Summary: You are what you eat, right? Find out what tuatara eat and how they eat it in the seventh episode of Tuatara.

For my hearing impaired followers, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

Show Notes:

“Tuatara” Royal Ontario Museum, https://collections.rom.on.ca

“Microstructure of dental hard tissues and bone in the Tuatara denture, Sphenodon punctatus,” by J.A. Kierser, T. Tkatchenko, M. C. Dean, M. E. H. Jones, and N. J. Nelson. Front Oral Biol. 2009:13:80-85. https://pubme.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19828975

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… This is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

We have made it to the seventh episode of Tuatara and the seventh thing I like about these super cool reptiles is their diet and dentition. We have hinted a bit about what they eat but today we’ll take a closer look at what that is specifically and how their teeth help. 

Let’s start with food. Tuatara are carnivores. They eat mainly invertebrates like worms and arthropods such as beetles, millipedes, spiders, and weta. Weta are insects native to New Zealand that look similar to crickets but like crickets on steroids. Weta have big bodies, spiny legs, and tusks. They look kind of like a cricket and a warthog had a baby.  

The majority of the tuatara diet is made up of invertebrates but they will also eat lizards, seabird eggs and chicks, and occasionally they venture in to cannibalism and will eat young tuatara. Because of this, juvenile tuatara are active during the day while adult tuatara are active at night. I mean, really, if your relatives might eat you at night, then who wouldn’t want to avoid them. 

Humans that live on the islands where tuatara are found always know when they’ve been hunting because they will see headless birds. Definitely not something you want to come across on a relaxing walk in nature. Why is this the indicator of the tuatara?

The tooth pattern of the tuatara is unique. Just like almost everything else about them. They have two incisor like teeth in front of their top jaw. And they have three rows of teeth (I was not able to find an actual count but am guessing it’s around 85 teeth). One row of teeth lines the bottom jaw and two rows line the top jaw. The bottom row of teeth fit neatly into the two upper rows of teeth when the jaw is closed. Wait for it, we almost have our answer. The jaw motion of the tuatara is also unique. Instead of an up and down motion, like chewing, they have a forward and backward motion, like sawing. 

And there it is! This is why the birds that tuatara hunt are missing heads. They saw them off with their unique teeth. Hah! Didn’t see that coming did you?

Besides the unique pattern of teeth, the structure of their teeth is also unique. They have acrodont teeth which means they are rootless and attached directly to the bone of the jaw. They kind of emerge from the actual bone. This is unlike any other reptile teeth alive today. The teeth are serrated which helps with the sawing motion. Tuatara cannot replace lost or cracked teeth. Once the tooth is gone, it is gone. As tuatara age their teeth wear down from use. They are eating crunchy invertebrates and bony vertebrates, so they do take a beating. Tuatara can live for up to 100 years, so the older tuatara have to switch their diet to softer prey as their teeth wear down. 

Now for a long time, we thought they didn’t have real teeth. We thought they were just bony protrusions that stuck out of the jaw, but some researchers in 2009 looked more closely at the teeth. They looked at teeth from a juvenile as well as an adult and found layers of typical tooth material. This was a surprise.

Using Scanning Electron Microscopy, which is a sophisticated imaging technique that uses an electron beam to examine the surface of various materials, researchers found evidence of enamel containing dentine tubules, dentine, and cementum. All of these are found in other types of teeth. It’s not just serrated, bony material sticky up in their mouths. They have actually teeth. They are different then your average tooth, but they are teeth none-the-less.

These tuatara are just full of surprises!

I hope you enjoyed our dental adventure because my seventh favorite thing about the tuatara is what they eat and how they eat it!

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another exciting episode about the tuatara.  

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: The term “living fossil” is a bit controversial but does it fit the tuatara? Join Kiersten to find out.

For my hearing impaired followers, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

Show Notes: 

“New study shows modern tuatara are little changed from 190 million year old ancestors.” Harvard University Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, March 2022. https://www.oeb.harvard.edu/news

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… This is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

The sixth thing I like about the tuatara is how long they have lived. Just like another animal we have talked about, the coelacanth, the tuatara appears in the fossil record from way back in time. The first time we see the tuatara in the fossil record is during the Jurassic period. Now, of course, a certain book and movie series has made this a very popular time in Earth’s history, so you may be familiar with this time period. It is famous for being the age of dinosaurs, at least some of the most popular and recognizable dinosaurs. 

The term living fossil has been tossed around in reference to the tuatara, as well as the coelacanth, but this term is controversial. It is quite the romantic phrase actually. To think that an animal is so well adapted to the world it lives in that is hasn’t changed since the first time it appeared on this planet is a notion that a lot of us want to believe, but is it true? The first major problem with this concept, is that there is no real definition of what makes an animal or plant a living fossil. 

Charles Darwin coined the term “living fossil” in 1859. According to Darwin’s definition a living fossil is a species or group of species that is so little changed that it provides an insight into earlier, now extinct, forms of life. A living fossil can also be described as an organism that has remained relatively unchanged over millions of years, or one that has no, or very few, close surviving relatives.

It certainly sounds like we have stumbled on another controversy here. In the last episode we answered the question of whether the tuatara is a lizard or not. Spoiler here, listeners, if you haven’t heard the previous episode and you don’t want a spoiler to this question, stop listening now and go back and listen to last week’s episode. With that warning, let’s move on. We have established that tuatara are not lizards, they are reptiles but not lizards for various reasons. Shall we jump into the next controversial question then?

Are tuatara living fossils? Let’s look at Darwin’s definition first. How much  have tuatara changed since they first appeared in the fossil record? A 2022 study from Harvard University’s Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology may give us some insight. Tuatara are the last remnant of the Rhynchocephalians. These reptiles peaked in abundance in the Jurassic period. Then they disappeared from the fossil record.  

Two researchers were looking through the archives in the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology and came across something that had been sitting in the drawers for decades, a tuatara fossil. This fossil was discovered in northern Arizona in the Kayenta Formation of the United States in 1982. Professor Stephanie Pierce and postdoctoral fellow Tiago Simoes jumped into examining this forgotten fossil. They used micro-CT scans to examine the fossil in three dimension. Then they digitally pieced the puzzle together revealing a full unflattened skull. It greatly resembled the modern day tuatara. It had rows of interlocking teeth that extended directly from the bone and it had two holes behind the eyes, just like the modern day tuatara. 

Pierce and Simoes named the fossil Navajoshenodon sani which means “old age” in the indigenous language of the Navajo. This fossil provides the first nearly complete skull of any fossil sphenodontine in the world. It also places the tuatara in the Late Triassic. They may be older than we thought. 

So how does this help us determine the answer to the living fossil question? It does give support for both descriptions. The modern day tuatara is similar enough to the fossil that it gives us insight into a long dead relative, and it seems to have changed very little from the long ago fossil of a creature that roamed the planet with dinosaurs. 

Unlike the coelacanth, which is definitely not a living fossil, maybe the tuatara is a living fossil. It is food for thought and that is one of the reasons I started this podcast.

I hope you will continue to think about this small living fossil controversy because it is my sixth favorite thing about the tuatara.

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another exciting episode about the tuatara.  

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: How do colonies of ants live in trees? Find out in this episode about arboreal ants.

For my hearing impaired followers, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

Show Notes: 

“Adventures Among Ants” by Mark W. Moffett

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

We are rounding the bend with the ants series and there is no better way to do that than to take to the sky. The title of this episode is Arboreal Ants. There are ants that live in trees and never touch terrestrial earth their entire lives. You thought the Leafcutter ants were amazing, well hold on to your hat because the seventh thing I like about ants is the colonies that live in the trees.

Arboreal ants, which are ants that live in trees, are found on many different continents and there is more than one species, but we are going to focus on one species in particular so we can really see their amazing qualities in detail. We’re spending some time with the Weaver ants of Africa, Oecophylla longinoda. Now living in a tree for an ant is no small feat, so how do they do it? Terrestrial ants dig into the dirt and create many chambered nests. It’s kind of difficult to dig into  a tree, so where are arboreal ants living?

Weaver ant nests are most common in the outer, uppermost branches of trees where the sun light is bright. Here, the ants will bind adjacent healthy leaves together to create a treetop tent. The size of each nest will vary but is often between the size of baseball or a volleyball. They are as light as an inflated ballon and can withstand wind, rain, and enemy invasions. To begin building a nest, a worker ant will pull the edge of a leaf toward the edge of another leaf. If her bending is successful other workers will come to her aide. 

Now weaver ants get their name from the next step. To keep the leaves together they employ their larvae. If you’re think, “What?” I hear ya! The larvae are picked up by workers and taken to the edge of the leaf connection. The workers tap the larvae on the leaf to encourage the larvae to release silk. Yes, the larvae of many species of ants create silk. The Weaver ants use this silk to secure the leaves together. The motion of shuttling the larvae back and forth to connect the leaves with the silk is where the weaving comes in. The nests may last for years because when one leaf dies the ants will just weave in another living one. 

The nests are larger enough to house thousands of ants, but the weaver ants don’t have just one nest in the tree. They travel all over the tree that they call home, so they often build other trees  op tents so they can maximize their resources. They don’t stick to one central nest, they have the ability to move around when they need to. One territory can have multiple nests. The queen is often in a nest that is the most centralized to the territory, but her eggs are distributed throughout all the nests.

With all of these spread out workers, Weaver ants have to have an excellent communication strategy. And boy, do they! Earlier we learned that pheromones are integral to ant communication. It’s the same with weaver ants, but they have a specialized gland that helps the pheromones that they use to create their paths last longer than terrestrial ants. They have an anal gland that helps them make their poop a bit more than just poop. To keep their pathways from wearing away too quickly, weaver ants use their feces to create longterm smell paths. The droplets of worker excrement hardens into a shellac like substance that can last for months. 

This form of communication also allows these ants to do something most other ants do not, defend a specific territory. Weaver ants are known to defend  their treetop territories from other ants they encounter. With the pheromone lines drawn already it gives them an advantage in skirmishes. Their scent is already laid down. If a weaver ant encounters an enemy worker, she will race back to more familiar territory to recruit help. She does this by mimicking fighting motions and other workers will follow her prepared for battle.

So what do weaver ants eat? This species of ant is omnivorous. They eat both meat and veggies. One of the coolest things they target is nectaries created by trees. These are spots on the leaves of trees that seep nectar. This isn’t like the sap that leaks from the tree’s bark, this is like the nectar that a flower produces. When they find a nectary, the weaver ants will built a tent around it to hide it from other animals that might be interested in this pot of gold as well. 

Weaver ants do eat meat in the form of other insects, Mark Moffett retells an experience he had in Cambodia as he watched some local Oecophylla drag a 5 cm long scorpion up a tree to pull it apart, as well as other meat items such as birds, bats, and other ants. The protein is eaten mainly by the larvae while adults typically consume sap and nectar.

Does the tree benefit from the ants in residence or are they detrimental? This is a question that ecologists try to answer through cost/benefit analysis. Some benefits to the tree are weaver ants culling leaf eating insects before they can defoliate the tree. Foliage lasts longer in areas where the weaver ants live. The ants also provide a bit of fertilizer to the tree as well by pooping on the leaves. Trees can absorb some nutrients through their leaves. On the cost side, some of the leaves the weaver ants use to create their nests are permanently lost, but considering the small percentage of leave the ants use, I think the benefits outweigh the costs. 

I hope this quick foray into the treetops with these arboreal ants was worth it, because treetop living ants is my seventh favorite thing about ants.

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another exciting episode about ants.   

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, my very own piano playing hero.

Summary: Are they limbs or are they fins? What are those things on the side of the coelacanth? Join Kiersten and a guest host to find out!

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

Shoe Notes: 

“Coelacanth Fossil Sheds Light On Fin-to-limb Evolution.” Science Daily, https://www.sciencedaily.com

Anatomy: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/fish/anatomy.html

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Oxford Languages Dictionary

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Casey teaches her students all about cladograms!

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This episode continues the coelacanth and their crazy interesting fins is the eighth thing I like about this deep sea fish.

Today I have a guest cohost joining me, my friend Casey. Thanks for joining me Casey.

Casey: You’re welcome. Thanks for having me.

Kiersten: Casey and I have known each other for a long time. We met as zookeepers 18 years ago and became friends very quickly. Today, Casey is a biology teacher and when she found out I was doing this podcast she was excited to help me.

Casey: Coelacanths are extremely interesting and their appendages, or limbs, are interesting in their history.

Kiersten: Great! Today we’re talking about limbs versus fins! I hope by now, listeners, you’ve all googled a picture of the coelacanth and have gotten a glimpse of their interesting fins.  In episode two, anatomy, I talked about the coelacanths special fins called lobed fins. They have six lobed fins.

Casey: I love their little limbs!

Kiersten: Me too! But I thought they were fins?

Casey: They do look like limbs.

Kiersten: I think we need to dive into this topic and learn a bit more.

Casey: I agree!

Kiersten: Let’s start with some definitions. The Oxford Languages Dictionary says a limb is "a leg or arm of a person or a four-legged animal, or a bird’s wing”. That completely leaves out the coelacanth, for sure!

Casey:  I agree! But the Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition is “one of the projecting paired appendages of an animal body used especially for movement and grasping but sometimes modified into sensory or sexual organs.” I think that puts the coelacanth back in the limb arena!

Kiersten: Maybe…Let’s hear Oxford Languages Dictionary’s definition of fin: “a flattened appendage on various parts of the body of many aquatic vertebrates and some invertebrates, including fish and cetaceans, used for propelling, steering, and balancing.” That definitely sounds like the coelacanth.

Casey: I can’t argue with that! But Merriam-Webster’s definition of fin is “an external membranous process of an aquatic animal used in propelling or guiding the body.” I’m on the fence with this one. I wouldn’t say that coelacanths have membranous fins.

Kiersten: Hmmmmm….I think what we need to do is look at what these fins can do.

Casey: You mean limbs.

Kiersten: Let’s call them appendages until we get his settled. 

Casey: Deal!

Kiersten: The coelacanth has seven appendages overall. Four are paired, two behind the gills, the pectoral fins, one on each side; two mid body on the bottom of the fish the pelvic fins, one on each side. Then there is one anal fin just in front of the tail on the underside of the fish and then two dorsal fins. They have eight if you include the tail. I think it’s interesting in itself that they have eight appendages, that’s quite a lot for a fish.

Casey: Yeah, what are they using all those appendages for?

Kiersten: Well the four paired fins on each side of the body move like paddles propelling them forward through the water. These appendages are able to rotate 180 degrees so they can probably use them to back up as well as more forward. The really cool thing about these four extremities is that they work in conjunction with each other. The right pectoral fin moves together with the left pelvic fin. 

Casey: You mean like the way a horse walks?

Kiersten: Yes! It’s a lot like how a many land mammals move their ….. oh, I see where you going with this. You just want me to say they're limbs!

Casey: Yes! Yes, I do! 

Kiersten: Well, I think we might both get what we want from the next definition. Coelacanths are classified as a lobe-finned fish. This means that the flouncy part of the fins are attached to a stalk that projects out from their body. It actually looks like a paddle with a fin attached to the end.  

Casey: That sounds like a limb…..and a fin.

Kiersten: Yes, I agree. Maybe we can agree that we’re both right?

Casey: I can do that. Did you know that some lungfish, who are also a lobe-finned fish, actually use their fins to walk on land when they need too? If the vernal pond they are living in becomes too shallow, they can use their limbs to drag themselves across the land to another water source. Essentially they use their limbs to walk to another pond.

Kiersten: I guess it really is both a limb and a fin. Speaking of limbs, I just read a research paper, from way back in the early 2000’s, that stated a coelacanth fossil actually helped scientists understand the evolution from fins to limbs in tetrapods. Tell us little about that.

Casey: I can! What you’re talking about is called evolutionary classification which is a strategy that we tend to use now instead of taxonomy which only looks at physical attributes. Evolutionary classification is grouping organisms together based on their evolutionary history. So, we’re looking at lines of evolutionary descent not just physical characteristics. These lines are called cladograms and they look like trees. They branch off at each different change. So, the cladogram where it’s branching off to tetrapods, which is a four limbed vertebrate, is where their is a bit of a controversy involving the coelacanth.

We are tetrapods. We may walk on two legs but we have four limbs. The big debate is whether the kingfish or the coelacanth is the direct ancestor of tetrapods. Now remember we said lungfish walk on their limbs to get to the next vernal pond. That is where the debate is coming from. I’d like to say there is an answer to this debate but there are three different cladograms and only one of them has the coelacanth as the direct ancestor to the tetrapod.

Kiersten: Is it descendent or ancestor?

Casey: It’s ancestor. 

Kiersten: Okay. Because we’re all tetrapods, right?

Casey: Right, but we would be a descendant of a coelacanth. Now I’m not talking like you grandmother or anything.

Kiersten: (laughs)

Casey: I’m talking millions of years ago. So coelacanths or lungfish would be the ancestors of tetrapods.  One version has the coelacanth as the direct ancestor, while another version has the lungfish as the direct ancestor, and the last version has both of them at the same branching. So, no solution to this debate as of yet. They’ve narrowed it down to these three options. No mater how you look at it though the coelacanth is Number 1 or Number 2. 

Kiersten: So, he’s still winning. (Laughs)

Casey: (laughs) Yes! He’s still winning. He still in the trifecta. Either way it’s still in the positive.

Kiersten: That is interesting! That’s why I picked you for this podcast! I knew you’d understand that and be able to explain it better than me! Thanks for helping me talk about the coelacanth appendages today Casey.

Casey: You’re welcome. I had a lot of fun!

Kiersten: Me too! And I think we both agree that coelacanth appendages are both limbs and fins.

Casey: I agree!

Kiersten: Well that is it for this episode, listeners. I hope you enjoyed a little debate about coelacanth appendages because it’s my eighth favorite thing about them.

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another episode about the coelacanth.  

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: Coelacanth reproduction is the most mind-blowing episode yet! Join Kiersten as she digs deep into the life cycle of this ancient animal.

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

Show Notes: 

Anatomy: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/fish/anatomy.html

Vims Fish Collection: Coelacanth, https://www.vims.edu

Goliath Grouper - https://marinesanctuary.org

“New Scale Analysis reveal centenarian African coelacanths,” Kelig Made, Bruno Ernande and Marc Herbin, Current Biology 31, 3621-3628, August 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.05.054

“Latimeria, the Living Coelacanth, Is Ovoviviparous,” by c. Lavett Smith, Charles S. Rand, Bobb Schaeffer, and James W. Ate. Science, 12 Dec 1975, Vol 190, Issue 4219, pp1105-1106; https://doi.org/10.1126/science.190.4219.1105

“‘Living fossil’ fish surprises scientists with 100-year lifespan,” by Thomson Reuters. Science, https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/coalacanth-fossil-1.6074328

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This episode continues the coelacanth series and the seventh thing I like about them is how they reproduce.

Strap in for this one listeners because this is the most mind-blowing episode of the coelacanth so far! 

There are so many unbelievable facts about coelacanth reproduction I almost don’t know where to start, but I have to start somewhere, so let’s start with their maturation age. 

Coelacanths are large fish averaging about five feet long with some individuals reaching six feet. With most large animals it takes some time to become mature enough to reproduce. For example, it takes elephants approximately ten years before they are ready to reproduce, blue whales, the largest animal alive today, mature around 15 years old, and Goliath groupers, a fish that can reach almost 8 feet in length, mature at about 20 years old. The coelacanth is no exception to this trend but they push it even farther than these three examples. A coelacanth becomes sexually mature at 55 years of age. That is an awful long time to survive before you can make more coelacanth. 

When coelacanths are ready to reproduce, a mate must be chosen. We don’t know what goes into this decision because we have not seen coelacanths copulating, yet. We don’t know what females look for in a mate, we don’t know if there is a mating ritual that males perform to attract females. We do know that most likely females choose the male and allow him to mate with her because fertilization is internal in coelacanths. I say this because other males of species that have internal reproduction or internal fertilization have various behaviors to attract females to them. The females pick the males that impress them most based on established criteria such as feather color, winning a fight with another suitor, or singing the best song. 

We’re already off to an unusual start because most scaled fish reproduce externally by laying eggs with males fertilizing the eggs after they are laid. Internal fertilization in fish such as sharks and rays is common but not so much in scaled fish.

