Allow me to present the reticulated glass frog in all it's glory. Beautiful animal, and I've mentioned this before but they get the name "glass frogs" because their skin is pretty much see-through. As with most of what I photograph I did not handle the animal at all so no pics of the internal organs which can clearly be seen when looking at the underside.
I love glass frogs, and they are some of the more rare frogs at the FCRE. We have a couple species but even with putting in time and effort we can't find them. Then I am just walking down a trail at night and bingo, there it is. Allow me to present the reticulated glass frog in all it's glory. Beautiful animal, and I've mentioned this before but they get the name "glass frogs" because their skin is pretty much see-through. As with most of what I photograph I did not handle the animal at all so no pics of the internal organs which can clearly be seen when looking at the underside.
7 Comments
I have decided not to change the original blog post, but to update with a new, much more informed opinion about the cicada. I contacted Dr. David Hughes, one of the top researchers on zombie insects, and he reviewed the photos. His opinion is that this is not a true zombie but a secondary infection of a cicada that died naturally. I certainly will go with the expert opinion, so not a zombie, but sure looked like one. The following is the original posting... Now that I covered the creepy-looking tail-less whip scorpion, I've got to go even further and show a real world zombie. Yes, a zombie. This is really outside my area of expertise but there have been a number of articles about zombie insects lately and now I have seen my first one for real. In this case a larval stage cicada. So what is going on, most likely since I have no information that this is known from cicada larvae, is that a fungus has attacked the cicada larva while it was living underground. The fungus then takes control of the insect's mind and delivers instructions for what the animal is to do. In this case most likely it was instructed to dig out of the ground, climb a short distance up, lock on to the tree, and die. Then, the fungus puts out its fruiting bodies, those white blobs on the stalks, and can drop the spores to the ground in the preferred place the cicada was instructed to go to. Now that's creepy! And here is what a zombie insect looks like, although I do note again that this really looks like one but I have not yet verified it. And I have to do a close up of the head...
Stick insects seem to be almost invisible during the day and we almost never see them. They tend to be either leaf litter brown or leaf green and are really camouflaged. But for some reason they seem to be quite findable at night and I see loads of them. Here is one of the brown ones and is about 4 inches long not counting legs and antennae.
We passed by a small tribe of white-faced capuchins while coming down the access road. These are quite attractive animals and fairly common at the FCRE.
Common names can be anything from perfect to misleading and the giant parrot snake is a good example. Is it really "giant"? Well you can decide by looking at the photos, but compared to a normal parrot snake it sure is a big one. Today was a very good day. We were able to release a rehabbed sloth on the FCRE property where it should find plenty of great habitat. Max the Sloth came to us from Alturas Wildlife Sanctuary, which does a fantastic job of rehabbing injured animals and then releasing them back into the forest. https://alturaswildlifesanctuary.org/ Max was brought to Alturas in pretty bad shape. His right hind foot was heavily damaged and infected, and after a long time under veterinary care he ended up with an amputated right foot and had put back on a kilo of weight. He showed that he could easily get around and climb even missing the foot and was ready to be released. Loyal Clarke brought Max over around lunch time, and he (the sloth not Loyal) proceeded to sleep in his cage while we picked the exact release point and had a wonderful lunch prepared by Marianela. We decided that a spot along the Phyllobates Trail would be perfect. Max was loaded into the UTV and Greddy drove Loyal and the sloth up to the trailhead. Sloths are notoriously slow. In Spanish they are called "oso perezoso" which means lazy bear. Even the word sloth means laziness. But that doesn't mean a sloth is a weakling! These are powerful animals and need to be shown a lot of respect when handling them. In this case we let the professional, Loyal, do all the handling. Which in the end isn't all that much, as one of the premises for the rehabbing is to keep the animal wild and not treat it like a pet so it doesn't get used to being around people. Up at the chosen tree Loyal took Max out of his cage and we all got a great close up look at a truly gorgeous animal. But it was quick, as Max was immediately placed up against the tree and he grabbed it right away. Pretty clear he was fired up to be getting back into the forest. You never know just what an animal is going to do at a release. In this case, max was quite intent on returning to the canopy where sloths tend to be. In his slow, methodical sloth fashion he climbed right up the tree and into the canopy. It really wasn't all that long before he was up high and pretty hard to see anymore. We eventually headed out and back down the hill and on the next thing. But we'll be keeping an eye out in that area for the next few days to see if we can spot Max.
I don't know a whole lot about the behavior, but certain caterpillars will cluster together and make some very interesting designs when doing so. I thought these were really awesome-looking.
The first two photos are of large non-web building spiders. These are hunters not trappers and while the first one is not much to worry about even though four inches across, the second one is not something you would really want to nip you. In the photo is it eating a camel cricket. This leaf-footed (or leaf-legged or leaf-kneed or flag-footed, etc.) bug looks to be in the genus Leptoglossus. It is another true bug.
The weather on day 1 was just so excellent that after dark I couldn't resist taking a short walk down along the Rio Cacao. These are known as Heliconia bugs, and are, not surprisingly, true bugs that live and feed almost exclusively on the plant Heliconia. I see them every year in one patch along the river and they were there again this year. Attractive bugs that are territorial on the plant and males will defend their turf. If another bug approaches things can quickly escalate into a weird reverse wrestling match. The two bugs turn around and grapple backwards using their strong rear legs. Not sure how the winner is determined but something about who can jam their legs spines into the other one's belly the hardest and make them give up. Tink frogs, so named because they make a very loud "tink" sound, are super common. But we have a number of species of them that require handling the animal to ID them so I will just show a photo of one without guessing at which one it is. Harvestman aren't really true spiders, but have those creepy 8 legs and sure act like spiders. A tiny body and very long legs give these the common name "daddy long legs." Okay, so let's get real creepy to finish this up. Another non-spider in the 8-legged category is the tail-less whip scorpion (Amblypygidae family). Latin factoid: amblypygid means "blunt butt" hence the "tail-less" part of the name. There are two genera of these here, Phrynus and Paraphrynus, but you have to put the front spiny part (the pedipalp) under a microscope just to see a little obscure almost spine in order to figure out which genus it is. So no ID other than family on this character. The body is about two inches long, so not a particularly huge one but decent sized. However the legs are very long and this animal would easily be 10 inches from leg tip to leg tip. But these are WAY creepier looking that I can show in a full animal image, so here is a close up of the head area. Those spines are used for spearing insect prey, and although it looks nasty is essentially harmless to humans.
I just got here and took a few photos. No time to ID things but putting up some pics anyway. There was a family of kinkajou in a tree just outside the ecology center. But with manual focus at 10 meters essentially taking photos in total darkness I just got this one as best: This caterpillar is just awesome Much more to come
|
AuthorKeith Christenson - Wildlife Biologist Categories
All
Author
Keith Christenson Wildlife Biologist Archives
September 2021
|