in honour of world frog day tomorrow, i made some frog cakes!!!
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@that-sapphic-frog
in honour of world frog day tomorrow, i made some frog cakes!!!
Think twice before you dip your cookies in “milk” from the Amazon milk frog (Trachycephalus resinifictrix)! This amphibian’s common name refers to the toxic, milky substance it secretes when threatened. This nocturnal frog inhabits the rainforests of South America, where it rests on leaves during the day and hunts for insects to munch on during the night.
Photo: Seth Ames, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist
It only just occurred to me that the conclusion to my dissertation about the management of chytridiomycosis (a fungal plague that's killing loads of frogs) is that it is probably going to affect the trout population (not kidding)
Hi! I have a professional question if you're okay with answering stuff like that, and sorry if not! I'm a student planning to go into a pretty niche field for a career in academia (developmental biology), and the job market and everything is of course very rocky right now. I still have a few years, but I'm wondering if this is a good idea at all. I know you're a herpetologist, which is pretty different from my field, but it's also a niche academic area. I wanted to ask, is it sustainable? Are you able to keep working in this for years, without the work getting exhausting due to financial issues or lack of opportunity? Basically, do you like what you chose and would you recommend a similar life for students like me, too?
Firstly, Developmental Biology is one of the most important biological fields, and if I had not gone in the evolutionary direction, I would also have gone in the direction of developmental biology. It is the coolest shit, especially with modern methods. It has extremely broad relevance, and the employment prospects are, I think, much better than many other fields. In evolutionary biology we are often making hypotheses but not satisfactorily able to test them. In developmental biology, you can test hypotheses directly, giving concrete results than can have major implications in many other fields. Consequently, many breakthrough papers of our age are coming from teams that have developmental biologists prominent among their author lists. I strongly recommend Stephen Jay Gould's 'Ontogeny and Phylogeny' for a little perspective on why development is critical to our understanding of evolution. But also read some of the hot new shit, like this fucking bonkers paper that established the developmental basis of patagium formation in sugargliders and other gliding mammals.
Secondly, you asked 'Is it sustainable? Are you able to keep working in this for years, without the work getting exhausting due to financial issues or lack of opportunity?'
This is such a tough question to answer. Fair warning: I am going to be brutally honest here, because I think you need to hear it from somewhere.
You are surely familiar with the Mark Twain line 'Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.' But this has a corollary: if your job is what you love, you will always be working. I don't know many successful academics that have a healthy relationship with work hours, or can sustain themselves on a 9–5. It can be straining on personal relationships, families, and your own health.
It can be exhausting, and frustrating when you are up against the funding machine. And that machine is brutal, especially in the current political climate—if you are in the US, the future is extremely uncertain; even well established colleagues of mine in the US have lost funding for their labs, have lost their own fellowships, and have even lost their jobs. But even in Europe, it takes a lot to break through and make it sustainable. Permanent jobs are extremely rare, and this can lead to it being cutthroat at times, and heartbreaking at others. This leads to a lot of employment anxiety, which for foreigners like me, can also lead to existential anxiety about your residence status, when it is dependent on your having a job.
Additionally, if you are working on academically interesting things with no obvious benefit to humans or society, you will always be questioned as to why your work should be supported, and the battle for funding will be especially hard. I face this all the time, because in Denmark, the same pot of money that funds basic science, also funds e.g. Alzheimer's research. I myself would find it hard to justify why they should fund research on tiny frogs, when they could be working on therapies that could save lives. I have to add relevance to human-related topics to my grant applications, even when I am *deeply* disinterested in that relevance—for me, it is the pursuit of knowledge and curiosity-driven investigation that motivates me, and not e.g. the bullshit about innovations in biorobotics that I sometimes have to add to my funding proposals for them to have a shot at getting funded.
So do I recommend a similar life for students? That's a tough one. If you are burning for this subject, do it. Academia was always the direction I wanted to go; since I was a tiny kid all I knew was that I wanted to have a PhD and to work in herpetology. I didn't see myself as having any other choice. And because I have this singular hyperfixation, I am convinced I would be absolutely useless in all other capacities in society. If you are just interested in having a 9–5, and living outside of work, then I am not sure it is the right thing to do. But if you want to figure out how and why Life is the way it is—if this gets your mind whirring, and you are burning to break into the field, academic pursuit of developmental biology may be for you.
I hope that helps.
Oogling the Oyster Toadfish
The oyster toadfish, also known as the ugly toad, oyster cracker, oyster catcher, and the bar dog (Opsanus tau) is a species of fish found in the Atlantic Ocean, along the North American coast from the Caribbean to the US-Canadian boarder. As juveniles they reside in coastal estuaries, and as adults they move out to shallow oyster reefs and rocky intertidal areas. Bar dogs are noted for being particularly tolerant of polluted waters.
The oyster cracker begins its spawning period in May and continues through August. Males and females move into the estuary, where the males excavate nests under rocks and make calls known as 'boatwhistles' using their swim bladders. Attracted females deposit a clutch of eggs for the male to fertilize, then leaves. The males remain and protect the nest; the eggs hatch after about a month, and juveniles remain with their fathers for another week or two. Young ugly toads reach full maturity at anywhere from 2–7 years and have a lifespan of 8 years.
Adult O. tau can reach anywhere from 30-43 cm (12-17 in). they have oblong, flat bodies which allows them to fit under rocks and into tight crevices. They tend to be drab in color, usually olive or brown with black mottling, although they do have some ability to change their color to match their surroundings. The ugly toad is named for its distinctive bulging eyes and wide mouth, which is lined with fringes that act like whiskers to help them detect prey.