We do know with some certainty that coelacanths are probably monogamous. In a scientific paper published in 2013, researchers genetically studied two clutches of coelacanth eggs and their mothers. Both coelacanth females were Latimeria chalumnae, the African Coelacanth. One female had 26 embryos and the other had 22 embryos. Both clutches appeared to be close to birth when the females were caught and perished. Let’s call the females with 26 embryos Clutch 1 and the female with 22 embryos Clutch 2. Results revealed that all the young of clutch 1 had four genotypes present. These were contributed by two individuals. The same results were reported for clutch 2. What exactly does this mean? It means only one male contributed his genetic material to the embryos. It was a different male for each female, but only one male contributed to the embryos. It’s an extremely small sample size, but this leads us to believe that coelacanths are monogamous. The females, at least, may only mate with one male at a time. 

Coelacanths are classified as ovoviviparous. For those of you who have listened to my caecilian series and remember the reproduction episode, you already know that ovoviviparous animals give live birth to animals that they incubate inside an egg that remains inside the female during development. This is what the coelacanth does. Now, you might be wondering how we know this since so much about their reproduction is still unknown. And that’s a great question, how do we know? 

In 1975, a gravid female was caught and upon dissection at the American Museum of Natural History, researchers found five young developing inside the oviduct of the coelacanth. These five young were attached to large yolk sacs. Since then other gravid females have been caught, as well, and dissection of these specimens has supported the findings of 1975. The female with 26 young in her oviduct appears to be the largest clutch discovered so far. 

Coelacanth eggs are pretty big. They are approximately 3 1/2 inches in diameter. Compare that to the average chicken egg at a diameter of 1 1/2 inches and you get a feel for how big their eggs get. When the young are born they are around 12 inches in length and they look like tiny versions of their parents. How long does it take a 3 1/2 inch egg to become a 12 inch fish? Probably longer than you think. 

Coelacanth females carry the young for up to five years. This is the longest gestation period of any animal that we are aware of at the recording of this podcast. Some species of sharks carry the young for three years. The coelacanth has them beat and it also explains why their eggs are so large. They need a good, long-lasting source of nutrition to develop properly. 

Once the young are born, we lose track of them. With the research we’ve been able to do with live coelacanths, we haven’t seen any young hanging around with adults so we assume that they must retreat to another habitat. There could be many reasons for this. They are much smaller than a full grown adult so they presumably eat different prey which means they could need a different environment in which to hunt. They might be escaping from their own parents territory because mom and dad might eat them. They may even move to higher depths or lower depths until they are much larger in size. Whatever the reason we have not seen any juvenile coelacanths, so for now their whereabouts remain a mystery.

The last thing we know about coelacanth reproduction is how long they live. For many years we thought they lived about 20 years and that they were extremely fast growing, but a study released in 2021 changed that. 

One way to determine a fish's age is to count the rings on their scales. Initial studies of coelacanth scales suggested a 20 year life span, but using a new technique involving polarized light researchers were able to see all the rings on the scales. The new data revealed that coelacanths can live up to 100 years. 100 years! This is also the study that determined they become sexually mature at 55 and they have a gestation period of five years. Who knew the rings on a fish’s scales could tell us so much?

That’s all for coelacanth reproduction. I still can’t get over all the amazing things I learned researching this episode and I know you are just as intrigued because it’s my seventh favorite thing about coelacanths. 

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another episode about the coelacanth.  

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: How does this deep sea fish find food? Just like everything else with the coelacanth, it’s fascinating! Join Kiersten as she explains how the coelacanth hunts and what it likes to eat. 

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

Show Notes:

“The coelacanth rostral organ is a unique low=resolution electro-detector that facilitates the feeding strike,” by Rachel M. Berquist, Vitaly L. Galinsky, Stephen M. Kajiura, and Lawrence R. Frank. Scientific Reports 5, #8962 (2015) https://doi.org/10.1038/srep08962

“The first direct evidence of a Late Devonian coelacanth fish feeding on conodont animals,” by Michel Zaton, Krzysztof Broda, Martin Qvarnstrom, Grzegorz Niedzweidzki and Per Erik Ahlberg. The Science of Nature 104, #26 (2017), https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-017-1455-7

Anatomy: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/fish/anatomy.html

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This episode continues the coelacanth and their diet and how they hunt is the sixth thing I like about them.

If you remember from episode two, Anatomy, coelacanths have what is called a rostral organ. This organ is believed to help them detect electric fields in their environment. Why do they need to detect electric fields? I love this question, listeners, and I’m proud of you for asking it! Some fish have the ability to detect weak, low frequency electric fields produced by living tissue that is in contact with water. These fish typically have some kind of electrosensitive organ that detects the electric fields and these fish tend to be meat eaters. See where I’m going with this?

The electric fields that living creatures give off is how the coelacanth finds its food. Let’s delve into the details of their rostral organ and see how this thing works.

Most fish with an electrosensitive organ that have been studied have complex labyrinths of hundreds to thousands of sensory canals. These canals are distributed throughout both the top and bottom of the head and are also often found around the mouth. These canals are typically arranged in clusters that are reminiscent of a directional antenna. All of the canals connect to an electrosensitive organ. The layout of the canals allows the fish to sense other animals near it from several different directions. This can help them find food, recognize conspecifics, or detect predators when they are at close range. Every animal’s electric field will be different and our fish can use those differences to discriminate between the animals near them. 

The coelacanth’s rostral organ is an electrosensitive organ but, just like everything else we’ve learned about so far, it’s not quite like other fish’s. To discover more about this organ, a team of scientists used an MRI machine on a preserved specimen of Latimeria chulumnae to get a good look at it. What they found was slightly unexpected but explained a few things that we’ll talk about in just a moment. 

The rostral organ of the coelacanth has only three sensory canals, as opposed to hundreds or thousands seen in other extant species of fish. These canals are called tubules and they are all restricted to a small area of the upper snout. They also have no electroreceptors connected to the lower surface of the snout or lower jaw. Seeing the smaller scope and size of the rostral organ, the researchers asked what good is it really doing the coelacanth. 

Using the 3D images they got with the MRI, they approximated the sensitivity of each tubule which allowed them to estimate the range of the rostral organ. What they found was that the coelacanth can only detect animals directly in front of their snout. Their rostral organ is only a low-resolution electro-detector so they do not get any complex information from the electric fields they detect and the field must be very close to them.

This makes them unique in living fishes that use electrosensory organs to detect prey because they cannot track the prey items movements. They have to wait until the prey is practically in their mouths before they sense them. Remember I said this studies’ findings explained something about the coelacanth, well the is it. It explains why they hunt the way they hunt.

When we first developed technology that allowed us to study live coelacanths in situ, we noticed a strange behavior. Sometimes coelacanths would drift along in a current with their heads down and their tails up, essentially in a headstand posture. We had no idea what was going on, until someone saw them snatch a fish. This is the way coelacanths hunt. 

It’s called drift hunting and it’s a passive way of hunting. The fish just floats along with the current of the water and waits for the right prey to come along. Then BAM!, dinner is served. This explains why their rostral organ is so focused on the snout region of their body. 

Once the coelacanth’s rostral organ indicates that an appropriate prey item has approached within 10 to 20 centimeters in front of its mouth, it snatches it out of the water. The specific feeding mechanism of the coelacanth is called suction-inhalation. I don’t think that really needs too much explanation. They suck their food into their mouth along with large amounts of water. This does explain why the coelacanth has such a large mouth. If you’re sucking your prey in whole, you want to have a big mouth. 

Coelacanths have well-developed protrusible jaws that are capable of great forward motion. Their extremely muscular lower jaw also contributes to their powerful suction-inhalation. They also have an expandable gular structure, under the chin, that helps increase the power and gape of the mouth. The intracranial joint that coelacanths have retained, while other species of fish have lost it through millennia of evolution, may also help with the flexibility of the head which in turn helps with mobility of the jaws.

This suction-inhalation does allow them to hunt animals that other fish of their size cannot reach. Researchers have seen coelacanth suck animals out of hidey holes in craggy canyon walls. And this method of cap ture is fast! It takes only a second for the coelacanth to inhale a prey item.

Inside the mouth, coelacanths do have three types of teeth. It does not appear that they use the teeth for grinding or shredding their food. It is more likely the teeth are there to prevent prey from escaping their giant maw.

Now that we know how coelacanth find their prey, what kind of prey are they looking for? This is a good episode for great questions, listeners. Y’all are on a roll today!

Coelacanths are classified as piscivores. Pisces is the Latin word for fish, but those of you born between February 19th and March 20th already knew that!  So a piscivore is an animal that eats fish. Coelacanth are not terribly picky about what they eat and their diet can include cuttlefish, squid, octopus, snipe eels, small sharks, and other benthic fishes. So, essentially whatever fits in their mouth. 

It appears they’ve been eating like this since the beginning of their time on earth. In a research paper published in 2017, the first direct evidence of a coelacanth eating eel like animals was discovered in the digestive tract of a fossilized specimen found in Poland. The coelacanth came from the Late Devonian period and a remnant of the eel was found preserved in the digestive tract. They also found coprolite, fossil poop, possibly from the coelacanth with the same remnants inside. We can’t know how these coelacanths hunted their food but we can now say that they’ve been eating the same kind of food for quite some time. 

In 2000, researchers looked at where coelacanths hunted, how abundant prey items were where they hunted, and how much food they might be eating.

They found that coelacanths hunted between 650 feet and 1300 feet below the surface of the water. They also measured prey density in relation to depth which increased as you descended deeper. I was a bit surprised by that actually. I thought there would be less prey as you moved further down. Maybe I need to do another series on some deep-sea wildlife.

They also estimated how much food the coelacanths were eating during each hunting session. Assuming the individuals studied were 100% successful on each hunt, medium-sized individuals were consuming about 122 grams of food and large females were consuming 299 grams of prey. Doesn’t seem like a lot considering an average sized Gala apple weighs between 150 to 250 grams. Although, an apple a day…right?

That’s all for this episode on the coelacanth. I hope you found their hunting behavior and their diet as fascinating as I did because it is my sixth favorite thing about them. 

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another episode about the coelacanth.  

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: Is the coelacanth a ‘living fossil’? Join Kiersten and a guest co-host as they discuss this controversial topic.

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

Show Notes:

‘Coelacanths as “almost living fossils”’ by Lionel Calvin and Guillaume Guinot, Front. Ecol. Evol., 13 August 2014, https://www.frontiersin.org

“Resolving the Phylogenetic Position of Coelacanth: The Closest Relative Is Not Always the Most Appropriate Outgroup”, by Naoko Takezaki and Hidenori Nishihara, Genome Bill Evil, 2016Apr; 8(4): 1208-1221, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201200145#sec1-3-title

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This episode continues the coelacanth and the controversy about whether they are a living fossil or not is the fifth thing I like about this ancient animal.

Today I have a guest cohost joining me, my friend Casey. Thanks for joining me Casey.

Casey: You’re welcome. Thanks for having me.

Kiersten: Casey and I have known each other for a long time. We met as zookeepers 18 years ago and became friends very quickly. Today Casey is a biology teacher and when she found out I was doing this podcast she was excited to help me.

Casey: I excited to talk about the coelacanth.

Kiersten: When the coelacanth was first rediscovered in 1938 by the Marjorie Courtaney-Latimer in East London, South Africa people immediately began calling it a “living fossil” with quotations because this fish had not been seen by modern humans expect in fossils. Today there is a big controversy over whether the living coelacanths actually qualify as a “living fossil.” Guess we should start off with a definition of “living fossil.”

Casey: Yes. One of the controversies is that there isn’t a real definition of living fossil. 

Kiersten: Ah! I could see how that could be a problem, but I thought Darwin had defined living fossil back in 1859.

Casey: He coined the term but it’s not really a scientifically accepted word. It’s just not measurable in scientific terms.

Kiersten: Okay, but I think we should let my listeners know what it is and so they can follow along. According to Darwin’s definition a living fossil is a species or group of species that is so little changed that it provides an insight into earlier, now extinct, forms of life. 

Casey: It can also be described as an organism that has remained relatively unchanged over millions of years, or one that has no, or very few, close surviving relatives.

Kiersten: Well that certainly sounds like the coelacanth to me!

Casey: Me too! But not all scientists agree. 

Kiersten: I’ve heard of some researchers using RNA sequencing to determine whether they are living fossils. Can you explain this?

Casey: Certainly….You have to think about when the coelacanth was first discovered. In 1938 we didn’t have a way to sequence genetics. Even in the 1990’s when the second specimen was found we still didn't have the technology that we do now. We know now that the coelacanth have been changing internally all this time even if they still look very similar on the outside to fossil coelcanths.

Kiersten: Okay, so comparing this to Darwin’s definition, they may look the same on the outside but on the inside they are different. Genetically speaking.

Casey: Yes. And looking at the second definition that I gave, once the second species was found in 1998 it voids that definition. There are now two related species or close surviving relatives.

Kiersten: So we can’t call the coelacanth a living fossil any more. That’s kind of sad.

Casey: I think so too! It’s a neat phrase to use but not necessarily the best. 

Kiersten: Let’s recap. The coelacanth looks physically the same because maybe the habitat is the same as years ago, and they do not need to change physically because their habitat is basically the same.

Casey: Correct, that could be one of the reasons. What they have seen geographically they haven’t seen much change on their habitat. Now. I’m not saying that their hasn’t been pollution or other similar changes but there have been no changes that cause them to change physically. Molecule or genetic changes are a different story. What scientists are looking at are RNA changes. 

Kiersten: Okay. We hear a lot about DNA, not so much about RNA. What’s the difference?

Casey: DNA is deoxyribonucleic acid while RNA is ribonucleic acid. They are looking at RNA to determine where coelacanth fall on the phylogenetic trees.  Who are they more closely related to and such. The RNA changes are helping them determine that.

Kiersten: So, internally we have some changes but externally not so much. 

Casey: Yes.

Kiersten: Thanks, Casey for this interesting debate and explaining RNA and living fossil research on the coelacanth! 

Casey: Thank you for having me. I think coelacanths and their history are extremely interesting.

I hope you all enjoyed this look into the living fossil debate because it’s my fifth favorite thing about the coelacanth.

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another episode about the coelacanth.  

If you’ve heard any strange noises on today’s episode, that’s Edison, Casey’s dog who joined us today, as well. 

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: What are those coelacanth doing in the deep water of the ocean? Join Kiersten as she discusses some of the coelacanth’s behavior.

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

Show Notes:

 Coelacanth, Smithsonian, https://ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/fish/coelacanth

“New Insights About the Behavioral Ecology of the Coelacanth Latimeria chalumnae Video Recorded in the Absence of Humans Off South Africa” by Jiro  Sakaue, Kazuhiko Maeda, Micheal J. Miller, Ryuichi Sakai, Koh-ichi Tahara, Hideki Abe, Kazuya Made, and Hitoshi Ida, Front. Mar. Sci., 10 November 2021, https://www.frontiersin.org

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This episode continues coelacanths and the fourth thing I like about this enormous fish is their behavior.

Once again, I’m going to  state that we are still learning new things about the coelacanth everyday, so what I talk about in this episode is what we currently know, but the future may bring different information.

As I mentioned in the last episode, coelacanths are a deep water fish. They are typically found between 250 feet to1300 feet below the surface. We can see them using specialized scuba diving equipment called ‘rebreathers’ and by using submersibles. This technology has allowed us to study live individuals instead of the dead specimens that wash ashore or are, most often, caught as by-catch by fishermen. Because of this we know a lot about their anatomy, since many of the dead specimens have been dissected, but we don’t know as much about their behavior.

In the 1980’s studying coelacanths with deep sea vehicles became the common practice in the Comoros Island area. Between 1986 and 2009 we studied this population with submersibles and remote operated vehicles, or ROVs. Using their spot patterns we determined that this population contained approximately 300 to 400 individuals. We also observed their basic day to day pattern. 

A day in the life of a coelacanth consists of resting in caves at a depth of 500 feet to 800 feet during daylight hours. They will share caves with other coelacanths and smaller species of underwater life. The caves are carbonate caves formed during underwater volcanic eruptions. During the night, coelacanths leave the caves to hunt in even deeper waters. At least one individual was seen hunting in waters approximately 2000 feet deep. That’s a third of a mile under the surface of the water! I can’t even imagine the pressure these fish endure.

In the Fall of 2000, a few individuals were encountered by divers in another area near South Africa called Jesser Canyon. This encounter actually was the first direct contact between humans and a live coelacanth. We then began focusing on this area, as well, to study the coelacanth. Between 2002 and 2004 submersibles were used to watch this area. Here they observed 21 individuals in 16 different locations in canyons off the coast of Sodwana Bay, South Africa. These individuals were seen at depths of 300 feet to 450 feet. These studies revealed that the coelacanths in this area were traveling between two canyons, Jesser Canyon and Wright Canyon.

Research begun in 2018 wanted do something that had never been done before, study coelacanths without the influence or interference of humans. If you noticed in all the research I’ve detailed so far, the common thread was the presence of a submersible, human diver, or mobile ROV. We have no idea how these things might change the behavior of the coelacanths observed. We do know that the presence of unknown stimuli, meaning divers or ROVs, can alter the natural behavior of wild animals. 

These researchers used fixed cameras set up in a known coelacanth resting places to record the fish’s behavior without the presence of humans. They also wanted to record the ocean conditions such as temperature and current direction and velocity. To do this they placed two oceanographic recording devices near the study site. The main focus of this study was on the folding or unfolding of the first dorsal fin. 

Now you might think, wow that’s a lot of work to look at one trivial little fin,  but we’ve learned some of the most ground breaking things about animals by looking at one tiny little behavior, such as the eye movement of gorillas and the tongue flicking of snakes. This research actually shone a light on coelacanth behavior that we didn’t even know we should be looking for!

Okay, let’s take a moment to look at the iconic coelacanth image. If you haven’t yet googled the coelacanth, do so now and look at a few different photos of live coelacanths. Go ahead now, I’ll wait. Unless you’re listening to this podcast in your car. Do Not try to look up an image of the coelacanth if you are driving. Eyes on the road! 

For those of you able to safely pull up images, look at that first dorsal fin. What do you notice about it in 98% of the pictures? It’s unfolded and standing up right, correct? I’m actually looking at the cover of the book A Fish Caught in Time by Samantha Weinberg right now and the first dorsal fin is erect in the illustration of the coelacanth on the cover.

Up until the 2018 research project, we thought this was just how the coelacanth naturally carried this fin. Now we did know they were capable of folding it up and down and we assumed this fin was used for stabilization during swimming. We might have been wrong about that. According to the data collected in the absence of human interaction, the dorsal fin raises when the coelacanth encounters a stressor. 

In this research it was a sand tiger shark. They got great video of a coelacanth and a sand tiger shark in the same cave during the day. The shark showed no antagonistic behavior toward the coelacanth but while the shark was in the cave with the coelacanth, that first dorsal fin was raised. When the shark left the cave, the fin relaxed. They were other species of fish in the cave with the coelacanth as well and the fin was lowered while they were present. 

This sand tiger shark was larger than the coelacanth and might have posed a threat to the coelacanth. There isn’t any evidence that sand tiger sharks eat coelacanths but when you’re a potential prey item you’re not going to ask the shark if they going to eat you, you’re going to take action. Raising the dorsal fin may be a way for the coelacanth to look bigger and ward off predators. This type of behavior has been well documented in other species of fish.  

This observation floored me. It means that the presence of humans and ROVs is considered stressful to the coelacanth and our presence was probably changing the behaviors we observed. If we want to know more about them, we’re going to have to come up with some unobtrusive methods of observation. 

This research also studied temperature and currents near where the coelacanth were seen. Does this impact their behavior? It was observed that the coelacanth were present in the caves when the temperature of the water was between 59 degrees Fahrenheit and 71 degrees Fahrenheit. This has been seen in past research, as well. The researchers postulated that this is the optimal range for oxygen uptake in the coelacanth. The current direction was frequently southward and low in velocity when the coelacanths were seen at the study site, but more research will need to be done to determine if this is of any significance.

Wow! I don’t know about you but the coelacanth continues to amaze me. I’m glad you spent some time with me to learn about coelacanth behavior because it’s my fourth favorite thing about this ancient fish.

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another episode about the coelacanth.  

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: Where do coelacanths live? Join Kiersten as she talks about the habitat of the coelacanth.

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

Show Notes: 

A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth by Samantha Weinberg

“Madagascar may be a secret stronghold for ‘living fossil’ fish” by Stephanie Pappas, www.livescience.com

African Coelacanth, NOAA Fisheries, www.fisheries.noaa.gov

Coelacanth, Smithsonian, https://ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/fish/coelacanth

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This episode continues the coelacanth and their habitat is the third thing I like about this amazing animal.

