Giant freaking salamanders, and other cool stuff from the natural world.

I. Love. Amphibians.

The Asian giant salamander and its close relative, the HELLBENDER (so named because settlers in the U.S. believed it to be a demon), are the largest amphibians alive. They are freaking sweet, and I want one.

I'LL EAT YO' BABIES.

Even law-enforcement officials have no idea what to do with such creatures.

WTF.

Shy and pretty much too huge to live, the giant salamander just chills all the time. Nonetheless, if European settlers thought it was a demon, and this Chinese guy can use one as a weapon...

Say hello to my lil' friend!

... Then the giant salamander has officially earned my respect.

Keep on keepin' on, Hellbender my buddy.

I started working in a frog lab on campus this week, and it's hella cool. We're doing several projects: one on the interaction and possible mediating effects of high temperatures on chytrid fungus infection in bullfrogs (without argument the biggest threat to amphibian populations in the world today), and another one on sexual selection in strawberry dart frogs.

Dart frogs are freakin' sweet. They don't make their own poison - it develops in their skin as they eat poisonous plants in their natural habitat - and they're one of the only amphibians that actively care for their babies once they're hatched.
Also, they're completely adorable. And small enough to fit on your thumbnail when fully grown.

Too. Cute. For. Life.

AND they come in fabulous colors like the orange ones above, blue,

A must have for fall.

... Red, yellow, and spotty. They're awesome.

It boggles me how vast the diversity of life on this planet is - the ranges in size are a great example. You can go from the Chinese giant salamander like those guys up top, which grow to about 4 foot 9, to this little guy,

Lincoln and his homebody, Mini-Frog.

... Who's the size of a pea when fully grown. And it's not just amphibians! This is a fish...

Probably dead.

And this is another fish.

Just times like a billion.

Primates range from the silverback male gorillas that can reach about 440 pounds when fully grown...

Badass.

... To the itty bitty mouse lemur, which tops out at about 2.4 ounces.

So. Fuzzy.

Very probably evil, also.

I've been thinking about doing evolutionary hypotheticals, lately. Wouldn't that be awesome? This one's paraphrased by Dawkins:
"Fred Hoyle has ingeniously speculated that, if we had been born with eight digits and therefore became accustomed to octal arithmetic instead of decimal, we might have invented binary arithmetic and hence electronic computers a century earlier than we did (since 8 is a power of two)."
Cool, huh?