Tag: meet the

Meet the Corpse Flower

Note: these are not miniature children
Note: these are not miniature children

Plants are so often the overlooked underdogs that I wanted to highlight one today. With their weird and wacky genomes, plants come in a variety of shapes and sizes and if you say you love orchids then you haven’t seen enough plants. Also, just recently we’ve discovered a new organelle (tannosome) in plants! A NEW ORGANELLE (yes, it’s in all caps because I’m yelling) -I sort of thought at this point, the whole organelle deal was sorted out. Nope, plants just keep surprising us. This is major news, like rewriting middle school textbooks major.

One of my personal favorite plants is Rafflesia also called “corpse flower” because it smells like rotting flesh. Sending a bouquet of rafflesia is a bad idea not only because of the smell, but also a single flower may be 90 cm in diameter.

Thanks to ARKive we canwatch this stinky, giant flower bloom.

ARKive video - Rafflesia flower openingThere are 28 species in the genus Rafflesia and they are all found in southeastern Asia. They have no roots and parasitize other plants. Speaking of organelles, the corpse flower has no chloroplasts which perhaps changes the way you define plants. This also provided a headache for the plant systematics world as they use chloroplast DNA to make their phylogenetic trees.

Learn more with this remarkable video from the botanist, Alastair Robinson

“Meet the…” is a collaboration between The Finch & Pea and Nature Afield to bring Nature’s amazing creatures into your home.

Meet the ‘Semaphore’ Frog

Green-spotted rock frog (Staurois tuberilinguis)
Green-spotted rock frog (Staurois tuberilinguis)

I am lucky enough to spend my days in a frog communication lab, but everyone on the street knows how frogs communicate-by calling (if you didn’t know that, I’m really sorry about the sad life you’ve been living. Please go outside today and sit in the grass. Maybe quit your job. Also, let your parents know you’d be better off if you were raised by wolves because at least then you’d know the glory of nature).

In general, we think of frogs calling from the edge of the pond where the only competition is from other male frogs. It gets more interesting when you consider some frogs call near rushing water and the modifications they must make to their call. Calling is energetically costly and competing with rushing water can surely be exhausting. Some frogs have developed another mode in which to signal by using semaphore. Indeed, the frogs of the genus Staurois from Borneo still call, but the streams are so loud that they modify their call and employ this semaphore in the form of foot flagging. Continue reading “Meet the ‘Semaphore’ Frog”

Meet the Nautilus

NautilusSpirlDataAndFitThe nautilus joins the ranks of cephalopods like the squid, cuttlefish, and octopus. However, the nautilus is the only one with a chambered shell. Interestingly, this shell is a natural logarithmic spiral.

Check out this video from the BBC to learn more:

“Meet the…” is a collaboration between The Finch & Pea and Nature Afield to bring Nature’s amazing creatures into your home.

Meet the Lake Titicaca Frog

Lake Titicaca resides between Bolivia and Peru at an extremely high altitude. One animal that has evolved to live in the environment is the Lake Titicaca frog (Telmatobius culeus) whose Latin name possibly started as a joke during an expedition in the late 1800s. Because there is sparse oxygen at high altitudes this frog has tons of extra skin to increase the surface area for oxygen absorption. While the average size of the frogs in the lake home has decreased over time, so too has the overall population and the IUCN now considers this animal as critically endangered. In the past, frog legs of Telmatobius culeus were eaten by visitors and locals alike, and animals were often used in local medicines. As a result of the IUCN status many locals are turning from cooking frog legs for dinner to becoming conservationists. Click on the link to watch the video!
ARKive video - Lake Titicaca frog - swimming underwater and eating shed skin

“Meet the…” is a collaboration between The Finch & Pea and Nature Afield to bring Nature’s amazing creatures into your home.

Meet the Caecilians

Yellow-Striped Caecilian, Thailand (Photo Credit: Kerry Matz; CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

There are three orders within the class Amphibia; Anura (frogs and toads), Caudata (salamanders) and Gymnophiona (caecilians). Caecilians are the least well-known group even though there are 184 known species with a widespread distribution in Africa, Asia, South and Central America. They have the appearance of worm-like snakes and can be small like worms or up to 1.5 meters. Caecilians can be fossorial or aquatic and below there is a video of each example. Continue reading “Meet the Caecilians”