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All in Herpetology
Let’s talk about frogs and toads!
I often write pretty lengthy posts about specific species, or subjects relating to manuscripts on which I am currently working. However, I thought it would be fun to write a series of short blog posts that go back to basics on one of my favourite extant orders of the amphibia class – Anura.
Ah taxonomy…thou art a beautiful and heartless bitch. If you’ve ever looked into the tropidurus genus post 1979, you know what I’m talking about!
It’s not uncommon for friends and family to send or show me photographs of reptiles and amphibians they encounter during their holidays. They often ask me to identify the species, and usually, this can be done fairly easily – especially when you know exactly where the individual was found. However, some species can be very hard to differentiate by image and location alone.
A few weeks ago, I was tidying up my portable hard drive and came across a few photographs that my brother took of a couple of Yellow Cururu Toads (Rhinella icterica) copulating. He'd found them during a trip to the countryside of Sao Paulo, Brazil, at the end of 2011 - towards the end of the species' breeding season.
Taking a trip down memory lane is always a gamble. We've all had good and bad experiences but I think it's fair to say that both help shape us into who we are today.
Out of all reptiles in existence, tortoises are one of the most widely kept as pets. This is not surprising considering that unlike other reptiles, they are perceived as mostly docile and non-threatening to humans. There's also, of course, the cuteness factor. Unfortunately, humans seem to be just as uninformed regarding their needs and husbandry as they are of any other reptilian order.
The Conraua goliath is one of those species that most people with no interest in amphibians will have heard of because of its size. The 'biggest frog' factoid being an almost must for any pub quiz...or perhaps more realistically, for any pub quiz I would certainly enjoy.
