Fish and Amphibians

Rana in aqua est. Rana parva est. Peering at our green pet tree frog, my dad and my seven-year-old self sat on the floor, composing simple Latin sentences like this: "The frog is in the water. The frog is small." ADVERTISEMENT My dad, having had a bit of Latin in school, taught me the basics of the language when I was six or seven. Reading stories of Rome and its people in another language was fascinating. The culture sparked my interest, too — poring over books on Ancient Pompeii and Percy Jackson, I kindled my love for the classical world.  I loved the way Latin worked; its logic and clarity were beautiful. As I delved into Virgil and Cicero, my writing began to mimic theirs. Cicero had me searching for just the right word to make my meaning clear, and Virgil's poetics slipped quietly into my own writing. Because of my early exposure to the language, and a few mentors who were experienced in classics, I headed to Princeton intent on concent...

Non-native iguanas are multiplying so rapidly in South Florida that a state wildlife agency is now encouraging people to kill them. A Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission news release says people should exterminate the large green lizards on their properties as well as on 22 public lands areas across South Florida. It doesn't say just how civilians should try to kill them. Iguanas aren't dangerous or aggressive, but they damage seawalls, sidewalks, landscape foliage and can dig lengthy tunnels. The males can grow to at least 5 feet long and weigh nearly 20 pounds. The commission says female iguanas can lay nearly 80 eggs a year. They are allowed to be kept as pets but are not protected by any law except anti-cruelty to animals.

Kuriyama, T., Miyaji, K., Sugimoto, M. & Hasegawa, M. Ultrastructure of the dermal chromatophores in a lizard (Scincidae: Plestiodon latiscutatus) with conspicuous body and tail coloration. Zoological science 23, 793–799 (2006). Article  Google Scholar  Steffen, J. E. & McGraw, K. J. How dewlap color reflects its carotenoid and pterin content in male and female brown anoles (Norops sagrei). Comp Biochem Phys B 154, 334–340 (2009). Article  Google Scholar  Kronforst, M. R. et al. Unraveling the thread of nature's tapestry: the genetics of diversity and convergence in animal pigmentation. Pigment cell & melanoma research 25, 411–433 (2012). CAS  Article  Google Scholar  Saenko, S. V., Teyssier, J., Van der Marel, D. & Milinkovitch, M. C. Precise colocalization of interacting structural and pigmentary elements generates extensive color pattern variation in Phelsuma lizards. BMC biology 11, 105 (2013). Article  Google Scholar  ...

Over 45 years ago, Rastelli's started as a one-room butcher shop in New Jersey. Today the family-run business delivers its responsibly sourced meats over the contiguous United States. Rastelli's meats are certified free of antibiotics, steroids, and hormones, plus its seafood options are either wild caught or raised in the wild. As a frozen meat delivery service, Rastelli's maintains the meat's flavor and texture by using a blast freezer and then vacuum sealing. This method freezes meat in just minutes and preserves freshness for up to a year. Tip: Thaw your meat quickly by placing the vacuum-sealed package into a bowl of cold water for at least 30 minutes.  Rastelli's online meat delivery is a breeze thanks to its user-friendly website. Featuring shops for every craving, the site includes meat and seafood delivery, roasts and sides, oven-ready dishes, organic meats, and curated boxes. The meat and seafood shop is a great place to buy staples, like steaks, pork, c...

Alright peeps, if this story doesn't restore a little faith in humanity, I'm not sure what will. And, for the record, you did read that headline correctly, and the story gets even crazier than that. According to Good News Network, it all happened back in March at a little convenience store in Southwick Massachusetts. Lea Rose Vieda had gone in and purchased a scratch ticket. She stood there, scratched her ticket off, then after realizing it wasn't a winner, handed it back to the store clerk who tossed it into a discard pile of already scratched tickets. A couple days later when the clerk was going through the pile of used tickets, he noticed that one of them hadn't been scratched all the way. Thinking that was a little strange, he decided to finish scratching it off. As the final number on the tickets was revealed, it became quickly evident that this ticket was a $1 Million winner. The clerk, who happened to be the son of the store owners, was able to track down...

Reuters S.African 'diamond rush' unearths only quartz crystals, officials say Unidentified stones that lured thousands of fortune seekers to a rural South African village to mine the land with picks and shovels were not diamonds as hoped, officials said on Sunday, but quartz stones with relatively low, if any, value. People from across South Africa travelled to KwaHlathi in the country's eastern KwaZulu-Natal province where villagers had been digging since June 12 after a herder discovered the first stone in an open field and put out the word. Provincial executive council member for economic development and tourism, Ravi Pillay, told a media briefing on Sunday he had counted some 3,000 there during a visit to the site, where samples were taken to identify the stones.

On a remote group of islands in the Bahamas, the trees run thick with anoles—lithe, color-changing lizards easily identified by the vibrant fans that adorn the throats of males. Leaping from branch to branch and skittering through the underbrush, these camouflaged reptiles can be tough to spot, let alone catch. But in the spring of 2015, even the most fleet-footed anoles proved no match for Tyler Kartzinel and his paint-loaded squirt guns. At the time, Kartzinel, now an ecologist and evolutionary biologist at Brown University, was in the midst of an elaborate experiment. For the previous four years, he and his colleagues had been making regular trips to 16 Bahamian islands to take annual censuses of three local lizard species to see how they interacted over time. One, the brown anole ( Anolis sagrei ), was a longtime island native. The other two, however, were newcomers introduced by Kartzinel and his team: the closely related, tree-dwelling green anole ( Anolis smaragdinus ), an...