- Home
- Angry by Choice
- Catalogue of Organisms
- Chinleana
- Doc Madhattan
- Games with Words
- Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience
- History of Geology
- Moss Plants and More
- Pleiotropy
- Plektix
- RRResearch
- Skeptic Wonder
- The Culture of Chemistry
- The Curious Wavefunction
- The Phytophactor
- The View from a Microbiologist
- Variety of Life
Field of Science
-
-
From Valley Forge to the Lab: Parallels between Washington's Maneuvers and Drug Development3 weeks ago in The Curious Wavefunction
-
Political pollsters are pretending they know what's happening. They don't.3 weeks ago in Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience
-
-
Course Corrections5 months ago in Angry by Choice
-
-
The Site is Dead, Long Live the Site2 years ago in Catalogue of Organisms
-
The Site is Dead, Long Live the Site2 years ago in Variety of Life
-
Does mathematics carry human biases?4 years ago in PLEKTIX
-
-
-
-
A New Placodont from the Late Triassic of China5 years ago in Chinleana
-
Posted: July 22, 2018 at 03:03PM6 years ago in Field Notes
-
Bryophyte Herbarium Survey7 years ago in Moss Plants and More
-
Harnessing innate immunity to cure HIV8 years ago in Rule of 6ix
-
WE MOVED!8 years ago in Games with Words
-
-
-
-
post doc job opportunity on ribosome biochemistry!9 years ago in Protein Evolution and Other Musings
-
Growing the kidney: re-blogged from Science Bitez9 years ago in The View from a Microbiologist
-
Blogging Microbes- Communicating Microbiology to Netizens10 years ago in Memoirs of a Defective Brain
-
-
-
The Lure of the Obscure? Guest Post by Frank Stahl12 years ago in Sex, Genes & Evolution
-
-
Lab Rat Moving House13 years ago in Life of a Lab Rat
-
Goodbye FoS, thanks for all the laughs13 years ago in Disease Prone
-
-
Slideshow of NASA's Stardust-NExT Mission Comet Tempel 1 Flyby13 years ago in The Large Picture Blog
-
in The Biology Files
A plant pundit comments on plants, the foibles and fun of academic life, and other things of interest.
Rainforest Field Trip - BE CAREFUL OUT THERE PEOPLE!
In the opinion of virtually all field workers, the dangers of working in a rain forest are far less than the dangers of visiting a big city. Mostly you learn what to look out for and you behave very very carefully. But when you have so many rookies you do worry that one of them will make a mistake, and the university frowns upon coming home with fewer students than you took. Actually once we came home with one additional one, but that's another story. The big problem is that some things are just plain hard to see, but every now and then, for reasons that are not at all well understood, some organisms stand out a bit more than others. Of the about 50 species of snakes at this field station, only 7 are poisonous, 5 pit vipers and 2 coral snakes. For the most part the pit vipers are quite well camouflaged and at times nigh on invisible. It makes you nervous to know a snake is there (marked with flagging) and still be unable to see the critter against its background. The eye lash viper is an exception. It comes in two natural color patterns, a green & brown pattern that is quite invisible against it barky background, this being a somewhat arboreal snake. How nice, right there at eye level. But it also comes in a very bright yellow or gold form that seems quite conspicuous in comparison, so it doesn't quite make biological sense. The trouble is that the number of yellow vipers you see tells you how many of the camouflaged ones you don't see. This handsome fellow was pretty small, maybe 25-30 cm long. A couple of scales over each eye make the lashes. Rule 7: no messing with poisonous snakes. Students who ignore this rule are on their last field trip, if you know what I mean.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment