Field notebook
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Field notebook
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Curated collection
A cross-section of the field guide’s current published collection.
The ground pangolin's tongue does not attach at the throat like most mammals. Instead it runs back to the pelvis, letting the animal unfurl a probe longer than its own body deep into insect nests.
Atlantic mudskippers spend most of their active hours out of water, absorbing oxygen through their skin and mouth lining rather than relying only on gills, a trait called cutaneous respiration.
Before reaching sexual maturity, female fossas grow an enlarged, spine-covered pseudo-penis and rust-orange fur matching adult males, a disguise thought to reduce harassment, then lose both traits within a couple of years.
Their sting is reduced to a useless stub, so defence falls to mandibles, resin and sheer numbers. Some species bite hard enough to draw blood, and a few smear caustic plant secretions into the wound.
Humphead parrotfish bite living coral, grind the skeleton in a throat mill of interlocking teeth, and excrete the rock as fine white sand. Estimates for large individuals run to several tonnes per fish per year.
A curlew probing deep in mud cannot open its whole bill against the sediment. Instead the upper mandible flexes near the tip, a mechanism called rhynchokinesis, so the bird can grip a worm at depth with only the last few millimetres moving.
Crocodylus halli was described from museum specimens and decades-old field notes rather than a new discovery in the field. The animals were well known locally; what changed was the recognition that they were not the same species as their northern neighbours.
The adult is a filtering sac with no backbone and no obvious head. Its larva, by contrast, swims with a tail stiffened by a notochord and a dorsal nerve cord, the defining features of the group that includes vertebrates.
The flat faces of the wedge point east and west, so the broad sides catch weak morning and evening sun while the narrow edge meets the fierce midday sun overhead. The alignment is remarkably consistent across a plain.
Almost all pollination is accidental, a by-product of insects seeking food. The female yucca moth gathers pollen with specialised mouthparts, lays eggs in the flower's ovary, then climbs the style and packs the pollen in deliberately.
Aplysia californica has around twenty thousand central neurons, some nearly a millimetre across and individually identifiable from animal to animal. That combination made it the organism in which the cellular basis of simple learning was first worked out.
Newborns move out of estuaries and into fresh water, where they can spend several years before returning to the sea. That nursery habit put the species deep inland, and it is why dams and water extraction hurt a marine ray.