Field notebook
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Field notebook
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Permanent editions
Published facts keep their original date, evidence and correction trail. Drafts and withdrawn editions are never mixed into this index.
Freshwater pearl mussel larvae must clamp onto the gills of a young salmon or trout and remain there for months before dropping off to burrow. Where the fish are gone, the mussels persist as ageing adults that never recruit.
Alvinella pompejana lives in a steep thermal gradient on vent chimneys, with its tail in far hotter water than its head. Reported tail temperatures above 80 degrees Celsius are contested, and controlled experiments suggest a lower true limit.
Its bumpy green and black skin already reads as a clump of moss on wet limestone. When that fails and a predator approaches, the frog tucks its limbs, rolls into a ball and stays motionless.
The tuna in the tin is usually not the tuna in the photograph. Skipjack, a small fast-growing species that matures in roughly a year, accounts for the largest share of global tuna landings by weight, far more than bluefin or yellowfin.
The name records a farmyard belief that these snakes suckled dairy cattle at night. A snake's jaw cannot form a seal, its teeth would be intolerable to a cow, and its stomach cannot process milk. It was in the barn for the mice.
All domestic cattle trace to the aurochs, a wild bovine that survived in Europe until 1627. Genetic work indicates two separate domestications, one producing taurine cattle in the Near East and one producing humped zebu cattle in South Asia.
Tetrodotoxin in pufferfish comes from marine bacteria taken up through the food chain and concentrated in the liver, skin and gonads. Pufferfish raised on clean feed in captivity grow up essentially non-toxic.
The metre-long green streamers of a breeding male quetzal are upper tail coverts, feathers that overlie the tail rather than form it. The true tail beneath is short, black and white, and largely hidden.
Physicians across the United States report brown recluse bites from states where the spider has never been established. Meanwhile, houses inside the range can hold thousands of recluses whose residents are never bitten at all.
For most of the twentieth century the alpaca was classified as Lama pacos, a descendant of the guanaco. Genetic analysis published in 2001 showed it descends from the vicuna instead, and the name changed to Vicugna pacos.
On stretches of the Ayeyarwady River in Myanmar, fishers tap their boats and the dolphins drive shoals of fish towards them, signalling with a tail slap when to cast. Both sides eat better than they would alone.
Treehoppers make almost no airborne sound. They vibrate the plant stem, and their families communicate along it: a disturbed nymph produces a synchronised group signal, and the guarding mother walks along the branch towards the source and attacks the intruder.
The name most likely records where the snake was found rather than what it eats. Corn snakes gathered around maize cribs because the stored grain drew rodents, and a secondary explanation points to the belly pattern's resemblance to maize kernels.
Most turtles pull in and hope. A box turtle does better: a hinge across the lower shell lets the front and back panels swing up against the carapace, sealing the animal inside a closed case that a raccoon or fox cannot open.
Field identification between the two kudu species is easiest at the neck. The lesser kudu shows two distinct white patches on the throat, carries more body stripes than its larger relative, and lacks the greater kudu's throat mane.
When overnight temperatures in south Florida drop to roughly 4 to 7 degrees Celsius, green iguanas become torpid and lose their grip, landing on lawns and pavements. The National Weather Service has issued advisories about falling iguanas. Most warm up and walk away.
![Photograph of Tapanuli orangutan: Frontal view of Pongo tapanuliensis Morphobank media number: M435788 See "paratypes" section of [1]](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2F6%2F65%2FPongo_tapanuliensis.jpg%3Futm_source%3Den.wikipedia.org%26utm_campaign%3Dimageinfo%26utm_content%3Dthumbnail_unscaled&w=3840&q=75)
Pongo tapanuliensis was described as a distinct species in 2017, the first new great ape named in nearly a century. Fewer than a thousand individuals are thought to survive in one isolated forest, making it the rarest great ape known.
The male big dipper firefly makes a rising J-shaped flash roughly every six seconds while flying. A perched female answers after a species-specific delay of about two seconds, and the interval is the signal that identifies her.
Female black dragonfish grow to about forty centimetres and hunt with a lit chin barbel. Males reach only a few centimetres, develop no teeth and no functioning gut, and live on stored reserves long enough to breed.
It was long assumed the orchid mantis was camouflaged among blossoms. Field experiments found the opposite: pollinating insects approach a solitary mantis on bare foliage more readily than they approach real flowers, making it an aggressive mimic that attracts its own prey.
Despite belonging to the genus Panthera, the snow leopard does not roar. Its main long-distance call is a drawn-out, breathy moan, sometimes rendered as a wail or a yowl; chuffing is a separate close-range greeting. Its vocal-fold structure is unlike a lion's.
Kākāpō do not nest every year. On Whenua Hou and Anchor Island they breed in step with the mast fruiting of rimu, a podocarp that produces a heavy crop only every few years, which caps how fast the population can recover.
The claim that lobsters never age comes from a real observation: they keep growing and stay fertile late in life, and their telomerase stays active. But moulting a bigger shell each time becomes energetically ruinous, and old lobsters die in the attempt.
A male malleefowl spends most of the year managing a mound of sand and decaying leaf litter, opening and closing it to hold the egg chamber near 33 degrees. He checks the temperature with his bill and adjusts the sand accordingly.