.
I’m actually going to put most of this Spooky Fact under the cut, because it is simply TOO SPOOKY.
(Seriously, though. If you dislike creepy teeth, skin shedding, and bite-y critters, maaaaybe give this one a pass. Read about oilbirds instead! They are wholesome and not too spooky)
Don’t say I didn’t warn you!
(These are not props on a scifi/horror movie set! This is what their teeth look like! x, x, x, and x).
While these teeth look very scary, caecilians are not dangerous to humans, instead favouring a diet of insects. One favourite food of many adult caecilians is termites!
However, in some species, the baby caecilians hunger for something else: THE FLESH OF THE LIVING.
Caecilians give more parental care to their offspring than most types of amphibians, with many species of momma caecilians curling around her brood of babies for the first part of their life.
(a loving momma with her babies; from Stuart et al. 2008; Alexander Kupfer)
It was originally believed that the caecilian mother exclusively fed her babies with a special liquid secretion from her tail. However, there was one thing that was strange:
Many baby caecillians have pointy little teeth that don’t seem well-suited to an all-liquid diet.
(Pointy teeth are suspicious. the picture of the baby is a little blurry, so here, have some pictures from a microscope as well, just to split the difference)
The presence of these temporary teeth were baffeling until scientists witnessed a feeding.
Guided by an unknown signal, the babies react all at once, latching onto their mother and tearing off and eating her skin in a practice known as maternal dermatophagy.
(they must FEED)
Luckily, this does not actually hurt the mother, since she is taking advantage of a process that all amphibians engage in: the periodical shedding of her skin.
Most amphibians will immediately eat their own shed skin, because they’re into that it’s rich in nutrients, so it isn’t a huge evolutionary leap to just... feed that skin to some babies instead.
When a caecilian mother is caring for a brood, she will shed her skin approximately every three days (source x). This shed skin is unusually rich with fats and proteins, which is very good for the diets of growing babies!
(great momma #2! x)
here’s a clip from BBC’s Life in Cold Blood that shows this feeding frenzy! They also get an awesome shot of the babies’ fearsome teeth!
(gosh I find them cute)
We don’t actually know how common this form of parental care is in caecilians, since, again: they like to hide. But, as of 2022, it has been observed in several species which are not closely related, which makes scientists think it must be pretty common! sources: x, x.
(this is a 100% inaccurate phylogenetic tree i made in <1 minute, showing basically what I’m talking about. The two confirmed skin-eating species had a common ancestor around 100 million years ago. sources for better, more detailed figures: x, x)
The other clue that hints that skin-eating may be fairly widespread? Those “baby teeth”!
We know that many caecilian species have vernal teeth, meaning they have special teeth when they’re babies which are not present in adults. I privately think of them as “baby teeth” because I cannot be arrested for it.
(friendly reminder that this baby is smol and cannot hurt u. That^ line in the picture? It’s there for scale and represents one milimetre. That’s 0.0394 inches for the americans in the room)
These “baby teeth” are known to be present in more than half of caecilian species examined in this paper. So, if these teeth are corelated that these species engage in maternal dermatophagy, then that implies that this form of parental care could be very widespread among caecilians!
This has been Spooky Fact Friday, telling you about the spooky amphibians that Hunger For Flesh!
bonus fact: ever since I learned out them, caecilians have always reminded me of this TV show that I watched as a kid called “Freaky Stories” that was co-hosted by this puppet:
(actually it might still be on TV? wild)
also if you were wondering: yes, the once-viral “penis worm” is a type of caecilian.
sources, because I am an Extra Individual:
Kupfer, A., Müller, H., Antoniazzi, M. M., Jared, C., Greven, H., Nussbaum, R. A., & Wilkinson, M. (2006). Parental investment by skin feeding in a caecilian amphibian. Nature, 440(7086), 926-929.
Ruttimann, J. Amphibian 'worms' feed young their own flesh. Nature (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/news060410-7
San Mauro, Diego; Gower, David J.; Müller, Hendrik; Loader, Simon P.; Zardoya, Rafael; Nussbaum, Ronald A.; Wilkinson, Mark (2014). Life-history evolution and mitogenomic phylogeny of caecilian amphibians. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 73(), 177–189. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2014.01.009
Stuart, S.N., Hoffmann, M., Chanson, J.S., Cox, N.A., Berridge, R.J., Ramani, P., and Young, B.E. (eds.) (2008). Threatened Amphibians of the World. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona, Spain; IUCN, Gland, Switzerland; and Conservation International, Arlington, Virginia, USA.
Wilkinson M, Kupfer A, Marques-Porto R, Jeffkins H, Antoniazzi MM, Jared C. One hundred million years of skin feeding? Extended parental care in a Neotropical caecilian (Amphibia: Gymnophiona). Biol Lett. 2008 Aug 23;4(4):358-61. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2008.0217
Moraes, L. J., de Almeida, A. P., de Fraga, R., Rojas, R. R., Pirani, R. M., Silva, A. A., ... & Werneck, F. P. (2017). Integrative overview of the herpetofauna from Serra da Mocidade, a granitic mountain range in northern Brazil. ZooKeys, (715), 103.
Fun Fact: Remora have suction cups on their backs/ heads
Remora are those fish that like to hang out with sharks, presumably because they like Living on the Edge.
However, (most) sharks are faster swimmers than remora, so instead of spending all their time and energy getting faster & improving their stamina to keep up, these fish instead took the path of least effort: they just grab onto the shark and hold on tight for the ride.
Like a teenage Marty McFly, holding onto a car while riding a skateboard, one of the most important aspects of this strategy is to hold on tight, so as to not fall off!
Sadly, unlike in this masterfully edited photo, real remora don’t have hands. So instead, they took their dorsal fin and, over time, evolved it into a suction cup.
I don’t know why, but this fact is deeply funny to me.
i mean. look at his lil head!!! amazing
there’s a bunch of videos of people sticking them to things, because it’s objectively crazy to see and, yes, kind of funny, but it’s also mean to the fish. I don’t really recommend trying it, just because the fish is probably already having a bad day, on account of being out of the ocean, and doesn’t need the additional stress & risk of injury >.>
Also, these suction cups are really really good at holding on to things, and also, importantly, work underwater! For this reason, scientists have been trying to mimic these funky little structures to design better and stronger suction cups! Yay for biomimicry!