Oyster catchers feed mainly on oysters, as well as crabs, squid, and marine worms, which they ambush at night and crush with their powerful jaws and strong teeth. Few other fish go after adult O. tau due to the fish's sharp gills and venomous spines. However, they are known to be predated upon by dolphins, sharks and marine birds like cormorants.
Conservation status: The oyster toadfish is classified as Least Concern by the IUCN. They have a large, robust population that's resistant to pollution; however, they may become vulnerable to overfishing or the loss of their primary prey.
Photos
Will Parson
David Gardner
Erickson Smith
I love them
I think that evolution is actually linear and they are the peak of it
Dude! That is an awesome design!
They should invent flashcards that aren't so soul crushing
Usually I supplement my anki flashcards with random frogs here and there. Pleasant surprises make the whole process a little less arduous! 🐸🐸🐸
"Do you ever dream of land?" The whale asks the tuna.
"No." Says the tuna, "Do you?"
"I have never seen it." Says the whale, "but deep in my body, I remember it."
"Why do you care," says the tuna, "if you will never see it."
"There are bones in my body built to walk through the forests and the mountains." Says the whale.
"They will disappear." Says the tuna, "one day, your body will forget the forests and the mountains."
"Maybe I don't want to forget," Says the whale, "The forests were once my home."
"I have seen the forests." Whispers the salmon, almost to itself.
"Tell me what you have seen," says the whale.
"The forests spawned me." Says the salmon. "They sent me to the ocean to grow. When I am fat with the bounty of the ocean, I will bring it home."
"Why would the forests seek the bounty of the oceans?" Asks the whale. "They have bounty of their own."
"You forget," says the salmon, "That the oceans were once their home."
Last year I finally had an excuse to illustrate this simple little Tumblr story I've had bookmarked forever for class.
I hope you like it :]
y'all ever think about how insane the sauropods were
this is a leg off of Argentinosaurusof them and its already the size of a two story house like LOOK at the size of these fuckers
the fact that any land animal ever got to be as large as this is insane. this shit is only beat by fucking whales, creatures that dont have to support their weight on legs
To be honest I don't understand how these things were able to, like, move or breathe or anything with how heavy they must have been
This thing would have been MUCH scarier than T. rex cause like look at it
Actually they were a lot lighter than you'd think for their size, they were FULL of air sacs specifically to make them lighter. They moved by having really, really straight legs so the weight was transferred straight down into the ground, and they walked on cushioned pads just like an elephant. Their lungs were sort of constantly cycling air around because otherwise it wouldn't be much good, and the whole point of having a really really long neck was specifically that they didn't need to move much!!!!
Like, they're incredibly unspecialised herbivores who just ate everything and let the gut handle it (hence why they had to get so big, just because they had to fit A LOT of gut in there) like their mouths were basically just Rakes.
This thing was built to sweep its head from high to low to near to far and rake in everything it could eat. By evolving a long neck it basically meant it was giving itself a huge range of motion to eat with but also being VERY energy-efficient because moving your legs takes a LOT more energy than just. Tilting your neck up and down, especially at that size. So this thing was basically built to be incredibly, INCREDIBLY energy efficient, light and weight-spreading for its size.
Blue whales sort of practice a similar feeding style, where because they're so Big and need so Much food, they just sort of went "ok im just going to take in AS MUCH food as possible as efficiently as possible" and the thing is. Using baleen takes 0 effort really other than opening and closing your mouth. Which is why whales can grow to be really big. See in the ocean weight matters less, so you can afford to just have a big mouth, but land animals have to do it differently.
Being Big isn't just a case of having lots of food available. It's about being as Efficiently able to eat it as possible. Hell, i mean elephants basically evolved the same thing, except they've just given themselves really long noses rather than necks. It means the elephant can stay in one spot while still reaching huge amounts.
Idk if you actually wanted answers, but, well, here they are.
wawa
wawawa
wawawawa
wawawawawa
wawawawawawa
Wawawawawawawawawawawawawa
i mean. i guess he is yeah
Shark.
🦈🦈🦈
I saw this and I thought Tumblr might enjoy it
Are you doing alright?
Hello yeah I'm great, just went to a birthday party where my friends and I were doing an inflatable obstacle course over on a lake (I fell off so many times, it was hilarious) How are you??
damn, you have liked frogs for a while hehe :P
Oh yeah!! They're just objectively the best animal I think....
I have a very fond memory of when I was about 6 years old and just gained consciousness, where I was sat at my dining room table drawing an entire A4 sheet of frogs with different colours. I had a very specific way of drawing them that I still do sometimes when I'm just doodling rather than drawing realistic frogs 😂
quickie 030
I'm currently reading “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson, which is all about the effects of insecticides and herbicides on the environment. It's a fairly old book (1962) which is pretty upsetting to think about, since everything is even worse now than how it was described in the book. Every single year there are fewer and fewer bugs around and whenever I go outside on a sunny day, I get so upset over the lack of invertebrates. I wish there was some chant or song I could sing to get all the bugs to come back 😭
Why do witches and wizards still turn people into frogs during modern times when the stigmatization has long been cast away you may ask
And the complex answer is something along the lines of the power of the journey, the understanding of helplessness, finding new perspectives and a new appreciation of the world, developing a love nature and the small kindness of people
The real answer is that they are trying to seduce a herpetologists to varied success
I don't think I will be truly happy until someone turns me into a frog to be fair 😞☝️