via WTF, Evolution?

Good evolutionary defense mechanisms: Running very fast. Hiding really well. Being full of poison. Having wicked spikes.

Questionable evolutionary defense mechanisms: … whatever this is.

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Because I've been rereading my Gerald Durrell books, and this particular species starred in Three Singles to Adventure, the account of his collecting trip to Guiana.

Pseudis paradoxa is a hylid frog found across a surprising wide part of South America, and in Trinidad, but it wasn't the adult that captured everybody's attention, oh no. It was the ( Read more... )

I just came across this from the splodefromcute  community!

( Look at the size of this frog! )

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There are several species of amphibians worldwide being threatened by Chytrid fungus.

"Chytrid fungi were long thought to be predominantly free-living saprophytes, with a few species capable of infecting only invertebrates and vascular plants. However, in 1999 a new species - Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (hereafter Bd) - was described infecting ( Read more... )

I made a comment in the blue earthworm post about how one of the photos in the article reminded me of a little-known amphibian called a Caecilian. From this picture, you may noticed that they do look like worms (or snakes depending on the size.) They may also be mistaken as eels when swimming.


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I've always known that tropical frogs come in all colours of the rainbow, but these are hardly tropical, so it surprised me a little.
Last week, as I was travelling from Gdańsk to Warsaw I stopped at a roadside restaurant in Masuria. Looking out of the window we saw some little bluish things on the surface of a pond. After a while we noticed that ( Read more... )

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Humans didn't invent the wheel. They reinvented it. From this clever video, you can see salamanders and caterpillars had it figured out, first.

Mudskippers are members of the subfamily Oxudercinae (tribe: Periophthalmini), within the family Gobiidae (Gobies). They are completely amphibious fish. They are found only in tropical and subtropical regions, including all the Indo-Pacific and the Atlantic coast of Africa ( Read more... )