We are still learning more and more about the coelacanth everyday. And one of the things we’re still learning about is their habitat. Where exactly do these behemoths live? The information I’ll give you in this episode is what we know to date, but the future could show us something different.

When the coelacanth was discovered off the coast of South Africa eighty-five years ago we had no idea where it came from, but we did know where it was caught. The fisherman caught it off the coast of South Africa in the Indian Ocean at a depth of forty fathoms, or 240 feet. We didn’t see another one until 1952. This one was caught near the Comoros Islands which is off the southeastern coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean. Now we had an idea of where we might find more.

It wasn’t until later that researchers went to the islands and talked to the native islanders asking about this giant fish. (Quick note here, we should do more of this. Native inhabitants of areas that others explore know a lot about local wildlife. Why reinvent the wheel when you have so much information right in front of you, if you are just willing to listen?) Now, back to the coelacanth. Locals of the Comoros Islands were familiar with the coelacanth and had even eaten them in the past. Focusing on this area, several more coelacanth were found.

In 1998, more coelacanth were discovered in Indonesia, half a world away. The question was how did they get there? Did they migrate? Do they do that seasonally? Did a few get lost? Did they get washed away in a storm? Or have they been there this whole time?  Turns out, they’d been there the whole time.

When the Indonesian coelacanth was discovered, scientists performed DNA tests to see if they were related to the African coelacanth or possibly a new species. Once again these ancient fish surprised us, the two populations were indeed two separate species. According to research available at the recording of this episode it looks like these two species may have evolved separately.

The African coelacanth’s scientific name is Latimeria chalumnae and the Indonesian coelacanth’s scientific name is Latimeria menadoensis. I mention this because they were named after Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer the discoverer of the first specimen in 1938 and I think it’s wonderful that this woman of science gets props for her discovery. 

Before we get into where exactly these fish are found around the global let’s talk about at what depths they are found. This first specimen found in 1938 was caught by fisherman at a depth of 40 fathoms or 240 feet. For quite some time we thought this deepwater depth is where they lived.  But we now know that they actually inhabit, mesopelagic waters, also known as the “twilight zone”, that reach depths of 650 feet to 1,300 feet. That’s a lot deeper that we thought or ever expected. We’re not sure why the original specimens were caught in the shallower depths, but they could have been hunting or they could have been ill and unable to control their swim bladders properly and floated up into shallower depths. More recent sitings of both species have been between 300-500 feet deep, so obviously these fish are doing something important at these depths. Now that we know at what depths the coelacanth can be found let’s look at where in the world we can find them.

Let’s investigate the habitat of the African coelacanth, Latimeria chalumnae, first. These coelacanth are found in the Indian Ocean near the coasts of southeastern Africa, Madagascar, and the Comoros. The first one found in 1938 was caught off the coast of South Africa but after that no more were seen in the area. More specimens were found near the Comoros islands, that are situated between Madagascar and the east coast of Africa, in the 1950s so it was thought that the first one found in 1938 was a stray individual from the Comoros area. But when diving technology advanced, divers using “rebreathers” which allow to you dive deeper underwater than typical scuba gear, and later on researchers using submersibles, saw resident individuals in South African waters. Specimens have been caught off the coast of Madagascar  and off the coast of Mozambique and Kenya.

Latimeria menadoensis, also known as the Sulawesi coelacanth is from Indonesia. Two specimens were caught off the island of Manado Tua at the northeastern tip of Sulawesi. Later two more were sighted 225 miles southwest of this island. 

In both regions, coelacanth inhabit temperate waters near steep rocky slopes of volcanic islands. In the daytime, the Comoran coelacanths can be found clustered together in caves in submarine lava deposits. In the evenings they venture out to hunt. The two individuals observed from a submersible in Indonesia were seen in a deep carbonate cave at a depth of 500 feet. Both species seem to depend on caves, canyons, and cliff ledges for almost all aspects of their life. Sleeping during the day and hunting at night seem to be done in and around these structures. 

in 2021 researchers found evidence that Madagascar might be an unknown haven for coelacanths. In a new review of Madagascar fishery bycatch, 34 specimens were confirmed to be coelacanths. These catches have never been reported to scientists or conservationists before now. This indicates that coelacanth may be living off the coast of Madagascar. 

When we look at the history of this large island off the coast of Africa, it could be completely possible. Coelacanth are actually older than the island of Madagascar by about 330 million years, but Madagascar has had a coast line for around 88 million years; whereas, the Comoros Islands is only 15 million years old. Based on this history and recent bycatch reports, researchers think that Madagascar might be their ancestral home. More research will need to be done to find out if this is true, but it just one more thing that adds to the mystery of the coelacanth.

I am so glad you went deep sea diving with me today to learn about the habitat and species of the coelacanth because it’s my third favorite things about them.

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another episode about the coelacanth.  

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: Join Kiersten as she takes you on a surprising journey from the head of the coelacanth to the tail. 

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

Show Notes: 

A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth by Samantha Weinberg

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/fish/anatomy.html

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This episode continues the coelacanth and their anatomy is the second thing I like about this ancient animal.

In the first episode we established that the coelacanth is a fish, so the anatomy should be like fish anatomy, right? Maybe, but this fish has been around for 400 million years and from comparisons between living specimens and fossils, they don’t seem to have changed much at all. So the coelacanth has some anatomical surprises that other fish do not possess.

Let’s start at the head of the coelacanth and work our way back. In the center of the snout there is a large jelly-filled cavity. It’s called the rostral organ. Scientists initially thought this might be an electrosensory organ for detecting weak electrical impulses given off by prey. This hypothesis was supported by examining the organ’s intricacies including nerves and how it interacted with the brainstem. When submersible exploration became available to scientists, we were able to test this on a living coelacanth. Using electrical fields, researchers confirmed that coelacanths do indeed respond to electrical fields under water. There is no other vertebrate, that we know of, alive today that has a rostral organ. So we’re already off to an interesting start. Let’s see what else the coelacanth has that other animals may not!

Moving to the mouth we find teeth. That’s not entirely unique in fish that eat other fish and the coelacanth is a carnivore. They have three different shapes of teeth, one is a high, sharp cone-shaped tooth that could be called a fang, the second is a midsized, sharp cone-shaped tooth, and the last is a small rounded tooth.  What is unique to the coelacanth is that the small rounded teeth are embedded in a bony dental plate that lies beneath their chin. We’re not entirely sure what the advantage of having a dental plate gives the coelacanth. In general, the teeth seem more like a way to keep fish in the mouth once they are sucked in versus tearing or chomping on their prey.

The eyes are just above the mouth and they are attached to thick optic nerves. The eyes are large. I’d say they are in proportion to their body and they are a five foot long fish, so…large eyes. Each eye does have a few cones, which allows for color vision, but they many rods, which help detect light. This is perfect for the coelacanth because they live deep under water where there is very little light available. The rods help them see in almost near darkness.  

They also have something else that helps them see in the dark and this is a layer behind the retina of the eye called the tapetum lucidum. If you’ve ever seen light flash in your cat’s eyes at night, you’re seeing the tapetum lucidum. This layer acts like a mirror reflecting the light that comes into the eyes back out of the eye to increase the amount of light that passes over the retina. This enhances the coelacanth’s ability to see in low light.

Just behind the eye toward the top of the head is the intracranial joint. Until we rediscovered the coelacanth this joint had only been seen in fossils of primitive fish. This joint allows the coelacanth to open its mouth exceptionally wide to swallow fish and other prey. Two powerful muscles cross the intracranial joint providing strength to the coelacanth’s jaws. The coelacanth is the only fish alive that still has an intracranial joint. 

Just under this joint and near the eye is the brain. The brain is small. It takes up only 1.5% of the brain case in mature adults. In a 90 lbs coelacanth the brain weighs less than a tenth of an ounce. That’s a pretty tiny brain. There is no extant vertebrate with this much of a difference between the size of the brain and the size of the body. Although, they have been alive for 400 million years so it must be working. 

Coelacanths do have gills like other species of living fish and they are located behind the eye in the usual place that you find fish gills. They are relatively small in comparison to the overall body size, but they are similar to other fish species found at the same depth as the coelacanth. The relatively small surface area of the lungs is indicative of a slow-moving fish as opposed to an active fish. All the evidence we have to date does show that the coelacanth is a relatively slow-moving fish. When you’re a five foot long fish, you take your time getting places.

This large fish is covered in scales and those scales are woven tightly together like armor. I think that seems appropriate for such an ancient animal. The scales are hard and rough to the touch. Each scale has tiny, tooth-like spikes called denticles all over the surface which creates the roughness. The hard scales and denticles provide protection against predators and rocks. The scales are a beautiful steely-blue color with random white spots throughout. The pattern of the spots is unique to each individual and scientists have used that to their advantage. Researchers use the spots like name tags to identify individual coelacanth.

The fins of this fish are quite spectacular. They have six fins that are lobed and this puts them into a group of fish known as the lobed-finned fish. Lungfish and coelacanth are both included in this group.  What’s the difference between a lobed fin and a normal fin? Great question! Lobed fins are fins that are attached to stalks that project out from the body rather than fins that are attached directly to the body. They look kind of like paddles sticking out from the side on the animal. The coelacanth has six lobed fins, one on each side just behind the gills called pectoral fins (2), one on each side of the pelvis called pelvic fins (4), one small secondary dorsal fin on the top of the body (5), and one anal fin on the underside of the body before the tail (6). 

Overall the coelacanth has seven fins, not including the tail. The first dorsal fin is the only non-lobed fin. It’s larger than the other fins and attaches directly to the body. It can be raised and lowered to change its surface area.

We call the coelacanth a vertebrate because it has an internal skeleton which usually implies that it has vertebrae or bones of the spine. Once again the coelacanth surprises us. They have a notochord in place of a bony spine. A notochord is a thick-walled, fibrous, and elastic tube that is filled with oil. This is what the coelacanth has in place of a bony spine. Most creatures with a backbone replace the notochord with vertebrae in the embryonic stage. But adult coelacanth use the notochord for their longitudinal support.

Like almost all other fish species,  the coelacanth has a swim bladder. Fish use the swim bladder to maintain buoyancy in the water. Most fish use air to inflate the swim bladder and they are able to modify the amount of air depending on the depth in which they wish to swim. I bet you didn’t see this coming but…, the coelacanth’s swim bladder is not filled with air! Okay, maybe you did see that coming. The coelacanth’ s swim bladder is filled with oil and fat, but it works the same as the air filled bladder, helping maintain buoyancy. 

That brings us to the end of the fish, also known as, the tail. Hopefully, you’ve listened to the first episode of this series where I talk about the rediscovery of the coelacanth, if not definitely check it out. When Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer rediscovered the coelacanth in 1938, she described the tail as looking like a “puppy dog tail.” The tail is actually divided into three sections with a small tail fin in the middle. The tail is flat and powerful giving the coelacanth the ability to dart forward forcefully when catching prey or escaping predators. The tail can rotate and flex from side to side and is thought to help the fish with trim and balance.

That is all I have for coelacanth anatomy. Thanks for joining me on this head to tail adventure because it’s my second favorite thing about the coelacanth.  

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another episode about the coelacanth.  

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: In 1938 something amazing happened in a small town off the eastern coast of South Africa. Join Kiersten as she reveals the unbelievable story of how the coelacanth, a fish thought extinct for millions of years, was rediscovered. 

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

Shoe Notes: 

A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth by Samantha Weinberg

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This episode begins a new series about an animal thought to have been extinct since the time of the dinosaurs, but as this episode will show the coelacanth has been here all along and this is the first thing I like about them.

We’ll begin with the unbelievable story of the rediscovery of this amazing animal.

Let me set the scene for you: It’s 1938 in the town of East London, South Africa. East London sits on the eastern coast of South Africa and harbors a bustling fishing industry. It’s a hot and humid December day and the young, female curator of the East London Museum is hustling to get her newest exhibition completed before they close for the upcoming Christmas holiday. As Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer is painstakingly assembling a rare dinosaur fossil, a startling sound shatters the peace of the museum and her concentration. It’s the ringing of the newly installed phone and she doesn’t know it yet, but it’s the sound of destiny calling. 

On the other end of the phone is the manager of the Irvin and Johnson trawler fleet. Mr. Jackson would call Marjorie when his ships came back to port with specimens that she might be interested in for the museum. This day Majorie was so stressed to get things organized before the holiday break that she almost said No, but she didn’t want to jeopardize her relationship with the shipping company manager. She decided to take a quick break and see what she could see.

She had no idea what she’d find when she stepped onto the deck of the Nerine. Over the phone Mr. Jackson had indicated that several pounds of sharks were available for her perusal. The museum didn’t need any sharks currently and Marjorie had decided that she’d most likely not take anything, but she took a look through the pile of fish on the forecastle deck anyway. She found sharks, seaweed, starfish, sponges, rat-tail fish, and many more. She carefully sorted through the pile but saw nothing she of interest which strengthened her reserve to take nothing that day. 

About halfway through she noticed a blue fin, not the usual faire, and she dug down through slime and scales to take a closer look. What she’d found was a fish, a very unusual fish.

A quote from the book A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth by Samantha Weinberg expresses the discovery in Marjorie’s own words.

“I picked away the layers of slime to reveal the most beautiful fish I had ever seen,” she recounts. “It was five feet long, a pale, mauvy blue with faint flecks of whitish spots; it had an iridescent silver-blue-green sheen all over it. It was covered in hard scales, and it had four limb-like fins and a strange little puppy dog tail. It was such a beautiful fish - more like a big china ornament - but I didn’t know what it was.” End quote.

The fisherman who stood by watching, said in thirty years of fishing he’d never seen anything thing like it. They’d caught it at a depth of forty  fathoms, 240 feet, off the mouth of the Chalumna River. When the captain of the ship first saw the catch he’d thought it so beautiful he’d almost set it free. Marjorie’s gut told her to take it. 

She and her museum assistant, Enoch, wrapped the fish in a bag and transported it back to the museum to give it a more complete inspection. It was weighed and measured and Marjorie sketched a rough picture of this puzzling fish. The specimen weighed in at 127 pounds and a voice in Marjorie’s head kept circling back to something she’d learned as a child in grade school. She’d gotten in a bit of trouble with her teacher and had to write a sentence as punishment.

‘A ganoid fish is a fossil fish.’ She had to write it twenty-five times and; therefore, never forgot the statement. Essentially it means a ganoid fish is a fish that has long been extinct and is only seen in the fossil records. (As an aside, Ganoid also refers to a type of scale that can be found in extant fishes such as bowfin, gars, paddlefish, and sturgeon.) This sentence kept running through her head as she examined the fish in front of her, but logically it could not be a ganoid fish because this was a fresh specimen caught just that morning. 

She looked through all the books she had on fish but nothing matched. She decided she must preserve the fish for future examination by someone with a bit more knowledge than herself. Preserving a five foot, 127 pound fish was not something that could be done in the museum, so she had to come up with some alternate plans. First she asked the mortuary if they’d place it in one of their lockers, since the were refrigerated. The mortician balked at storing a giant fish with the bodies of the human dead, he was worried what the town might think. Then she thought of the food storage building. It also hade refrigeration, but that was also a no go. 

Her final option was the taxidermist and he was certainly up for the challenge. Between the two of them they wrapped the humongous fish in formalin soaked towels and stored it in the taxidermist’s store. Next, Marjorie sent a letter to James Leonard Brierley Smith, a chemist lecturer at Rhodes University in Makhanda, South Africa. J.L.B. Smith was an amateur ichthyologist and acted as the honorary curator of fishes for the smaller museums along the south coast, such as the East London Museum. She asked for his help in identifying a strange fish she’d found and sent along her sketch of said fish. 

Because of the holiday, his response was delayed several days. As she waited, Marjorie checked in on her find daily. Despite all their hard work the fish was inevitably deteriorating. The taxidermist had to get to work at his trade to save any portion of the fish. Finally, an answer came back from JLB Smith. It was most likely a coelacanth. Marjorie was gobsmacked. The coelacanth was a fish thought to have gone extinct during the time of the dinosaurs. They hadn’t existed outside of a fossil for 65 million years, or so we thought. Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer’s discovery shook the scientific community.  

I hope this episode whet your appetite to learn more about the coelacanth because their rediscovery is my first favorite thing about these forgotten fish.

If you’d like to know more about Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer and the rediscovery of the coelacanth, I highly recommend the book A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth by Samantha Weinberg. It is one of my favorite non-fiction reads. 

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another episode about the coelacanth.  

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: Even though we don’t know much about caecilians they still need our help. Join Kiersten as she talks about what threats caecilians face and how we can help.

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

Show Notes: 

IUCN Red List: www.iucnredlist.org

“Fatal fungus found in third major amphibian group, caecilians,” by Natural History Museum, Phys Org; phys.org/news/2013-05-fatal-fungus-major-amphibian-group.html

Chytridiomycosis: Cornell Wildlife Health Lab: cwhl.vet.cornell.edu

Conservation Organizations:

IUCN SSC Amphibian Specialist Group: www.iucn-amphibians.org

Amphibian Ark: www.amphibianark.org

Save the Frogs: savethefrogs.com

Association of Zoos and Aquariums: www.aza.org/amphibian-conservation

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This episode concludes caecilians and the tenth thing I like about these intriguing creatures is the conservation efforts we already have under way to protect their future. 

Throughout the last nine episodes I have clearly established that we don’t know as much about these fascinating amphibians as we should considering how long they’ve been on the planet. Of course, they are fairly secretive living underground and under the water, so it’s definitely been hard to study them. Having said this, you may be wondering how do we know anything about their conservation status if we can’t get an accurate count of how many are in the wild. The answer is, we can’t, but we do have enough information on some of the species to classify them on the IUCN red list of threatened species.

As a reminder, or for the first time if you haven’t listened to any of my previous series’, the IUCN stands for International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. They list the conservation status of animals and plants from around the world. A species can be listed as data deficient, which means we don’t have enough information to make a decision on whether the population is so low that the species is in danger of disappearing, or extinct, which means all the individuals of that species have died. They no longer exist. 

There are several stages in-between data deficient and extinct. These classifications help us develop plans to help species survive the changing environment that is most often impacted by human activity.

Of the 200 species of caecilians that we know about, 193 are listed on the IUCN’s red list. 76 are listed as Least Concern which is good, that means their populations are healthy and thriving. 3 are listed as Near Threatened which is a step up from Least Concern, which means they are still okay for now but we should start including them in conservation plans. 7 are listed as Vulnerable which means they are one step away from Endangered and need help now. 16 are listed as endangered which means if efforts are not taken now we could lose this species. And 2 are listed as critically endangered which means they are a step away from extinction. That leaves 89 listed species as Data Deficient, almost half of the known species of caecilians.

Now that we have the numbers, we have to ask what is impacting caecilian populations. I think you, my listeners, may be able to guess. According to the IUCN website habitat loss is the biggest impact on caecilian populations. It’s the subtropical and tropical species that are being disturbed the most and the activities that are impacting them are all human centric activities. Non-timber agriculture is the largest pressure on the habitat in which our most endangered caecilians are found. The pesticides used in association with the agriculture is the next threat to their lives. Since they live in the ground and are dependent on mainly insects for food you can see how they would be majorly impacted by these activities.

So what exactly are we doing to help? The first thing is we’re still studying them. The more information we have about how they live and where they live the better our conservation plans. We have to know what habitat is best for them, what they eat, and how long they live to truly understand how to successfully protect them. Studying their natural history is a great tool for any conservation efforts for their future. Any students or zoologists out there listening that are looking for a species to study, maybe you can think about caecilians.

Studying animal’s in situ, which means out in their natural habitat, can be difficult. First you need to find them, then you need to catch them without harming them, then you measure everything you can possibly measure such as weight, length, color, sex, and any distinguishing characteristics such as scars or patterning. Then before you let them go you tag them with some kind of ID tag that does not harm they, so if they are captured again or seen by naturalists data can be added to their history. For example, when ornithologists catch birds they place a ring around their leg that has a number on it specific to that bird. When that bird is found again or birders report seeing the bird that information is added to their file. This helps us understand how large an animal’s home territory my be, determine migration paths, and can tell us how long they live. 

Caecilians are even more difficult than most because they choose to live underground or underwater making it terribly difficult to find them, and once they have been found we have no way of permanently tagging them. This is something scientists are still working on for further research.

The other thing we are doing is protecting their habitat by declaring swaths of land preserves or national parks. This is often done because other plants and animals in the same area need protection, too. It’s a great side effect for the caecilians.

Habitat loss is not the only thing caecilians need to worry about. Disease is another serious threat to amphibians. One of the worst diseases effecting amphibians is chytridiomycosis. This is an infectious disease caused by a fungus and has been the cause of declines or complete extinction of over 200 amphibian species. It is know to effect over 350 species of amphibians and until 2013 we thought caecilians might be safe. Chytrid fungus gets into the skin of the amphibian which is devastating because amphibians breathe and take up water through their skin. This fungus interferes with that function. An infection is almost always fatal. Because most caecilians are fossorial we had hoped they might be unaffected by chytrid but a study published in 2013 did find the fungus present in 50% of the individuals tested from the wild. This was devastating news.

For years scientists have been working on a cure for the fungus, but very little head way has been made since what kills the fungus often kills the amphibian. Putting anything in on amphibians skin is instantly absorbed into their system, so it’s a thin line between curing and killing. Some head way has been made with an ionic liquid spread on the backs of frogs but this can only be done with captive individuals and is still not 100%. To date we have no real cure for this disease. 

So what can we do to help? If you are a hiker or explorer in areas where amphibians are common, the chytrid fungus is probably found there. To prevent spread of the fungus, disinfect your clothing and gear before you use them again at another site and do not transport amphibians of any kind from one habitat to another.  

On that note, if you are a hobbyist that likes to have amphibians as household pets, including caecilians, be sure you’re not getting your animals from illegal harvesting companies. Trapping for pet trade in another reason our amazing amphibians, including our caecilians, are disappearing. Make sure you’re patronizing a responsible person who sells only animals born in captivity.

For more on what you can do to help caecilians and other amphibians in the wild, check out my show notes where I have a few great organizations listed.

That’s it for caecilians! Thank you for joining me on this journey through caecilian behavior. I know I had an amazing trip and I think you did too. Conservation efforts for caecilians is my tenth favorite thing about this mysterious amphibian. 

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me in two weeks when we’ll talk about an animal thought extinct since the time of the dinosaurs until it was rediscovered alive and well in 1938! 

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: In this episode Kiersten and a guest host talk about a few things we know only a little bit about, such as caecilian origins and how they communicate.

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

Show Notes: 

Caecilians: An Overview https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/caecilians

“Petrified Forest Brings the Funk with the World’s Oldest Fossil Caecilian.” Park Paleontology News, Vol 15, No 1, Spring 2023. Https://www.nps.gov/aticles/000/petrified-forest-brings-the-funk-with-the-world-s-oldest-fossil-caecilian.htm

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This episode continues caecilians and the ninth thing I like about them is a bit of this and a bit of that. In this episode we’re going to talk about some of the amazing things that we only know a little bit about and my husband Georgiy will be joining me.

Hello Georgiy!

Georgiy: Hello!

Kiersten: Are you enjoying my series on caecilians?

Georgiy: Da!

Kiersten: I’m so surprised about all the amazing attributes these animals have. I think it’s my favorite research so far!

Georgiy: I’m surprised that they have lived for so long and we hardly know anything about them!

Kiersten: I agree and speaking of which. New information about their fossil history has recently been discovered!

Georgiy: Really?

Kiersten: Yes! In the Chinle Formation of the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, paleontologists have found the oldest caecilian fossils to date.

Georgiy: How old are they?

Kiersten: They are 220 million years old. More than 80 bones from the caecilian named Funcusvermis gilmorei have been found. Scientists are excited about this because it bumps the fossil record of caecilians back about 35 million years. So they are even older than we thought they were. These ancient caecilians have the two rows of teeth like modern day living caecilians but, unlike extant caecilians, they have legs and no tentacles. Finding these fossils answers a question that scientists have had for many years. Where are the Triassic Era caecilians? Now we know!

Georgiy: Does this tell us anything new about modern day caecilians?

Kiersten: Sort of. These fossils help support the hypothesis that living amphibians are more closely related to each other than any of their extinct ancestors. So frogs, salamanders, and caecilians that are alive today are more closely related to each other than their long dead ancestors. Even though modern day amphibians look and act so much different from each other.

Georgiy: That’s interesting.

Kiersten: I think so, too. You know what else is interesting?

Georgiy: What?

Kiersten: Caecilians are both terrestrial and aquatic.

Georgiy: I say again, What?

Kiersten: (laughs) I’ve mentioned this before in a few episodes but I wanted to make it very clear. Some caecilians live on land, terrestrial, and some live underwater, aquatic. The terrestrial species usually live under ground in tunnels, but some live in the thick leaf liter of the tropical forest floor.

Georgiy: Oh…I see. 

Kiersten: Good. Now to throw another curve at you, some species of caecilians live on land as adults but live under water as juveniles.

Georgiy: Whoa! How does that work?

Kiersten: As adults, some caecilian species lay eggs in an underground burrow near fresh water. When the eggs hatch the young make their way to the water where they slither in and spend their larval stage under the water.

Georgiy: How can they breathe?

Kiersten: Oh, good question! While in the egg the young developed external gills to help them breath under water. They also developed lungs so, when they become adults they loose the gills and emerge onto land where they breath air with their lungs. 

Georgiy: That’s just cool! So let me get this straight, some caecilians live their entire lives underground, some spend their entire lives underwater, and some split their lives between the water and the ground.

Kiersten: Exactly! 

Georgiy: This episode has been pretty cool.

Kiersten: But wait, there’s more! Another interesting thing about caecilians is how they communicate. 

Georgiy: Oooo! How do they communicate?

Kiersten: With chemical perception. 

Georgiy: Explain please.

Kiersten: Why certainly. Caecilians are the only amphibians with tentacles. These tentacles are on their face in-between their eyes and nose and detect chemical in the environment. Scientists believe that they also use these to communicate with each other. 

Georgiy: Do they talk to each other a lot?

Kiersten: Most caecilians appear to be solitary, so probably not, but we don’t know much about their social lives. The aquatic caecilian Typhlonectes natans uses chemical cues to find mates. They probably use their tentacles to sense pheromones. It’s highly possible that the terrestrial caecilians do the same thing. 

Georgiy: So they sniff out a good mate.

Kiersten: (laughs) Yes! There is something to be said about a nice cologne.

Well thanks for helping me out today, Georgiy.

Georgiy: You’re welcome.

Kiersten: That all I’ve got for this odds and ends episode. Thanks for joining me for this second to last episode about a little bit of this and a little bit of that about caecilians because it is my ninth favorite thing about them!

I would like to take a moment to thank a gentleman at Central Arizona College in Apache Junction, Arizona who went to great lengths to help me find information on the caecilian when I began this series. Thanks Richard, you’re the man!

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for the final thing I like about caecilians!

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary? Can ants be farmers? Join Kiersten to find out!

For my hearing impaired followers, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

Show Notes:

“Tales from the Ant World” by Edward O. Wilson

“Adventures Among Ants” by Mark W. Moffett

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

Can ants be farmers? In this episode we are going to find out. The sixth thing I like about ants is their farming abilities.

You may have heard of leafcutter ants. These are ants that cut leaves and carry them back to their colony. They are often highlighted in nature television programs. It’s mesmerizing and charming watching a line of ants traveling with various sizes of leaf pieces held above their heads. Leafcutters will fall into one of two genera: Acromyrmex and Atta. There are 39 species that we currently know of and they are all found in the New World. Atta are most prevalent in the tropics of South America but there are two species that can be found in North America, one in Texas and Louisiana and one in Arizona. 

Leafcutter ant nests can extend 7 meters, or 22 feet, into the earth and contain eight thousand chambers. The largest chamber is typically the ant waste chamber which is buried as far down as they can make it. The title of this episode is farmers so how does that relate to our leafcutter ants? Well, leafcutter ants are farmers. I used to think that they cut those little pieces of leaves to eat themselves, but that is not what they are doing. They take the leaves back to their nest where they feed it to fungus. They tend the fungus like farmers and then they eat the fungus, or rather the larvae eat the fungus. So I guess every leaf cutter ant eats the fungus at some point in their life. 

The adult workers ants eat the sap from the leaf fragments that they cut. This is what energizes them to process the leaves. The leaves have to be mulched first before it is fed to the fungus. The fungus will grow and grow and grow in the leafcutter nest. It will fill up the majority of the chambers with a lightweight spongy structure that kind of looks like a human brain and is called a fungus garden. The ants tend the fungus by adding new leaves to the top and sides while they removed the older bottom portions. 

It is unusual that ants are completely dependent on vegetation, but leafcutter ants are. The fungus is actually high in protein and that helps the larvae grow big and strong.  

The largest nest that Mark Moffett ever came across during his studies was in the Kaw Mountains of French Guiana. The above ground soil mounds were chest high and ranged over a 14 meter wide area. It ranged over about 160 square meters in total. If we compared this to a human made structure, it would be bigger than the Empire State Building in New York City. This nest probably housed millions of workers. 

A nest of this size can require an excavation of 40 tons of soil. It must house the queen, the brood, and the workers but even with millions of ants it’s the fungus gardens that take up most of the real estate. The ant population can weigh up to 15 to 20 kilograms and utilize 280 kilograms of leaves. That’s enough plant matter to blanket a soccer field.

Now, this is a lot of living things inside an enclosed space, so it gets hot and humid. To combat increasing heat and humidity which slows down fungal growth, the ants have installed air conditioning ducts. The long tunnels that open above ground are placed strategically around the nest to release humidity and heat. If it get too cold, the tunnels will be closed off. 

The only reason leafcutter ant nests can support millions of workers is because they are farmers. Just like humans, farming allows the ants to support a larger population by creating their own resources. These ants use incredibly advanced farming techniques. Humans will use various farming equipment to produce large quantities of crops, but for leafcutter ants its all hands on deck.

The ants within this species are highly polymorphic, meaning sizes between workers vary greatly depending on your job. The largest soldier ant is 200 times bigger than that of a small worker. These colonies are run like assembly lines of self-directed individuals. Many steps are managed by ants in a variety of sizes. Mid-size workers cut the foliage, carry it into the nest, and deposit it onto the garden surface. Smaller ants with 1.6 millimeter wide heads take the next step which is shredding the greens into scraps.The next step is accomplished by even smaller ants who chew up the scraps into moist pulp. Still smaller ants will insert the pulp into the gardens. Then ants with 1 mm sized heads will lick the pulp and seed it with tufts of fungus from established fungal gardens. This is just like a human horticulturist using cuttings from a vine to establish a new crop! The smallest workers with a head width of 0.8mm remove contaminants from the gardens such as bacteria, yeast and spores. 

Just like any good farmer, the ants use fertilizer to help their gardens grow. They don’t have to go far to get the fertilizer, they just poop on the leaves. The ammonia and amino acids in the feces helps breakdown the leaves and encourages growth. 

To retrieve the plant matter that grows the fungal gardens, leaf cutter ants will maintain almost permanent trails. Other species of ants trails vary depending on where they can find resources, but leafcutter ants are loyal to their grocery stores. Another caste of ants larger than the workers we have already discussed but smaller than soldiers that defend the nest are the maintenance crew for the paths. They will dismantle anything that gets in their way. They haul off debris that they can heft and chew through things they can’t. They widen and smooth out the path until traffic is flowing again. They can do this quickly as they are present on the paths at all times! Boy, don’t we all wish our highways were that well maintained!

There is still one more layer to these superhighways. Worker ants that are smaller than the ladies hauling the leaf parts home will scamper about under the plant carriers and reinforce the pheromone trails. As we discussed before, these pheromone trail are super important for ant communication. 

With all of these layers of responsibility, levels of workers, and intricate cooperation, some believe that leaf cutter ants are the gold standard of superorganisms. Quoting from Edward Wilson’s book, Tales from the Ant World, “So well-marked and powerful is the division of labor among members of a leaf colony that individual colonies can be reasonably called a superorganism.” The definition of a superorganism is an organized society that functions as an organic whole. Leafcutter ants must have every layer of worker functioning correctly to survive, any deviation and the whole organism dies. 

Edward Wilson goes on to say, “The leafcutters are superorganisms that succeed under natural conditions.”

I think we have established that ants can be farmers and very successful farmers at that! Thanks for joining me for episode six because my sixth favorite thing about ants is their ability to farm. 

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another exciting episode about ants.  

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, my very own piano playing hero.

Summary: Join Kiersten as she talks about how caecilians defend themselves against predators.

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

Show Notes: 

“Morphological Evidence for an Oral Venom System in Caecilian Amphibians,” by Pedro Luis Mailho-Fontana, Marta Maria Antoniazzi, Cesar Alenandre, Daniel Carvalho Pimenta, Juliana Mozer Sciani, Edmund D. Brodie Jr., and Carlos Jared. iScience, Volume 23. Issue 7,101234, July 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2020.101234

“Predation on Caecilians (Caecilia orientalis) by Hawks (Leucopternis princeps) Depends on Rainfall,” by Harold F. Greeney, Rudy A. Gelis, and W. Chris Funk. Herpetological Review, 2008, 39(2), 162-164. 

“Skin gland concentrations adapted to different evolutionary pressures in the head and posterior regions of the caecilian Siphonops annulatus,” by Carlos Jared, Pedro Luis Mailho-Fontana, Rafael Marquez-Porto, Juliana Mozer Sciani, Daniel Carvalho Pimenta, Edmund D. Brodie Jr., and Marta Maria Antoniazzi. Scientific Reports 8, Article number: 3576 (2018).

“This Worm-Like Amphibian May Pack a Venomous Bite,” by Alex Fox, Smithsonian Magazine, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/worm-amphibian-may-pack-venomous-bite-180975266/

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This episode continues caecilians and the eighth thing I like about these amazing amphibians is how they defend themselves.

Who are caecilians protecting themselves from? We’re aware of a few species of animals that eat caecilians. Snakes, spiders, turtles, and ants have all been reported preying on caecilians. In 2008 a surprising animal was added to this list. A group of researchers watching cameras set up to record a Barred hawk nesting site in Ecuador captured something unexpected. The parents fed their single chick many different animals including 50 individual Caecilia orientalis, a terrestrial caecilian species. Researchers are unsure how a hawk was able to find a subterranean animal easily enough to bring 50 of them to their young, but we can add these hawks to the list of caecilian predators.

So how do caecilians protect themselves from getting eaten? The first way caecilians protect themselves from predators is really a bit of a happy accident and that’s their fossorial lifestyle. Spending most of your life underground does cut down on the number of predators that can find you, although it doesn’t seem to be slowing down the Barred Hawk. Even so, evolution has given terrestrial caecilians a bit of a jump start on protecting themselves by equipping them to live underground. Aquatic caecilians spend a large amount of time close to the substrate of their chosen water source and hidden in dense plant matter, also a great place to start protecting themselves.

Caecilians do have a few other tricks up their sleeves to actively defend themselves from predators. 

But before we get to those, I want to tell you that most of the information I’ve found on this subject comes from the study of one species of caecilian, Siphonops annulatus, so it may not apply to all species of caecilians. One more I caveat need to mention is that this information is based on educated inference. Because we have not actively seen caecilians defending themselves from predators, we are making some assumptions based on the natural history of other species of animals.

Now that’s out of the way, let’s get to the really cool stuff!

Most amphibians are covered in mucus to help with oxygen transmission and disease protection, caecilians are no exception. Actually, caecilians have more mucus glands than any other amphibian. If you remember, in the locomotion episode, I mentioned that some fossorial caecilians, such as Siphonops annulatus, use their mucus to help lubricate their tunnels to make movement easier. To do this they have glands on their heads that create and release the mucus. They also have glands on their rear end and scientists assumed it was for the same reason. Not so. The gland on the rear end expels a poisonous mucus. We assume that this poison is excreted to protect them from predators that might follow them into their tunnels. 

They also tend to plug the opening of their tunnels with their rounded bums when they are sleeping or resting. A perfect way to keep a predator at bay, greet them with a face full of poison!  

Another option Siphonops annulatus has is their bite. A recent study from 2020 has shown that Siphonops annulatus may have a venomous bite! Once again this is a first for an amphibian. It’s not the first time toxins have been found in Order Amphibia. The most famous example is poison arrow dart frogs that produce poison that is excreted onto their skin. Now, they are classified as poisonous because the toxin is transferred through touch. Animals classified as venomous such as rattlesnakes and Gila monsters inject their toxin into another animal through something like fangs or teeth. Up until this recent discovery, we thought there were no venomous amphibians. 

The study found glands closely associated with this caecilian’s teeth. They found the glands in both the upper and lower jaws. These glands are the same type of glands found in certain venomous reptiles. Within the glands researchers found a combination of mucus, lipids, and proteins. The researchers isolated the cells found in the glands and discovered a similarity to oral venom glands identified in the Texas alligator lizard. As of the recording of this podcast the Texas Alligator lizard and Siphonops annulatus are not classified as venomous, but we’ll have to wait to see what future research determines.

Unlike snake venom glands there appear to be no muscles related to the glands in Siphonops annulatus to facilitate injection of poison, but the caecilian teeth are covered in mucus produced by these oral glands. This leads the scientists to believe that the venom may be secreted when the caecilian clamps it jaws down tightly on a prey item.

There needs to be more study to determine whether this substance is a toxin used to immobilize prey and if it is truly a venomous substance at all. Another purpose for this adaptation may also be as a defense against predators. Considering we’ve never seen defensive behavior in Siphonops annulatus in situ, these glands might be related to protection against predators. 

These scientists did find oral glands present in other species of terrestrial caecilians meaning that they all may have venom that they use for capturing prey and for defense. Further research needs to be done to confirm or debunk this. When they looked at some aquatic caecilians they found no oral glands, which truly intrigues researchers. 

That is all we currently know about how caecilians protect themselves from predation, but I’m sure future research will turn up even more amazing information, and I can’t wait to read about those discoveries because defense is my eighth favorite thing about caecilians. 

I want to take a moment to say hello to a young listener. Lydia, thanks for listening and I’m so glad you’re enjoying the podcast. Speaking of which…

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another thing I like about caecilians!

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: Now that we know about the existence of caecilians. Let’s talk about how caecilians make more caecilians! Join Kiersten as she walks us through the various ways caecilians reproduce.

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

Show Notes:

“The Care and Captive Breeding of the Caecilian Typhlonectes natans” by Richard Parkinson. Herpetological Bulletin, 2004, Number 88.

“Reproductive ecology of female caecilian amphibians (genus Ichthyophis): a baseline study” by Alexander Kupfer, Jarujin Nabhitabhata, Werner Himstedt. Boiological Journal of the Linnean Society, Vol 83, Issue 2, October 2004, pg 207-217.

*cool egg pictures in this paper

“Life history and reproduction of the neotropical caecilian Siphonops annulatus with special emphasis on parental care” by Carlos Jared, Pedro Luiz Mailho-Fontana, Simone G. S. Jared, Alexander Kupfer, Jacques Hubert Charles Delabie, Mark Wilkinson, and Marta Maria Antoniazzi. Acta Zoological, Vol 100, Issue 3, pg 292-302.

  Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This episode continues caecilians and the seventh thing I like about these hidden gems is how they reproduce.

When it comes to reproduction most animals will reproduce in one of three ways. If you are viviparous, you give live birth to young that have developed in your uterus. If you are ovoviviparous, you give live birth to young that have developed inside eggs that are incubated in your uterus. These young are typically born with a yolk that helps nourish the young for a few days after birth. If you are oviparous, then you lay eggs that are incubated outside the body by parental warm or substrate covering. There are animals out there that reproduce in other ways, but these are the three main ways of animal reproduction.

Caecilians use two of these reproductive techniques. Of the caecilians we know of today, they are either oviparous or viviparous. 

Let’s take a look at our oviparous species’ first. Some research has been done on species in Family Ichthyophiidae. These species lay eggs and their young go through an aquatic larval stage. The species studied in this particular research was found in Thailand and individuals were observed in the wild as well as in captivity.  It was actually one of the first times caecilians in this family had been studied in situ, which means on site in their natural habitat. Ichthyophis kohtaoensis was studied for three consecutive years and researchers discovered many previously unknown behaviors. 

When we talk about reproduction in most species, it tends to revolve around certain times of the year. Very few animals are like humans and reproduce anytime of the year. Most amphibians found in tropical areas jump into breeding mode at the start of monsoon season, so one of the first questions researchers asked is whether this would be the same for caecilians. The answer they found was a bit of yes and a bit of no. Just like other amphibians, caecilians breeding season was cyclical and revolved around the rainy season. But actual mating appeared to begin at the end of the dry season before the rains came and continued into the beginning of the rainy season. Egg laying typically happened after the rainy season had already begun.

When it comes to parental care, if there is any given, it is the female only. Ichthyophis kohtaoensis does incubate eggs for approximately three months. Toward the end of the dry season, females will begin to gain weight in anticipation of remaining in a nest to guard and incubate eggs. The average number of eggs is 37 with a range of 22-58 eggs laid in one nest. Larger females tended to have larger clutch sizes. The eggs are round and clear, so you can see the developmental stages of the young inside. The pictures they included in their  scientific paper were pretty cool!

The nest site is extremely important because the larval stage of this caecilian is spent in the water. Females will chose a site with softer substrate such as sand, loose soil beneath tree roots, and sandy clay loam under grass tufts. Every nest found was between seven to nine feet from the edge of a freshwater source. The sources were varied including standing ponds and pools, slow moving brooks and rivers, and large seasonal ponds. Once the eggs hatch the young make their way into the water and are on their own. Field studies and captive observations indicate a long larval period so the chosen body of water needs to last long enough for the young to survive through this period to adulthood.

This pattern of reproduction is only one option for oviparous species. Another pattern lengthens the parental care window and has been well studied n only one species, Siphonops annulatus. Unlike Ichthyophis kohtaoensis, the young of Siphonops annulatus do not have an aquatic larval stage. When the young of this caecilian hatch they remain in the underground nest with the mother. 

Breeding season occurs about about the same time as our previous caecilian, beginning at the end of the dry season. Females gain weight at this time and lay eggs after the rainy season has begun. This is more support for the hypothesis that caecilian reproduction is cyclical and follows the seasonal changes revolving around monsoon season because this pattern has now been seen in two species from different countries. Ichthyophis kohtaoensis is found in India and Siphonops annulatus is found in Brazil. The observations reported in the study on Siphonops annulatus were collected over a period of ten years and were gathered in situ and in captivity. 

The young of Siphonops annulatus hatch after about a month but remain in the underground nest with the mother for approximately four months. This species practices dermatophagy which means they eat skin. Specifically the young eat the outer layer of their mother’s skin. Part of the weight that the female gains before egg laying includes a thickening of the outer layer of her skin. This layer bulks up with nutritious fatty lipids that the young scrape off using special baby teeth that they lose when they leave the nest. 

In captivity, young have also been seen congregating around the mother’s cloaca, which is the orifice near the end of the tail, consuming a liquid. We don’t currently know what this substance is but it may be another nutritious liquid for the young. After four months of feeding on mom in the nest, the young will emerge into the world and be on their own. Siphonops annulatus lay fewer eggs than Ichthyophis kohtaoensis and this may be due to the intensive parental care Siphonops annulatus provides.

The last form of reproduction in caecilians is live birth and we’re going to look at one of the most well studied species of viviparous caecilians, Typhlonectes natans. Hopefully you remember from previous episodes that this species is an aquatic caecilian, living their entire lives in the water. The information about the breeding behaviors of this species comes mostly from captive specimens, so this information needs to be taken with a little grain of salt because animals always act a little different in captivity than they would in the wild. These behaviors have been in several different individuals; therefore, we feel fairly comfortable saying this is what happens in the wild. 

Once again, it appears that breeding behaviors are influenced by monsoon season, but in a slightly different way than with our egg-laying species. The dry season that comes before monsoon season is when Typhlonectes natans is triggered to begin breeding. Then the females will carry their young through the following rainy season and give birth when the next dry season begins. We have no proven information why this happens, yet, but using some inference, this pattern probably provides females with more consistent access to food while they are pregnant. They carry their young for about 10 months, so it’s important to be healthy and well fed. 

The young are born in the dry season when waters are lower and calmer. This makes it easier for them to get to the surface of the water and that is important because Typhlonectes natans must surface to breath air. The young are in danger of drowning if they can’t breath air from the surface of the water. 

While they are growing inside mom, the young scrap a secretion from the mother’s uterine wall to nourish themselves. They have small fetal teeth that help them collect these nutrients. I can’t believe there is another species of caecilian that eats its mother! 

The developing young also have gills which allows the female to pass oxygen to them in utero. When the young are born, the gills are already gone or disappear within two days. After birth the young will begin to eat small, soft invertebrates within a few days and do not rely on mom for anything. 

Females are not the only one’s involved in the reproductive process. Let’s take a quick moment, because that’s all it’s going to take, to talk about what the male contributes to the next generation of caecilians. Unlike all other amphibians, that we currently know of, caecilian reproduction is internal. Most amphibians lay eggs that are fertilized after they are laid. Caecilian males have a phallodeum which is an organ that they use to pass sperm into the female through her cloaca. No other amphibian does this. With every episode I make, these caecilians become more and more fascinating.

Whether in the water or underground, the males and females twine their bodies together aligning their cloacas up with each other. Then the male inserts his phallodeum into her cloaca and passes her his sperm. A month after mating eggs are either laid or pregnancy indicators, such as weight gain and size growth, are seen.  

All of the behaviors I talked about in this episode are based on observations of just a few species of caecilians and may not apply to other species. There is so much more we have to learn about them and hopefully we’ll be able to do that in the future.

That’s all I wrote about caecilian reproduction and I trust hope you found it as fascinating as I did because it is my seventh favorite thing about the unknown amphibian.

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another thing I like about caecilians!

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: What do these secretive amphibians eat? Join Kiersten as she takes you on a culinary journey in this episode on caecilian diet.

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

Show Notes: 

“Caecilian jaw-closing mechanics: integrating two muscle systems” by Thomas Kleinteich, Alexander Haas, and Adam P. Summers. J R Soc Interface, 2008 Dec 6: 5(29): 1491-1504. doi: 10.1098/rsif.2008.0155

“Diet of the Banana Caecilian Ichthyophis bannanicus in Mekong Delta, Vietnam” by Binh V. Ngo, Nghiep T. Hoang, and Chung D Ego. Journal of Herpetology, 48(4):506-513 (2014). doi.org/10.1670/13-113.

“Rotational feeding in caecilians: putting a spin on the evolution of cranial design” by G. John Easy and Anthony Herrel. Biology Letters (2006) 2, 485-487. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2006.0516

“Dietary Partitioning in Two Co-occurring Caecilian Species (Geotrypetes seraphim and Herepele squalostoma) in Central Africa” by M. T. Kouete and D. C. Blackburn, Integr Org Bill, 2020; 2(1). doi:10.1093/iob/obz035 

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This episode continues caecilians and the sixth thing I like about these awesome amphibians is their diet.

Our understanding of what and how caecilians eat is still evolving but we know enough to know that it is fascinating!

First, let’s talk about what they eat. Caecilians are carnivores. That means they eat meat. There have been enough studies into various species of caecilians that we have a decent idea of what prey items they tend to eat. In general they focus on invertebrates that are commonly found where they live, underground, in the leaf litter of tropical forests, and underwater. Some examples include ants, termites, earthworms, snails, and some caecilians have been recorded eating crabs, lizards, frogs, and blind snakes. Aquatic caecilians eat fish and aquatic invertebrates. You probably get the drift, if it’s an insect or small animal that lives where caecilians live and it fits in their mouth, they’ll eat it.

Since caecilians have no limbs to help them catch or stabilize prey items their jaw muscles and skulls have evolved to produce a high bite force to help prevent prey items from squiggling away. Caecilians have developed a double jaw muscle mechanism that is special to these amphibians. These muscles are different from other vertebrates because they are actually located above and below the jaw as opposed to the side of the jaw. Take a moment here and place your hands on the side of your jaw. Now open and close your mouth. What you feel moving is your jaw muscles. 

If we were able to place our hands on the sides of a caecilian’s jaw, we would not feel those muscles. Scientists think that the placement of the  muscles on the top and bottom of the skull may be due to the close confines of burrows in which the caecilians live and hunt. Whatever the reason it’s one more cool adaptations these amphibians have developed.

In the last episode we talked about the two different skull formations found in caecilians. At first thought, these differences might be due to the burrowing needs of the caecilian, but upon studying bite force and diet the different skull formations may actually be related to bite force. Caecilians who have the perforated, or zygokrotaphic, skull structure utilize the leverage from the two jaw muscles more efficiently than caecilians with the completely roofed, or stegokrotaphic, skull. What exactly does this information indicate? We’re not quite sure yet. We need more research to determine what these results may mean. For now, we’ll just have to settle for the knowledge itself.

Scientists, being the inquisitive people that they are, asked if caecilians might specialize in specific diet items. Two pieces of evidence leans us towards yes as the answer. One piece of evidence supporting this is tooth shape. Caecilains that eat mostly soft-bodied invertebrates, like earthworms, tend to have sharp curved teeth. This allows the teeth to hook into soft tissue and hold tight. Caecilians that tend to eat prey items that have a harder shell, such as snails, have flatter, pedestal style teeth. This allows them to crush and grind the hard shell. 

While we’re talking about teeth, let me toss this cool fact out there. Caecilians have two rows of teeth in their top jaw and may have one to two rows in the bottom jaw! Forgive my side trip, I just couldn’t resist telling you this fascinating fact.

The second form of evidence supporting diet specialization comes from a study done with two species of caecilians that live in the same area but in different layers of soil. Researchers analyzed the diet of Geotrypetes seraphini and Herpele squalostoma two terrestrial caecilians from Central Africa. G. seraphini lives lower in the soil and eats mostly earthworms, while mole crickets which are found higher in the soil or in leaf litter above ground dominated H. squalostoma’s diet. Now, we don’t know if the diet is dependent on where they live or if they live where their preferred diet can be found. That is a study for the future.

Caecilians just can’t stop surprising us! In another study looking at feeding  behavior of caecilians scientists discovered that these amphibians utilize  rotational feeding. What exactly is rotational feeding? Think about those nature programs you’ve seen about African animals being snatched up by a crocodile. The crocodile often catches something larger than it can swallow in one gulp and spins length wise. This behavior is used to reduce the size of a prey item so it can be easily consumed.

In this study, two species of terrestrial caecilians were observed and recorded eating. They caught both species using rotational feeding to successfully maneuver large prey items into their mouths, just like crocodiles. Unexpectedly, the researchers also observed the caecilians using rotational feeding even when they caught smaller prey items that easily fit into their mouths. So the question is why do they spin when the prey item fits easily into their mouth? We don’t have a solid answer to that question yet, but the researchers postulated that because caecilians are blind maybe they are using the rotational feeding to feel the prey item to help them determine what it is. 

The last behavior we’re going to talk about concerning caecilians’ diet is the most fascinating and slightly disturbing food item I’ve come across in all my years as an animal caretaker. Boulengerula taitanus is an African caecilian that begins life by eating its mother’s skin. You heard me correctly, they eat their mother’s skin! What?! 

So, while mom incubates her eggs that she laid in her subterranean tunnel the outer layer of her skin thickens with nutritious fatty lipids. When the young hatch they have special baby teeth that help them shave off the mother’s outer skin layer. This is the only vertebrate known to use this type of parental feeding strategy! I am thankful everyday I wasn’t born bird so my mother didn’t have to puke into my mouth to feed and now I’m thankful I wasn’t born a caecilian so I didn’t have to eat my mother’s skin.

That’s all for this episode and I know you loved this episode on caecilian diets because it’s the most fascinating episode I’ve researched so far and it’s my sixth favorite thing about this amphibian.

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another thing I like about caecilians!

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: Caecilians are legless amphibians, so how do they get around? Join Kiersten as she talks about caecilian locomotion.

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

Show Notes:

“The kinematics of locomotion in caecilians: effects of substrate and body shape” by Anthony Here et. al, J Exp Cool A Ecol Genet Physiol. 2010. Https//pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

“A comparative study of locomotion in the caecilian Dermophis mexicanus and Typhlonectes natans (Amphibia: Gymnophiona)” by Adam P. Summers and James C. O’Reilly, Zoological  Journal of the Linnean Society, Vol 121, Issue 1, Sept 1997, pls 65-76. Https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1096-3642.1997.tb000147.x

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right outside our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This episode continues caecilians and the fifth thing I like about these supercool amphibians is the way they get around. 

In previous episodes, we have clearly established that caecilians do not have legs, so you may have been asking yourself, how do they get around? Excellent question. Let’s get the answer.

Caecilians are definitely not the only no-legged animal on planet Earth. There are snakes, glass lizards, and fish that do not have legs. Each of these examples have a unique way of locomotion. Caecilian locomotion is something that blows my mind!     

In the last episode we learned that caecilians are divided into ten different families. Most of those families are terrestrial, which means, according to the Oxford Dictionary, of, on, or relating to the earth. Furthermore, many terrestrial caecilians, are fossorial which means they live underground. Nine of our ten families are considered terrestrial caecilians.

So how exactly do caecilians create motion? They use hydrostatic movement. Hydrostatic motion is created when one set of muscles contracts in a circular and longitudinal pattern and another set of muscles stretches in response. Think of how a jellyfish moves. That in and out, almost like breathing, motion is how hydrostatic movement works. Many species of invertebrates use hydrostatic systems to move and several species of vertebrates use hydrostatic systems in specific body parts. 

What makes caecilian hydrostatic locomotion unique is that they are the first known vertebrate to use their entire body as a hydrostatic system for locomotion. How could this get more interesting? I shall tell you! Hydrostatic movement generally depends on utilizing fluid filled portions of the body or vertebrae, but caecilians hydrostatic motion depends on a criss-cross array of tendons that surround their body cavity. Caecilians' skin and skeleton move independently of each other. Muscles do not attach the skin to the skeleton like other vertebrates. This allows them to create twice the maximum forward force of similar sized burrowing snakes that rely on longitudinal movement. 

This is one more example of what makes caecilians so unique in the animal kingdom.

Now that we know exactly how terrestrial caecilians create forward motion let’s look at another characteristic that is influenced by their fossorial lifestyle.

As you know, caecilians don’t have feet, so instead their skull bones have adapted into the perfect shape to move through the soil. They’re skulls are often described as wedge-shaped, compact, and robust. Sounds a lot like a shovel which would be perfect for digging through soil!

Fossorial caecilians’ skull bones have actually fused together in ways that other animals’ skull bones are not fused. There are two types of skull structures in caecilians. The first type is zygokrotaphic in which the skull is perforated between the squamosal, or the side of the skull and the parietal, or the top of the skull. The second type of skull is stegokrotaphic which means the skull in completely roofed. 

These two skull types are incredibly interesting to researchers and have inspired several scientific studies. One study investigated whether the amount of tunneling a species does determines which skull formation is found in their family. The thought was that the completely roofed skull formation would be  better suited to caecilians that burrow in soil more than other species that live mainly in leaf litter. To withstand the force needed to push through the soil a completely fused skull would be better, right? 

What investigators found did not support this hypothesis. There was no evidence showing caecilians with stegokrotaphic skulls had increased burrowing activity. Skull shape may be more influenced by what they eat instead, we’ll talk about this more in next week’s episode.

While investigating this hypothesis the researchers did discover that cranial shape varies greatly throughout caecilians. Even though there is variability in the position of the mouth, the temporal perforation of the skull, and the closure of the eye orbits, caecilian skulls are are generally bullet shaped which helps make burrowing much easier. 

Scientists are always asking questions and a group of researchers studying caecilian movement wanted to know if the length of a caecilian impacted the way they moved. Using x-ray video these scientists recorded the movement of five different species of caecilian that ranged in size. What they discovered was that as the length of the caecilian increased their ability to create the internal concertina motion of hydrostatic movement decreased. As the caecilians increased in length they lost the skin and skeletal independent movement because of the increase in body length. The larger species depended more on lateral movement, even though they are still capable of concertina movement. 

On an interesting note, in all species locomotion choice was dependent on substrate. When they were burrowing through soil they used a whole body or concertina motion to move forward; yet, when they were above the soil they used a lateral movement. This movement is similar to how snakes move in that side to side slithering motion.

Family Typhlonectidae contains our aquatic caecilians. There are 13 species in this family and they all live their entire lives under the water. They also burrow into soil but since the substrate is underwater it’s often more sandy or silty. Many species in this family have lost the concertina movement of terrestrial caecilians. Instead, they rely on a lateral motion to move through the water and soft substrate.

That’s it for caecilian locomotion, I hope you enjoyed this episode because it’s my fifth favorite thing about this awesome animal.

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another thing I like about caecilians!

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: This little known amphibian has 200 different species in its ranks. Join Kiersten as she takes you on a quick tour of the different caecilian species.

 For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

Show Notes:

The Amphibian Class by Rebecca Stefoff

https://www.britannica.com/animal/caecilian-amphibian/classification

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This episode continues caecilians and the fourth thing I like about this unknown animal is the number of species that we know about.

I have to admit as I was doing my research into the caecilian I was amazed to discover that we actually know of about 200 species of this amphibian. Most of my friends and family looked at me with blank faces when I mentioned that I wanted to do the next series of Ten Things I Like About on caecilians. I had a few people ask me if it was going to be about people from Sicily. (laughs) Clearly not.

This episode will include a lot of scientific names so I apologize in advance but most caecilians don’t have common names since they are not very well known. 

Let’s start off with a little taxonomy, that’s the scientific classification of all living things. All caecilians are in Kingdom Animalia, as are humans, Phylum Chordata, because they are vertebrates with a skeletal system, Class Amphibia, because they are amphibians, Subclass Lissamphibia, and Order Gymnophiona also known as Apoda which is Latin for “without foot”. Within this Order there are ten Families of caecilians.

The different Families of caecilians are distinguished from each other based on physical characteristics and life history. The extant, or living species, are classified by the absence or presence of a tail, the amount of fusion of the skull bones, the degree of movement in the skull, the nature of the annular grooves (these are the cutaneous grooves that circle the body), and the structure of the phallodeum (which is the male’s sex organ). Classification is also based on whether an aquatic larval stage is present in the life history of the caecilian and whether they lay eggs or have live birth.

The youngest family of caecilians is Family Caeciliidae. The species in this family date from the Paleocene era which is 65 to 55 million years ago to today. They have no tails and most have no aquatic larval stage. There are 42 species in Family Caeciliidae. They are native to Central and South America and as adults they range in size from 4 to 60 inches.

The next seven families all date from the Cretaceous period which is 145 to 65 million years ago to today.

Family Dermophiidae includes 13 species. They have secondary annuli with annular scales. They are viviparous which means they give live birth and they are found in Africa and Central and South America.

Family Herpelidae, commonly known as the African caecilians, is native to Africa and includes 9 species of caecilian.

Family Ichthyophiidae species have tails, an aquatic larval stage and are native to Southeast Asia, peninsular India, Sri Lanka, Sumatra, Borneo, and the Philippines. There are 50 species in this family that range in size from 16 to 20 inches as adults. This family is also known as the Asiatic tailed caecilians or the fish caecilians. I couldn’t  determine why they are called fish caecilians but they do have an aquatic larval stage. 

Family Indotyphlidae is native to Africa, the Seychelles, and India. There are 21 speices in this family. Some of them are viviparous and some of them are oviparous which means they lay eggs to reproduce. The viviparous species do not have scales or secondary annuli. The characteristics that bond these species together are their non-perforated ear bone and the presence of teeth in the lower jaw.

Family Rhinatrematidae has tails and aquatic larvae. The 11 species of this family are native to South America and range in size from 10 to 13 inches as adults. This family is also known as the Neotropical tailed caecilians, the American tailed caecilians, or the beaked caecilians. 

Family Siphonopidae, also known as common caecilians, have non-perforated ear bones and no teeth in the lower jaw. The 19 species of this South American caecilian family are oviparous. 

Our last family originating in the Cretaceous period is Family Typhlonectidae. These caecilians have no tails. Adults are aquatic, so these caecilians live their entire lives in the water. The young have gills but the adults breathe through tracheal lungs. There are 13 species in this family and adults range in size from 20 to 28 inches. Family Typhlonectidae is native to South America and are also known as rubber eels. 

Our last two families are our two oldest species and originate in the Jurassic period which is 200 to 145 million years ago. 

Family Scolecomorphidae is native to Africa and only contains 6 species. They have no tail and no aquatic larval stage. Adults range in size from 16 to 18 inches. They are also known as tropical caecilians, the buried-eyed caecilians, or the African caecilians. 

Family Chikilidae is the most recently discovered family but they are one of the two oldest living caecilians. The seven species of this family have two rows of teeth on their lower jaw and are native to northeastern India. The year 2012 brought this terrestrial caecilian into the light and is named after chikila, the northeastern Indian tribal name for this amphibian. 

Now that we’ve talked a bit about the different families of caecilians let’s talk about colors! In the anatomy episode we learned that all capelins essentially look like earthworms, They have no legs, they have annuli that make their skin look segmented, and they are covered in slimy mucus. But we didn’t discuss what colors they come in. Yes! I said colors. 

Many caecilians, actually a lot of caecilians, are a gray to black color, but not all. Some caecilians are blue, some are red or orange, some have accentuated annuli that gives them a two-toned ringed appearance. Some even have bright yellow striping that runs from their head to their tails! Considering all caecilians are blind and live in mostly dark places, we’re not entirely sure why they have different colors, but boy are they pretty. 

Siphonops annulatus is a beautiful azure blue color, the sticky caecilian is dark gray with a yellow stripe down the midline of their body, the Sao Tome caecilian is bright yellow all over, the Panamanian caecilian is lime green! With 200 different species their color possibilities are quite varied.

They vary drastically in size as well. The largest caecilian is Caecilia thompsoni and this species measures in at a whopping 5 feet long! Holy Smokes! They can weigh up to 2.2 lbs. If you’d live to get a chance to see this caecilian plan a visit to Columbia, as this is their native country. 

The smallest caecilian is a tie between Idiocranium russeli from West Africa and Grandisonia brevis, from the Seychelles. These two species grow to only 4 inches. That is quite a difference in size! Boy caecilians sure as fascinating.

Well that’s it for caecilian species, try saying that five times fast, and I know you had a great time with this episode because it’s my fourth favorite thing about caecilians.  

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another thing I like about caecilians!

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: Caecilians are unique vertebrates that have some incredible anatomy. Join Kiersten as she takes on a tour of the caecilian body.

 For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

Show Notes:

The Amphibian Class by Rebecca Stefoff

Caecilians: An Overview https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/caecilians

“An insight into the skin glands, dermal scales and secretions of the caecilian amphibian Ichthyophis beddomei.” Damodaran Arun, S. Sandy, Mohammad Abdulkader Akbarsha, Omen V. Omen, and Letha Divya. Saudi J Bill Sci, 2020 Oct:27(10): 2683-2690 doi: 10.1016/j.sjbs.2020.06.009

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This episode continues caecilians and the third thing I like about this wiggly, squiggly amphibian is their anatomy!

We’re going to start on the outside and work our way in by beginning with the skin. Most amphibian skin is slimy because it’s covered by mucus. Caecilians are no exception. They have two types of glands in their skin and one type produces mucus. The mucus covers the entire body so whenever you try to pick up a caecilian it’s slippery and that’s part of the point! Being slippery makes it much harder for predators to get a hold on you.

Another reason for the mucus is to keep the skin moist which helps with temperature regulation and cutaneous respiration. That means you can breath through your skin. 

The second type of skin gland is called a granular gland also known as a poison gland. It does appear that at least some species of caecilians produce a poison in their adult stage. While studying Siphonops annulus, a species of caecilian from Brazil, researchers noticed a concentration of enlarged mucus-producing glands on their head and their bums.

The glands on their head produce mucus to cover their skin as well as lube up their underground burrows to make it easier to move through the tunnels. The glands on their bums release a poisonous mucus that helps in predator defense. 

An extremely unusual and unique characteristic of caecilian skin is that they have scales. Amphibians don’t have scales, but these amphibians do! To make it even weirder their scales are under the top layer of their skin! We don’t know why they have these scales. It may just be an evolutionary hold over from ancestors. But we do know that not all species have scales, which only makes it a bigger mystery. Why do them have them? And what are they used for?

The skin is also segmented with annuli which are grooves that encircle the body. I haven’t found any information on why they have these annuli or what advantage they give the caecilian, but I’m sure there is a purpose for them. 

While we’re still on the outside let’s talk about limbs or legs. Caecilians have none! They are like snakes in this characteristic. Modern day caecilians have no vestigial components of legs at all, no shoulder bones or pelvic girdle indicating that they might have had legs in their evolutionary past. This is a testament to how old these animals are evolutionarily speaking because the fossils we have found from 190 million years ago have legs. We can make an educated guess that the legs became unnecessary as caecilians adapted to live their entire lives underground or underwater. As they evolved the bones that supported these limbs also disappeared.  

In the last episode we discussed senses, so if you’re listening in order you already know that caecilians do not have image processing eyes. Depending on the species the eyes will be covered in skin, bone, or absent all together. Those that still have an eye can probably determine the difference between light and dark but cannot see images. For a more in depth discussion of this, backtrack to episode two.

Since caecilians do not rely on vision to interact with their surroundings, they have developed tentacles that help them smell and feel their environment. The tentacles are located on the face in-between the eye and nostrils. They are short little protrusions that are chemoreceptors. For more on caecilian tentacles check out episode two of this series.

Okay, we’re going to head inside the body through the nares. As we’ve already discovered caecilians can breathe through their skin, but for most of them that does not provide enough oxygen to survive. Most caecilians have a functioning right lung and a vestigial left lung that doesn’t process much at all. The breathing pattern includes a long exhalation with short inhalations through buccopharangeal pumping. Let me explain that sentence. That means they breathe a long breath out and breathe in short breaths by puffing their cheeks and floor of their mouths in and out. This patten of breathing prevents mixing the clean oxygen that comes in and the carbon dioxide that goes out. This seems to unique to caecilians, at least in the amphibian family. The normal respiratory rate of Typhlonectes natans is 4 to 7 breaths per hour!

Most caecilians have at least one lung but two species of caecilians have no lungs at all. They must do all of their respiration through their skin. How coo is that!?

Let’s move on to the skeleton. The most fascinating part of the caecilians skeletal structure is…well, all of it! Since most caecilians dig into soil, whether on land or underwater, their skulls have fused many of the typical individual bones that are found in amphibian skulls so it can withstand the pressure of pushing through the dirt. The head comes to a point at the nose to make it easier to move through substrate. Small, sharp teeth line the inside of the upper and lower jaw. The mouth is on the underside of the head. Three sets of jaw muscles hold the jaw shut tight so no accidental ingestion of soil happens. This is a fascinating adaption to living underground!

Depending on species, caecilians can have 95 to 285 vertebrae that run down the entire body. Double-headed ribs attach to each vertebrae except the one directly behind the skull and the last few toward the tail. The ribs do not support the body structure like some other cylindrical vertebrates. The muscles of the caecilian actually forms a sheath around the skeleton that is attached to the skin with fibrous connective tissue. This allows the skin and muscles to move together. This cylindrical muscle sheath is what gives their body form.

Caecilians lack functional bone marrow which is where blood cells are produced in other vertebrates, so their blood is created by the liver, kidney, spleen, and thymus.  

The digestive tract consists of teeth, tongue, esophagus, stomach, intestines, and a pancreas. Caecilians are carnivores so their digestive tract is set up to digest meat.

Depending the species, the caecilian’s snake-like body ends in a short tail or none at all. The cloaca is located near the tail on the underside of the body. This is an orifice through which waste is dispelled, eggs are laid, and fertilization occurs. Not all at the same time, though.

That pretty much covers anatomy for caecilians. I hope you enjoyed learning about their unique physiology because it is my third favorite thing about them.  

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another thing I like about caecilians!

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: This amazing amphibian’s senses are unique and almost unbelievable! Join Kiersten as she sheds a little light on caecilian senses.

 For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

Show Notes: 

The Amphibian Class by Rebecca Stefoff

“Underground amphibians evolved unique ear.” by PlanetEarth Online. https://phys,org/news/2014-07-underground-amphibians-evolved-unique-ear.html

Caecilians: An Overview https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/caecilians

“The comparative morphology and evolution of the eyes of caecilians (Amphibia, Gymnophiona) by Marvalee H. Wake, Zoomorphology: 105, 277-295 (1985) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/bf00312059

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This episode continues caecilians and the second thing I like about this amphibian is their senses!

Let’s dive right in, listeners, because this is some fascinating stuff! We’re going to start off talking about vision. In the first episode my guest co-host and I touched quickly on the fact that caecilians are essentially blind. Let’s explore this in a bit more detail. 

In all the species of caecilians that have been investigated it appears that their eyes are either covered by skin or bone. Interestingly all of the examined species have a functional photoreceptor. What does this mean in layman’s terms? It means that they don’t have eyes that help them see images but they may still use their eyes to detect light. 

Ancient fossils of caecilians showed that they had larger eyes that might have been used to see images but over the millennia their eyes have become smaller and weaker. We know why this has happened. Caecilians live in dark places, underground and underwater. This behavior probably evolved slowly as they adapted to the pressures of survival in a changing world. As they relied less and less on light their eyes became smaller.

Scientists, always on the hunt for more information, asked the question “What exactly happened to the eyes of caecilians as they evolved?” Did they retain all the components of a functional eye or did they loose certain structures that were no longer needed? In 1985 a biologist in the Department of Zoology at the University of California Berkley found some answers. At the time Marvalee Wake investigated all the caecilians that were known and studied the structure of their eyes. Seven differ trends were seen. 

1. The eyes were covered by thicker skin as well as bone.

2. Nonessential ocular muscles became smaller or nonexistent

3. The retina progressed from a typical layered pattern to fewer cells to a net like formation instead of layering

4. The optical nerve starts off present then becomes smaller and weaker then to only a small amount of cells

5. The lens of the eye is originally round or spherical then progresses to crystalline to cellular to absent.

6. The vitreous liquid in the eye is lost

7. The cornea becomes attached to the covering skin and the lens becomes attached to the cornea and retina.

All of these trends show how the eyes of caecilians became obsolete, but some structures still remained. 

Another project from 2014 studied the rods and cones in the the eyes of caecilians. Rods are the structures that are active in lower light levels while cones are active at higher light levels and can detect color. They found that the caecilians optical cells only contained rods. This is further evidence supporting the thought that their eyes my still be used to detect light but are no longer used to see actual images. 

So, now we know that caecilians no longer rely on their vision to help shape their knowledge of the world around them. Some of you may be asking if they have compensated for this lack of information in some other way? I like the way you think, listeners, because this is exactly what happened!

Let’s look at the sense of smell next. Most caecilians have nostrils through which they breath but there is no evidence that indicates their sense of smell is located within the nares. Many species have another anatomical structure that helps them smell, tentacles. 

Caecilian tentacles are located on their face in-between the eye and nostrils. They have one on each side. I know when I think of a tentacle I think of the arms of an octopus, tentacles that are long, thin, and capable of grasping objects. Caecilian tentacles are not like this and thank goodness! Could you imagine having two long squiggly arms that pick up random items sticking out of your face?  Whoa! Talk about problems! Caecilian tentacles are more like short nubs. 

The tentacles of caecilians are chemoreceptors. Essentially they help them smell. They use them to gather information about their environment such as what kind of soil they are in and where they can find food. Caecilians are carnivores so they are always on the look out for terrestrial insects and other invertebrates to eat. Terrestrial and aquatic caecilians use their tentacles in the same way.

The tentacles are attached to the tear ducts and the Jacobson’s organ also known as the vomeronasal organ. Being attached to the Jacobson’s organ is a good indication that these tentacles are used for smelling. Almost all  amphibians, reptiles, and mammals on earth have a Jacobson’s organ that helps  them detect smells. 

These facial organs have a secondary purpose as well. Caecilians also use these tentacles as tactile receptors which means they use them to feel their environment as well as smell it. This is extremely helpful when you have poor or no vision. Caecilians are the only amphibians that have tentacles. They most likely evolved to help compensate for their failing vision.

The last sense we’re going to talk about is hearing. Caecilians do not have external ear holes or pinnae. When you live underground or underwater you have no real need to hear sound waves that travel through the air. But if you could feel vibrations, this would be useful. In 2014, researchers used a CT scanner to create a 3D image of a caecilians head and found something interesting. Caecilians have a much larger ventral organ in the ear than other types of amphibians. This organ is used to sense vibrations!

To deal with their underground lifestyle, caecilians have evolved a large vibration sensing organ in their inner ear. According to the study, this is different from other underground animals such as molerats. The researchers hypothesize that because the caecilians are more sedentary than other underground dwellers and they leave their head on the ground more, since they have no legs, this may be the reason their ventral organ is larger.

That’s it for caecilian senses. I know you had fun listening to this episode because it’s my second favorite thing about caecilians.

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another thing I like about caecilians!

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: Have you ever heard of a caecilian? Join Kiersten and a guest co-host to find out what it is!

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

Show Notes: 

The Amphibian Class by Rebecca Stefoff

https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/carcilians-found-in-south-florida

“The Creature Feature: 10 Fun FactsAbout Caecilians (or, This Amphibian is One in a Caecilian)” by Mary Bates, https://www.wired.com

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… This is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

My name is Kiersten and I have a Master’s Degree in Animal Behavior and did my thesis on the breeding behavior of the Tri-colored bat. I was a zookeeper for many years and have worked with all sorts of animals from Aba Aba fish to tigers to ravens to domesticated dogs and so many more in between. Many of those years were spent in education programs and the most important lesson I learned was that the more information someone has about a particular animal the less they fear them. The less they fear them the more they crave information about them and before you know it you’ve become an advocate for that misunderstood animal.

This is the first episode of caecilians and I have a guest cohost with me to kick off this series about an unknown animal that most of you have probably never heard of. My friend and cohost of my other podcast The Feathered Desert a podcast all about backyard bird feeding in the Southwest region of the United States, Cheryl is here with me today. Thanks for joining me Cheryl!

Cheryl -  Thanks fro asking me!

Kiersten - So, Cheryl do you know what a caecilian is?

Cheryl - (laughs) No! But you’re going to tell, aren’t you?

Kiersten - Yes! We are certainly not talking about people from Sicily although it sounds the same. The caecilians we’re talking about are amphibians. It’s spelled c-a-e-c-i-l-i-a-n. It comes from the Latin word for “blind” and we’ll find out why they were given this name shortly.  I guess the next question we need to answer is what is an amphibian?

Cheryl - Oh! I know this one! An amphibian is an organism that can live both on land and in the water. We typically think of frogs, toads, and salamanders when we think of amphibians. The most distinctive characteristic is that their early years are spent underwater breathing through gills and their adult years are generally spent on land breathing air through their nose. 

Kiersten - Exactly! Caecilians are an amphibians that most people don’t know about. Even if you were to come across one, you might mistake it for something else. Something like an earthworm. Many caecilians have segmented skin called annuli that makes them look a lot like worms. They’re also legless. Essentially caecilians are amphibians that look like earthworms. 

Cheryl - How exactly would I come across one?

Kiersten - Well, caecilians live underground. Terrestrial ones burrow into the dirt and aquatic ones burrow into the bottom of lakes and streams. You could, possibly, encounter one while digging in your garden if you live in a humid, tropical or neotropical area in Central America, South America, Central Africa, or Southeast Asia. In 2021 they were discovered in a canal in Miami, Florida!

Cheryl - So pretty much all over the world.

Kiersten - Yes, in the right habitat they are naturally found on almost every continent, except Antarctica and Australia. Although three species have been introduced into Australia.

Cheryl - Three species? So there’s more than one species of caecilian?

Kiersten  - Yes! There’s approximately 200 species of caecilians that have been discovered around the world. Can you believe there’s that many species and virtually no one has ever heard of them?

Cheryl - No! Don’t forget you were going to tell about why their name comes from the Latin word for blind.

Kiersten - Right! Thanks for the reminder. Caecilians, for all intents and purposes, are blind. As they evolved their eyes became smaller and weaker, since they spend so much time in the dark. Scientists believe they still have optic nerves but most caecilians eyes are covered by skin and some are even covered by bone.

Cheryl - So not using those eyes for much, then.

Kiersten - Not much, no. We believe that the ones covered only by skin may use them to tell light from dark, but they certainly do not use them to determine clear images.

Cheryl - Now you said, as they evolved they lost their eyes. That’s got to take a lot of time. How old are these animals exactly?

Kiersten - Good catch! We have found caecilian fossils dating back 190 million years ago. That’s before the time of the dinosaurs. 

 Cheryl - These guys sound pretty cool! I can’t wait to learn more about them!

Kiersten - Me too! I’m truly enjoying my research into this animal. I’m learning so much! Thanks for joining me today, Cheryl.

Cheryl - You’re welcome. Thanks for asking me! This animal has peaked mu interest.

Kiersten - Well listeners, I hope this episode has whet your appetite for more information about caecilians because this is my first favorite thing about this amazing unknown creature. 

Cheryl - PLus their name is fun to say!

Kiersten - Absolutely!

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another episode about caecilians!

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary:  Even tarantulas need a little love! Many species of tarantulas are disappearing and in this episode Kiersten talk about what’s happening and what we’re doing to help.

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

Show Notes: 

The Tarantula Scientist by Sy Montgomery

“Farewell to the World’s Smallest Tarantula?” By Jane Schneider https://www.nwf.org/Magazines/National-Wildlife/2017/Oct-Nov/Conservation/Spruce-Fir-Moss_Spider

“Beautiful Ornamental Tarantulas Win Global Protections from Pet Trade.” https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/beautiful-ornamental-tarantulas-win-global-protections-pet-trade-2019-08-26/

Conservation Organizations to check out:

Butterfly Pavillion in Colorado - https://butterflies.org/spider-conservation-research/

Commission for Environmental Cooperation - www.cec.org

Tarantulas de Mexico - https://www.tarantulasdemexico.com

iNaturalist app can be downloaded from any app store

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This episode is the tenth and final episode of tarantulas and the tenth thing I like about these hairy beauties is the conservation efforts being done to ensure we never lose them.

Now it may not seem like tarantulas need conservation efforts but many of them are impacted by habitat loss, the pet trade, and souvenir trinkets. In this episode we’re going to take a look at some of these threats and what we’re doing to help.

When discussing any animal conservation issue, habitat loss is often one of the main problems. There are a lot of us creatures on this planet and we need to get much better at sharing it with all living things. One example of a tarantula impacted by habitat loss is the spruce-fir moss spider, the smallest tarantula in the world. This tiny BB-pellet sized tarantula is found in only a few isolated pockets of the Southern Appalachian mountains. They used to be commonly found all over Clingmans Dome, a mountain straddling North Carolina and Tennessee, but they have become more and more difficult to find. Biology Professor Kefyn Catley says in 1987 he could find them all over the rocks at Clingmans Dome but in 2017 they were none to be found.

These small tarantulas live at high elevations typically above 5300 feet above sea level in moss that clings to boulders. The moss grows in mats which creates a microclimate that provides warmth, moisture, and food that the tarantula needs to survive. If the moss dries out, the spider cannot survive. This is exactly what’s plaguing the spruce-moss tarantulas of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Invasive insects have invaded the park and are decimating the native trees that provide shade and moisture which keeps the moss growing. The loss of these trees has also increased the temperatures of this ecosystem. This is bad news for our little friend. 

The tarantulas are trying to find new habitat by moving to north-facing rocks that still harbor the moss mats they need, but these refuges are also quickly disappearing.  So what are we doing to help? First we’re still studying this little arachnid. Biologists from Western Carolina University and Great Smoky Mountain National Park forestry biologists are continuing their studies of this tarantula. We must know more about their natural history and their current population numbers if we are to help them survive. 

The second action we’ve taken is to add the spruce-moss tarantula to the Endangered Species List. In 1995, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service added this tarantula to the endangered species list making it only the third spider to be added to the list. Doing this provided scientists leverage to take steps toward protecting the habitat in which the tarantula lives. Once this was done, a third action was approved which was the targeted eradication of the invasive insect eating the trees in the park. Now, spraying insecticide around can impact more than just the insect you want to kill and the scientists knew this, so with the help of park services, they devised a plan that targeted the invasive insect with as little impact to others as possible. This is an ongoing project and I know I have my fingers crossed that the spruce-fir moss tarantula survives for years to come.

For those of us that are fans of the great outdoors, we know that habitat loss is something that is a problem on every continent and in every environment. Hundreds of different animals are impacted by it everyday. Tarantulas are no exception and what is happening to the spruce-moss spider is happening to many species of tarantulas all over the world. As tropical forests are cut down to make room for cattle, as wooded areas are logged for use in construction, and as desert is torn up to provide housing for more and more humans, the tarantulas are losing their homes. What we must learn is how to share our space with them and make sure when we move in they don’t have to move out.

The other major threat to tarantulas is the pet trade. Those of you who may be listening to this series to help get over your fear of tarantulas are probably thinking ‘who in their right mind would have a tarantula as a pet?’. Well, I can’t attest to the ‘right-mind’ part, but tarantulas can actually be pretty cool pets. They are certainly not for everyone and they do need specialized care that you must be willing to take the time to give them, but they can be a very rewarding pet. As I’ve said before, I had a rose-haired tarantula for 12 years. She hung out in an aquarium with coconut fiber substrate, a water dish, a hidey hole, and furniture that we’d rotate to give her something new to investigate. We did not handle her much, only every once in a while when we needed to deep clean her enclosure, even though she was very even tempered. Tarantulas don’t really like to be handled.

Sorry for that slight detour there, I really loved Rosy, but let’s get back to the pet trade.

For many years the pet trade has been taking its toll on the wild population of tarantulas. We first saw it in the desert areas of Mexico where the red-kneed tarantulas are found. These beautiful red, orange, and black tarantulas have been favorites of pet owners for years. It’s fairly easy to catch these burrowing tarantulas by fooling the females out of they burrow with a fake prey item  on a string, kinda like fishing. During breeding seasons all you have to do is scoop up the males that are wandering around looking for a mate. The desert used to be covered in these tarantulas and people didn’t think collecting them from the wild was a big deal. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, what would it hurt if we took a few?

It hurt a lot because the mature adults were being harvested for the pet trade removing those that could repopulate the area. And it takes many years for these spiders to reach reproductive age, like 8 to 10 years. 

The same thing is now happening to newly discovered tarantula species like the beautiful blue tarantulas of Sri Lanka and India. These are arboreal spiders that have proven incredibly popular with tarantula enthusiasts because of their bright, gorgeous colors. They are incredibly difficult to breed in captivity; therefore, people who are interested in nothing but making money off of nature, collect from the wild to sell them to an eager market.  

So what are we doing? Reluctantly not enough, because part of the problem is that we don’t have an accurate count of the population numbers of most tarantulas in the wild. Scientists all over the world are trying to fix this by beginning studies to count tarantulas year after year to try and get a baseline to help develop conservation guidelines. 

Another regrettable problem that impacts tarantula populations in the wild is that trade in many species is legal because there are no regulations. Trade in some species is illegal but not many. We are combatting this through CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species which has ratified a treaty approved by 183 countries to regulate tarantulas in the Poecilotheria family. This is the family that includes our bright, blue friends. This was passed in 2019, and trade still continues in these species but permits are now needed and shipments are inspected at customs. This is step toward protecting them, a small step but these regulations combined with the population studies researchers are conducting can lead to stronger protections. 

The last major threat to tarantulas is souvenir shops. This may sound silly but this is one of the number one reasons bird-eating spider populations are dwindling. Tourists visiting the home of the bird-eating tarantulas can find these awe-inspiring spiders mounted under glass or plastic for sale in souvenir shops. They are beautiful and look awesome hanging on your wall but we have to remember that these were living creatures that were roaming the jungle just days before. Taking them out of the web of life to hang them on your wall is not something that should be okay. A picture is worth a thousand words and can save a tarantulas life.

Now, my listeners, what can you yourselves do to help your eight-legged friends? Many things. For one, if you want to purchase a tarantula for your own enjoyment at home, make sure you are buying a captive bred tarantula. Ask the breeders where they get their tarantulas, ask to see proof of their breeding facilities, and talk to breeders who specialize in baby tarantulas that are bred in captivity. My Rosy was an adoption from a family that had purchased her from a responsible breeder. 

Number two, do not buy any souvenirs that are made using dead tarantulas. If there is no market for this kind of souvenir, people will stop killing tarantulas to make them. Number three, get involved with a local college, or an app like iNaturalist, that is studying tarantula populations. So much amazing research is supported by citizen scientists and you can help make a difference. You could be taking a hike in the desert or a tour in tropical forest and reporting a siting on iNaturalist can help researchers. 

I know I’ve gone over a bit in the episode and I apologize, but I am completely fascinated by these amazing arachnids and I want them to survive for millennia to come! Thank you so much for taking the tarantula journey with me. The conservation efforts we are taking to ensure their continued survival is my tenth favorite thing about tarantulas. 

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me in two weeks for the beginning of a brand new series discussing a wicked cool unknown animal, the caecilian. 

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: There are so many myths about tarantulas that are untrue and perpetuate fear. Join Kiersten as she dispels some of these myths. 

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

Show Notes: https://tomsbigspiders.com/2015/08/15/the-best-and-most-ridiculous-tarantula-myths/

“The Natural History of Tarantula Spiders” by Richard C. Gallon https://www.thebts.co.uk/old_articles/natural.htm

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This episode continues tarantulas and the ninth thing I like about this beautiful creature is myth busting. What exactly to I mean by that? This episode is all about putting an end to the incorrect myths about tarantulas.

Regrettably, tarantulas have been the subject of many a cheesy horror flick. Hollywood loves a good monster movie. I have to admit I have watched my fair share of them, but I do not have a fear of spiders so these movies have impacted my daily life very little. Since the fear of spiders is such a wide spread phobia, these movies have only perpetuated myths about these invertebrates, myths that are largely untrue. 

Myth number one: Tarantulas are aggressive to humans.

Those of you that have listened to my previous episode already know that this is false. We can blame this one on movies like Arachnophobia, Tarantula, and Earth vs. the Spider that keep this myth on everyone’s mind. Tarantulas are not aggressive, especially towards people. They see us as scary predators to avoid. Most likely when we encounter them they run away or hide. 

Myth number two: Tarantulas will chase you across the room. 

Tarantulas do not chase people. Tarantulas cannot run long distances, period, because of their physiology. To move their legs they rely on the pressure of the hemolymph in their bodies. This is reliant on the amount of moisture they have stored. They get moisture from the food they eat and from drinking water. When they move quickly they deplete the pressure. They must take breaks when moving quickly to recharge. They can run fast, when they need to, but only in short spurts.

If a tarantula seems to be chasing you or running toward you it’s because it’s the only way they can get to a safe hiding place. It is a defensive action to run at something larger than themselves, such as humans. They never aggressively run after humans. 

Myth number three: Tarantulas can jump 5, 6, 7, etc. feet in the air!

Completely false. Terrestrial tarantulas can leap on prey, but we’re talking about an inch. They are ambush predators meaning they sit and wait until prey is close enough for them to capture without a lot of expended energy. So when they pounce, it’s an inch or less. 

They are too heavy to jump feet into the air. If you have ever held a tarantula you can probably remember they felt much heavier that you expected.  They are just not equipped to get that bulky body leaping into the air. They are not jumping spiders.

If they actually leapt six feet into the air, when they landed they’d go splat. Tarantulas are actually pretty fragile and a drop of a few inches could kill them. It was one of the things I was most concerned about when we had our rose-haired tarantula. We housed her on a very sturdy piece of furniture because I knew if she ever fell she’d die. 

Now, arboreal tarantulas are capable of jumping from tree branch to tree branch, but it’s only a few inches. They are very careful when they do it, because if they fall from the tree they will not survive. Tarantulas cannot jump several feet into the air.

Myth number four: Tarantulas are poisonous. 

Once again false, but not too far off. Tarantulas are not poisonous because you can touch them and not get a toxin on you. Animals that are poisonous such as poison arrow dart frogs excrete a poison on their skin that can be spread by merely touching something. Tarantulas are venomous which means they must inject the poison in their bodies with something like fangs. And that’s exactly what tarantulas do, they inject venom into their prey with their fangs when they need to eat. So touching a tarantula will not make you sick or spread a toxin.

Myth number five: Tarantula bites will kill you!

False. No one has ever died from a tarantula bite. There are many cases of humans getting bitten by tarantulas but not one has ever died as a direct result of the venom from a tarantula bite. About 100 years ago there are records that two people died after being bitten by a tarantula but these deaths were a result of blood poisoning and gangrene. Both of these conditions are easily treated with modern medicine. 

Not to mention, we’ve been living with tarantulas around us for a very long time and no one has been fatally bitten by one yet. I think we’re fairly safe. You have a greater chance of getting struck by lightening than dying from a tarantula bite. 

Now I do have a friend that is allergic to spider bites, getting one usually results in blood poisoning so of course she is very careful when she is anywhere that spiders might be living, but she lives in an area that has many tarantulas and she still enjoys hiking and camping. Just be smart when you’re outside and you’ll be okay. And remember when we encounter a tarantula it will typically run away or hide. 

Myth number six: Tarantulas catch their prey with webs.

Tarantulas do not make elaborate webs in the air like some other species of spiders. We’re all used to seeing the webs made by garden spiders that are strung between tree branches. Tarantulas, even arboreal tarantulas, do not make webs like this. They do use silk to line their burrows and sometimes they trail silk outside the burrow entrance to alert them to when prey may be moving around outside, but they do not make webs to catch prey.

Myth number seven: Bird eating spiders eat birds! 

Those of you who have listened to my Species episode know that this is not entirely true. Bird-eating spiders are the largest species of tarantulas but they very rarely, if ever, eat birds. They are large enough to eat birds but they typically eat invertebrates and small mammals. It takes a lot of energy to catch birds and why bother when you can catch an insect fairly easily. 

This rumor started when European explorers saw tarantulas large enough to eat birds during their travels and came back telling stories of the gigantic bird-eating spiders.

We’ve covered seven myths about tarantulas and I hope it’s put you at ease. If you have anyone in your life afraid of tarantulas maybe this episode can help you help them get over their fears. Thanks for joining me for this myth busting episode because it’s my ninth favorite thing about tarantulas. 

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another thing I like about tarantulas!

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: Let’s talk ant anatomy! Join Kiersten as she discusses basic ant anatomy, as well as a few unbelievable anatomy specializations.

For my hearing impaired followers, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

Show Notes:

“Ant Body Structure” - Harvard Forest: https://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu

“Ant Anatomy” - Ask a Biologist, Arizona State University: https://askabiologost.asu.edu/explore/ant-anatomy

“Tales from the Ant World” by Edward O. Wilson

“Adventures Among Ants” by Mark W. Moffett

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

So far we have talked about some extraordinary ant behaviors and we have so much more to explore, but I thought we should look at an individual ant before we move forward. The fifth thing I like about ants is their anatomy.

Ants are classified as insects, so they have three body parts: head, thorax and abdomen. They have an exoskeleton made of chitin. Chitin is the second most abundant amino polysaccharide polymer found in nature. It is hard and protects the internal organs of insects and gives their body structure. 

The head of an ant typically hosts two compound eyes, two antennae, two mandibles and a mouth on the outside while internally it houses the brain. Many species also have ocelli in the middle of the head, as well. The compound eyes contain hundreds of lenses that combine to form a single image. Species that use vision to hunt for prey will have larger compound eyes, while those that rely on other senses will have smaller compound eyes. All species of known ants have antennae, typically two. The antennae will be constantly moving as the ant tastes, touches, and smells everything it comes in contact with. The antennae will bend in the middle like a human elbow allowing maximum flexibility. Mandibles are super important to ants and they will vary by species. Some of them are extremely specialized and we will go through a few of those species in a moment. In general, mandibles are used to grasp anything ants need to pick up or carry. They are also used to bite, crush, cut, dig, fight, and hunt. Just behind the mandibles is the mouth which is used to eat, clean themselves, and groom nestmates. The last item on the head is the ocelli. Ocelli are simple eyes that detect light. Ant head shape will vary greatly between species and that is dependent on what they eat and how they build nests.

The second segment is the mesosoma. Now, I just said ants have three segments and the second segment was the thorax, right? I did and this is technically correct, but the last two segments aren’t clearly visible. The mesosoma actually contains the thorax and the front of the abdomen. The mesosoma segment is full of muscles and is where the legs attach to the ant’s body. Ants have six legs. Their legs are made for movement and most ants can run fast when needed. Each leg has four segments and a hooked claw at the end of each leg helps the ant climb and hang onto surfaces.

The third segment is the abdomen which is made up of the petiole and the gaster. This is the segment that contains all the important internal organs that keep the ant alive, besides the brain which is located in the head. The heart, the digestive tract, and the chemical weaponry is all found in the gaster. The chemical defense system will vary by species. Ants can have a stinger with which to inject venom into prey or predator or they may have a small opening through which they can spray acid to stun prey or defend themselves.

In between the mesosoma and the gaster is the petiole. This structure attaches the mesosoma and the gaster together giving the ant enough flexibility to sting or spray acid in different directions. Some species of ants will have a second attachment segment called the post-petiole. 

Ant can have separate classes of workers, major and minor workers. They perform different activities. Minors typically take care of the young, clean and build the nest, and gather food. Majors are often soldiers, guarding and defending the colony. Some species will have size differences between these castes and can have modified anatomy to fit their specific jobs.

Queen anatomy is slightly different as they are the only ant in the colony making babies. The body will still have three segments, like an other ant as well as all other anatomical parts we have discussed thus far. They will have wings at birth so they can make the nuptial flight but they will lose them soon after reproduction and establishing her new colony.  

The queen is typically larger than the other worker ants in the colony. Her gaster will be large because it contains all of her important life-giving organs and her reproductive system. Her mesosoma is also large because she needs more muscles to power flight.

As I have stated before, all workers in a colony are female, so male ant anatomy is slightly different. They have wings like the queen so their mesosomas are large and muscular. They may be bigger than some workers but are often not as big as a queen. Their eyes are typically smaller and their antennae are straighter. Their reproductive organs will be large. They don’t live very long and are made for only one thing, mating.  

Now ant anatomy can be specialized for certain species and I thought we’d talk a little about some of these unique features.

Certain canopy ants that spend most of their lives in trees have an internal sac to store liquid called a crop. They can transport tree sap to their sisters in this sac and regurgitate it to feed to them when needed. Kinda like birds. There is also an oral pocket that most ants have in which they store detritus that they clean off each other or strain off a meal before consuming it. Once a day, ant workers will spit out a pellet in the midden pile that is full of this detritus, like an owl pellet! Weaver ants have a sternal gland specific to their family that releases a short-range pheromone during war or hunting to call her sisters to her aide.

One on the most diverse parts on an ant is the mandibles. Each species’ will shapes will be dictated by what they eat. Some are so specialized that they are modified to eat only one type of prey. 

One of the most abundant ants in the world, the dacetines, are small ants with long mandibles that snap together like spring traps. Why would such a small ant need such vicious, fast snapping mandibles? Because they eat springtails. Springtails are small invertebrates that jump fast and high, so these ants have developed mandibles that help them catch this specific prey. Thaumatomyrmex, or miracle ants, have mandibles that look like wicked pitchforks. Their mandibles consist of a flat base that ends in a row of long spikes. Yikes! Why do they need such scary looking mandibles? They eat polyxenid millipedes. These millipedes are covered with dense bristles that ward off most predators. The thaumatomyrmex mandibles allow them to impale the millipedes without worrying about the dense bristles. These ants also have an additional adaptation that allows them to eat these scary millipedes; pads on their forelegs that help them scrub the bristles off the millipede exposing the soft bodies. 

There are so many more amazing anatomical adaptations in the ant world, but I only have so much time. Thank you for joining me for the fifth episode of ants because my fifth favorite thing about ants is their anatomy.

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another exciting episode about ants.  

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, my very own piano playing hero.

Summary: Tarantulas have many predators and they have developed a plethora of ways to defend themselves. Join Kiersten as she discusses these interesting and surprising behaviors.

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

Show Notes: 

The Tarantula Scientist by Sy Montgomery

“The Natural History of Tarantula Spiders” by Richard C. Gallon https://www.thebts.co.uk/old_articles/natural.htm

“Parasites of Tarantulas,” Pizzi, Romain. Journal of Exotic Pet Medicine, Vol 18, Issue 4, pg 283-288. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1557506309001153

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This episode continues tarantulas and the eighth thing I like about these awe-inspiring arachnids is how they defend themselves.

I know lots of people are afraid of tarantulas, but tarantulas have predators that they’re afraid of too. So they’ve developed a plethora of ways to defend themselves.

The first way a tarantula will defend themselves from predators larger than themselves is to stay out of sight. They accomplish this quite well by only coming out at night. Tarantulas are nocturnal, except during mating season, as we learned in the previous episode, when males are out looking for females. When they come out at night during the rest of the year, they do try to stay under cover. This is also where the prey they are hunting is most often found. 

What kind of predators are these tarantulas hiding from? They actually have quite a few natural predators including foxes, skunks, coyotes, large lizards, birds, and even some fellow invertebrates such as centipedes, scorpions, and tarantula hawk wasps. In Cambodia, they have to worry about being eaten by people. They are considered a delicacy. Certainly not on my menu, but…

If hiding does not keep the tarantula safe, the next step they’ll take to ensure survival is to run away. I’m not seeing too much fault in this strategy, honestly. The one who runs away, lives to fight another day. I would love for those of you who are afraid of tarantulas, or those of you that have friends or family that are afraid of tarantulas, and think they are hideous spiders out get you to remember that the first two behaviors they use when confronted with danger is to hide or run away. They are not vicious invertebrates out to bite humans. If they come across us, they really don't want to have anything to do with us and will run away.

Having said that, sometimes you don’t have the ability to run away. When a tarantula finds itself in a position that does not allow for running away, a third behavior called threat posturing is employed. Threat posturing is when a tarantula rears up placing their weight on the back legs and raising its front two pairs of legs and pedipalps straight up in the air.  This makes it look much bigger than it is, which hopefully will make a potential predator think twice about making a meal out of the tarantula. This posture also displays the tarantulas large fangs, which would certainly make me think twice about trying to eat it. The underside of many species is dark which highlights the red fangs making them even more impressive. To enhance this defense mechanism some Old World tarantulas, those that are found in Africa, Asia, and Europe, have brightly colored bands of yellow, white, and black under their two front pairs of legs. We believe flashing these colors is used as a threat to scare off predators.

Defense strategy number four is also only used by Old World tarantulas and involves making threatening sounds. Many species of Old World tarantula have specialized hairs, or setae, that they can use to make sounds. These are called stridulatory setae. They are typically found on the chelicerae and by rubbing the hairs together they can produce hissing or rasping sounds that can scare off a predator.  

Defense strategy number five is used by New World tarantulas, those found in North, Central, and South America. This strategy involves urticating hairs. The main purpose of these hairs is to irritate a predator to ward them off and keep them from coming back for a second try. The irritating hairs, or setae,  are generally found on the tarantulas abdomen. These hairs can be deployed in one of two ways. 

The first way is for the tarantula to rub their abdomen against a predator’s skin. The urticating hairs will dislodge from the tarantula and pierce the predator’s skin and wiggle its way into the predator’s flesh with backward facing barbs. This method is mainly used by the Avicularia species, aka pink-toes, that are native to Panama, the Caribbean, and tropical South America. The problem with this delivery method is probably obvious. You have to get really close to your predator to use this defense mechanism. 

The second way to deploy these urticating hairs gives the tarantulas a bit more room to maneuver. The Theraphosinae species of New World tarantulas can flick these hairs at predators. When threatened with no way out these tarantulas will use their back legs to brush the hairs off their abdomen and flick them into the air. The setae then penetrates the predators skin and wiggles into the flesh with backward facing barbs just like the hairs of the pink-toes. The advantage of being able to flick the hairs, besides distance, is that these hairs can penetrate the eyes of a predator. And as we all know, it’s all fun and games until someone gets poked in the eye.

Research into these urticating hairs has revealed that there are six different types of urticating hairs. It is believed that the different hairs target different types of predators. Types 3 and 4 appear to target mammals as they are more irritating to mammalian predators. Type 3 also seems to target invertebrates. More research is needed to determine if the other types target a specific predator. 

Let’s take a moment to reflect back on the defense mechanisms that tarantulas use to protect themselves from larger predators. We’ve discussed five so far, and there is more to come, but so far not one of these defense strategies has involved biting. I mention this because this is the main reason that tarantulas are misunderstood. People think they want to bite us! But they don’t. They really don’t want to bite a predator. It’s literally the last defense mechanism they will use and only if the first five have failed! 

Now these are all defense strategies that tarantulas use against predators that are larger than themselves, but they also have to worry about predators smaller than themselves. Let’s take a look at who those predators are and how  they protect themselves against them. 

In the southwest United States the Tarantula Hawk Wasp is a common sight in spring and summer. It’s a large wasp, growing up to 2 inches in length, with a green-black body and flame colored wings. It’s quite pretty, actually. This is also a misunderstood animal as well, as many people are afraid they might sting us humans, but that only happens if you catch them or accidentally sit on them. 

The adults are pollinators and females are the ones tarantulas must fear. The female wants to find a tarantula to lay her egg on. The wasp lures the tarantula out of its burrow and stings it. The sting immobilizes the tarantula and then the wasp drags the spider back into its burrow and deposits one egg on the tarantula. She the fills in the entrance of the burrow and leaves her egg to hatch. When the wasp egg hatches the pupa eats the tarantula and then emerges from the burrow a full grown wasp. Not the way I want to go!

There is also a species of fly that eats tarantulas from the inside. The fly lays their eggs on the tarantula. When they hatch, the maggots make their way into the book lungs through the openings on the abdomen. They set up house and eat the tarantula’s insides. It can take months for the maggots to finish off the tarantula, who goes about their daily business as usual. It becomes fatal when the maggot pupates and bursts from the tarantula’s abdomen killing its host.

Ants are a predator that female tarantulas must worry about during breeding season when they are protecting eggs sacs. Ants can invade a burrow and tear into an egg sac destroying her young.

So how so you protect yourself from these small predators? It’s difficult but tarantulas have a few tricks up their sleeves. Once again being nocturnal helps because these predators are typically diurnal. Living in burrows helps defend against the tarantula hawk wasps. Staying in an enclosed space can keep you safe because the hawk wasp won’t venture down into the burrow, but the wasps have ways of tricking the tarantula out into the open, so the tarantula must be wary of potential prey items. 

An unexpected way to defend against these predators is to have a roommate that can help you out. Two species of American tarantulas have been seen sharing their burrows with small frogs. The tarantulas do not attack them and it is thought that the frogs eat invertebrates that come into the burrow. They  eat ants that come in looking for an egg sac and, maybe, the flies that are looking for a place to lay some eggs. The frogs also get something out of this arrangement as well. They have a big, hairy bodyguard that protects them from predators that might want to eat the frogs. It’s a win, win. 

That wraps up defense mechanisms for tarantulas and I hope you enjoyed it because it’s my eighth favorite thing about tarantulas. 

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another thing I like about tarantulas!

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: Making babies isn’t easy for tarantulas! So many steps go into creating tarantula spiderlings. Join Kiersten as she talks you through this fascinating behavior.

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

Show Notes: 

The Tarantula Scientist by Sy Montgomery

“The Natural History of Tarantula Spiders” by Richard C. Gallon https://www.thebts.co.uk/old_articles/natural.htm

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This episode continues tarantulas and the seventh thing I like about tarantulas is how they reproduce!

I’m sure you have all heard at least one thing about spider reproduction before listening to this podcast episode and I’m sure it’s the rumor that male spiders better run fast after mating or they’ll get eaten! That can be a valid concern with various species of spiders and even some tarantulas, but not all female spiders are out there looking for a good man to eat. 

Before the male finds himself in this precarious situation there are many steps he must perform first. Let’s start at the beginning. Mating season for many tarantulas is in the late summer or early fall. This is when those of us that live in the western United States will encounter male tarantulas in the road, yards, or even our houses. They are out looking for females.

Before they leave their burrows though, they have a bit of work to do to get ready to win over the ladies. Males must charge their palpal bulbs on the ends of their pedipalps with sperm before they wander out to find a female mate. What exactly does that mean? Great question and I have one doozy of an answer! 

To be able to mate with a female the male tarantula must have a way to transfer his sperm to the female so that her eggs can be fertilized and grow into baby tarantulas, or spiderlings. The male tarantula uses the palpal bulbs, which are hardened sperm storage organs on their pedipalps to make that transfer.  His sperm is made inside his body but not near the pedipalps; therefore, he has to complete a rather long process to get his sperm just where he wants. 

First the male spins a blanket of silk somewhere in his burrow or a protected area at an angle, then he spreads his sperm on the underside of the silk blanket, or sperm web. Next he maneuvers himself on top of the web in just the right spot so that he can reach the sperm with his pedipalps and dips the palpal bulbs into the sperm drawing it into this storage organ. Whew! I’m worn out just talking about all that work. 

Once he’s all charged up, he’s on the prowl. Most females stay in or near their burrows or nests their entire lives, so the male has to go hunting. Now he doesn't just charge into a female’s burrow, that’s how you get eaten! So how do you get a female to come out of their deep, dark hole without losing your life? You dazzle her with song!

Male tarantulas will drum their front legs on the ground just outside the burrow or on the silk threads that protrude outside the female’s burrow. This is how they let the female know it is a romantic house call. This is risky for the male because if the female is not receptive to mating she could come out and aggressively run him off or even damage him. He might also mistakenly pick a male’s burrow. Males don’t generally get into fierce fights with an accidental courting but it’s precious time wasted. 

To help streamline things, females will often announce their receptiveness by applying a pheromone on the silk outside their burrow that let’s males know to knock on her door. Some species of tarantula will actually place this pheromone web in plant matter above their burrow so that the wind will blow the scent farther. Then the male will come and the drumming will commence.

If the female is interested, she will emerge from the burrow to inspect her suitor. Once they are face to face there are a few things that can happen. If she needs a bit more persuading, the male will begin a dance with his front legs, lifting them up and down. Sometimes the female will join in the dance and sometimes she just moves towards the male immediately. Responses can vary from species to species but can also vary with individuals in the same species.

Once he’s won the female’s permission, the slightly dangerous part begins for the male. The two tarantulas will stand in front of each other face to face, then the male with reach under her with his front legs and grasp her fangs with small spurs on the ends of his legs. Once her fangs are secured, which seems like a way for him to make sure she doesn’t try to eat him once copulation is complete, the male will gently lift her and reach back to her genital openings and place his sperm inside. This doesn't take much time and once he’s done he skedaddles as fast as he can.He’s off to find another female. In the wild sexual cannibalism seems to be rare, but in captivity it is known to happen in certain species. 

The female will often fall into an immobile state for several moments after copulation is complete, which is the perfect time for the male to split. We don’t know why the female becomes immobile at this time, but it appears to happen in almost every species of tarantula, at least ever species we’ve observed mating.

Now the female will usually carry the sperm in her body until she is ready to create an egg sac. Since mating is in late summer or early fall, she will typically carry the sperm around until the following spring or summer. Then she prepares some silk and lays the eggs in the silk. The eggs are fertilized with sperm as she lays them. She then rolls the silk into a sturdy egg sac. Depending on the species, she will either carry the sac around with her or stash it safely in her hideout. Generally speaking, ground dwelling tarantulas seem to be the ones that carry the egg sac around while arboreal species leave them in the safety of their homes. This may be due to the fact that the eggs must be kept warm so they can grow into spiderlings and burrows underground stay cooler than nests in trees. Maybe. 

Depending on the species, females can lay anywhere from twenty to one thousand eggs. That’s a whole lotta babies! The eggs typically incubate from 2 to 3 weeks before they hatch. During incubation mom takes very good care of her eggs sac. If she is a species that carries the sac around she’s constantly monitoring the temperature to ensure the eggs do not get too hot or too cold. If they secure them in a hidden space, she’s always nearby making sure the egg sac is safe. 

When it’s time to hatch, the spiderlings will either emerge after they have molted into their first instar stage or before. When they do hatch, they’ll be about the size of a tick. In Avicularia species the spiderlings will emerge in their first instar stage after their first molt. They will be covered in a dark, hairy, hard exoskeleton and will be fully mobile. Other species will emerge as pale, soft nymphs without a hardened exoskeleton. After a few weeks the nymphs will molt into their first instar stage. The spiderlings will hang out with mom for a few weeks and then head out into the world on their own. 

Many people think tarantulas are bad moms and that it’s get out or be eaten as soon as you hatch, but some researchers at Hiram College studying an East African tarantula species saw something quite different. The researchers were actually studying these tarantulas’ breeding behaviors, which were successful, giving the researchers a whole other exciting behavior to study.  After the spiderlings hatched the researchers fed the mother and the babies some crickets and saw something remarkable. The mother grabbed a cricket and allowed many of her spiderlngs to gather around her mouth and share the meal with her, while a second cricket was shared by the rest of the spiderlings! 

I think this is some truly amazing and unexpected behavior. It’s also something that we share in common with this tarantula, caring for young and sharing with our siblings! Who woulda thought?

Like many invertebrates tarantulas must molt their exoskeleton to grow. This can be a complicated and dangerous moment in the tarantulas life. To molt they must crack open their current exoskeleton, flip over on their backs, and shimmy out of their old clothes. It takes several hours until their new exoskeleton hardens and while they wait they are vulnerable. But this it what tarantulas must do at least once a year until they are fully mature and ready to make their own babies. 

The age of maturation varies greatly amongst tarantula species. Some females can take up to ten years before they are ready to mate. Many females of various species can live twenty to thirty years. Males mature earlier and generally live a lot shorter lives than females. Sorry about that guys.

Well, that’s all there is for tarantula reproduction. I hope you were as fascinated by this behavior as I was because it’s my seventh favorite thing about them. 

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another thing I like about tarantulas!

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: Tarantulas have taught us some pretty cool things! Join Kiersten and a guest co-host as they talk about what tarantulas have taught us about colors and pain killers.

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

Show Notes: 

“Tarantula venom could be used as a potent pain reliever” by Angela Betsaida B. Laguipo, BSN; https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200414/Tarantula-venom-could-be-used-as-a-potent-pain-reliver.aspx

“Tarantula Venom Helps Reveal How We Sense Pain” by Ben Taub; https://www.iflscience.com/tarantula-venom-helps-reveal-how-we-sense-pain-36091

“Blue Tarantula Hair Inspires Nonfading Color Pigment” by Kacey Deamer; https://www.livescience.com/58031-tarantula-hair-inspired-nonfading-color.html

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This episode continues tarantulas and the sixth thing I like about tarantulas is what we’re learning from them that changes the way we see our world!

Today I have a special guest to help me, my husband Georgiy! Thanks for helping me with this episode on biomimicry, Georgiy.

Georgiy - You’re welcome. You said bio-what? 

Kiersten - Biomimicry. 

Georgiy - What is biomimicry?

Kiersten - Biomimicry means that a structure or process built or designed by humans was influenced by biological creatures or processes that happen naturally in the world. 

Georgiy - Cool! So this episode is about what we are learning from studying tarantulas?

Kiersten - Yes! Exactly! And we’re going to start off with a study done by scientists researching color in tarantulas. Georigy, do you know that tarantulas come in many different colors?

Georgiy - I do because you showed me pictures.  My favorite tarantula is the bright blue Sapphire Tarantula.

Kiersten - Ooo. Good choice! That one is amazing!

Georgiy - What did they find out researching the blue color of these tarantulas?

Kiersten - I’m so glad you asked because it’s super cool! They discovered that the blue on the tarantula is a structural color. Many of the colors we see are pigments that produce color when the electrons interact with light. Our clothing and our paint are based on these kinds of pigments. The problem is that they will eventually fade and is often made with chemicals that can harm our environment. 

The tarantula’s blue color is a structural color, which means there are tiny nanostructures on their exoskeleton that scatter light at a specific wavelength producing the blue color we see. Now structural colors, which are produced when light interacts with nanostructures that are about the same size as a specific color’s wavelength, are nothing new. We’ve known about structural colors for a while, but most of them are iridescent. 

Georgiy - Like some bird feathers? 

Kiersten - Yes! Just like certain bird’s feathers. Have you ever looked at at peacock feather in the sun? 

Georgiy - I have. It’s very pretty.

Kiersten - What happened when you twisted that feather between your fingers?

Georgiy - It looks like it changed colors.

Kiersten - Exactly! When the light reflects off the nanostructures at different angles the light changes m  aking the color change. It’s beautiful but as one of the researchers from the University of Akron in Ohio, Bor-Kai Hsiung (suhng) said in an interview with LiveScience, “It’s beautiful out in nature, but not very functional when we’re watching television and we move to a new seat.” 

Georgiy - So how does the Sapphire Tarantula fit in?  

Kiersten - Researchers took a closer look at several different species of blue tarantulas and discovered that their pigments are not iridescent. The nanostructres of their hair are covered with distinct flower-like structures that limit the iridescence.

Georgiy - Wow! What does that mean?

Kiersten - It means that we could use this structure to create more vibrant, longer lasting, and less toxic colors for use in paints, clothing, and digital screens!

Georgiy - Well, that is just cool! What other things are tarantulas teaching us?

Kiersten - The venom of Heteroscodra maculata, or the Togo Starburst Tarantula native to West Africa, is helping us understand how our bodies process pain.

Georgiy - Hmmm. Tell me more.

Kiersten - Certainly. Researchers at the University of California, San Fransisco were interested in isolating the specific pathways that indicate pain to our central nervous system. The impulses that tell our CNS that we are in pain use voltage-gated sodium channels known as Nav channels. We have so many different types of Nav channels that we don’t currently know which ones actually indicate pain. So when you use a local anesthetic it blocks all the Nav channels so that patient does not feel pain. But if we could understand which channels actually transmit the pain signals we could better treat certain CNS disorders. 

Georgiy - That sounds complicated.

Kiersten - It kind of is, but that’s it for the hard part. Next the researchers injected the tarantulas venom into the feet of mice and then mapped the Nav channels that reacted.  

Georgiy - What happened?

Kiersten - The mice got some itchy feet and the researchers discovered that the Nav1.1 channels are the ones that reacted to the proteins in the venom. We now understand that these Nav1.1 channels are the ones that react to a mechanical pain but not a thermal pain. They took this information and applied it to a disorder called irritable bowl syndrome, or IBS, in which people often describe pain in their guts. These Nav1.1 channels are found in the gut. So by using this tarantula’s venom we now have a new idea of how to better treat the symptoms of IBS.

Georgiy - All of that from tarantula venom?

Kiersten - Yep! And speaking of venom, there’s more.

Georgiy - More? What else have we learned from studying tarantula venom?

Kiersten - Researchers at the University of Queensland have discovered that molecules in tarantula venom could be used as pain killers for people that suffer from chronic, or long-term, pain.

Georgiy - That’s interesting, but taking pain killers long term can be pretty addictive, right?

Kiersten - Yes, if you’re taking an opioid pain killer. These can be extremely addictive and as anyone who listens to the news knows, it has been a big problem that many people are battling as of late. The venom of the Chinese Bird Spider, also known as the Chinese Black Earth Tiger Tarantula, was broken down into its individual molecules, then scientists replicated some of the molecules creating mini-molecules and gave them to mice. It helped reduce pain without any addictive side effects. This could be a non-addictive alternative to opioids for people with long-term pain.

Georgiy - It seems like we are learning a lot from tarantulas.

Kiersten - We really are and as long as we keep their natural habitats from disappearing who know what else we can learn!

That’s it for this episode of Ten Things I Like About Tarantulas! Thanks for co-hosting with me this week, Georgiy!

Georgiy - You’re welcome! 

Kiersten -  I hope you all enjoyed learning about what tarantulas have taught us because it’s my sixth favorite thing about these amazing arachnids.

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another thing I like about tarantulas!

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: Did you know that there are more than 850 species of tarantulas and that they’ve been around since the time of the dinosaurs? Join Kiersten as she delves into the natural history of the tarantula and takes a look at the different species alive today.

 For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

Show Notes: 

The Tarantula Scientist by Sy Montgomery

Remarkable Animals: The Tarantula by Gail LaBonte

“Tarantulas are everywhere and now researchers know why” by Mihai Andrei, ZME Science https://www.zmescience.com/science/biology/tarantula-evolution-gondwana-19042021/

https://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/goliath-bird-eating-tarantula

https://tarantulafriendly.com/category/tarantula-species/south-america

“Farewell to the World’s Smallest Tarantula?” By Jane Schneider https://www.nwf.org/Magazines/National-Wildlife/2017/Oct-Nov/Conservation/Spruce-Fir-Moss_Spider

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This episode continues tarantulas and the fifth thing I like about these unbelievable spiders is how many different species and sizes there are!

There are 850 different species of tarantula currently known today and we’re discovering new species all the time!

Let’s clarify what exactly I’m talking about when I use the word tarantula. In all the episodes of Ten Things I Like About Tarantulas, I am talking about spiders in the Theraphosidae Family. This family includes nothing but tarantulas, the heavy bodied, hairy looking arachnids. All sub-tropical and tropical tarantulas are classified under Family Theraphosidae. 

They were not originally called tarantulas actually. In Malaysia they are called “earth tigers”, parts of Africa call them “monkey spiders”. The name tarantula came from European explorers that made a mistake. The original spider referred to as a tarantula is not a spider classified in the Family Theraphosidae. It’s actually a wolf spider from Mediterranean Europe and it IS a fairly large, hairy spider, but not a tarantula. Back in the day, people thought this spider’s bite was exceptionally dangerous. They were mistaken, another spider was actually responsible for the terrible bite but that’s another story.  

It was said that the wolf spider’s bite hurt so much that it made you dance around in pain while you tried to get rid of the venom! They called the dance the tarantella, named after the Italian town of Taranto where this wolf spider is commonly found. When European explorers traveled to far away lands and saw large hairy spiders they called them tarantulas because they looked so much like the wolf spiders they ere used to seeing. So once again, a misunderstanding in language has lasted throughout human history. 

Okay, now that we know the origin of the tarantula’s name, let’s look at their evolutionary history. It seems that tarantulas evolved about 120 million years ago in the Cretaceous period. That’s when dinosaurs were still roaming the earth. They actually shared the planet with dinosaurs for about 60 million years. 

Tarantulas roamed the content of Gondwana, which was a super continent formed of modern day South America, Africa, Arabia, Madagascar, India, Australia, and Antarctica. This is why they are so widespread today. When continental drift began to create the Earth’s modern day configuration, tarantulas hitched a ride on the moving landscape. The preserved fossil of a 40 million year old tarantula shows that they have changed very little from that time period. They look pretty much like the tarantulas of today. Why mess with perfection, right?

As time passed varies sizes and species of tarantula developed. Let’s look at some of the fascinating species of tarantula that inhabit our planet today.

We’ll start off with the largest species of tarantula. Weighing in at 6 ounces with a body length of 5 inches and a leg span of 12 inches, we have the Goliath Bird-Eating Tarantula. If you put a full grown adult on a common dinner plate their legs would sit comfortably on the edges of this plate. That is a huge spider!

The Goliath Bird-Eating Tarantula is found in South American rainforests. They eat pretty much anything smaller than themselves including mice, lizards, amphibians, and invertebrates. Even though they are called bird eating tarantulas they rarely if ever eat birds. The name comes from a sketch that Maria Sybilla Merian, a naturalist who lived from 1647-1717, drew of a tarantula in a tree eating a hummingbird. She based the sketch on reports from explorers in country at the time that stated the tarantula was large enough to eat birds.  Much like anything else outrageous, it has withstood the test of time. 

Goliath Bird-Eating Tarantulas are a rust red color all over and the hairs, or setae, that cover their body lay more flat compared to some other tarantulas, giving them a more stream-lined look. Like all other tarantulas they have fangs that help them catch and eat their food. The Goliath Bird-Eating tarantula’s fangs are 2 inches long!

Turning to the complete opposite end of the spectrum, let’s look at the world’s smallest tarantula. The Spruce-Fir Moss Tarantula is the size of a BB gun pellet when fully grown! That is a seriously small spider. It is found only in one place in the world, a few pockets of the Southern Appalachian Mountains of the Southeastern United States. They live under the moss mats that grow on rocks at high elevations of the mountains. They are typically found above 5300 feet above sea level. The moss they build their funnel webs under provides them with insulation and food resources they need to survive. 

Spruce-Fir Moss tarantulas are a brown color all over the body and, similar to the Goliath bird-eating tarantula, they have a bit less hair than some other tarantulas.

Sadly these mini-tarantulas are on the endangered species list do to habitat loss. Since they are so small and live his in the mountain range we know very little about their individual live,s but researchers are still studying them when they can to learn everything we can about them in hopes of helping them survive.

Size is not the only thing that ranges widely between tarantula species. What would you think if I told you tarantulas come in many different colors? I can see you faces now! You’re giving me the chin scratch! Tarantulas only come in different shade of brown, right? Nope! While brown is a very common color some tarantulas are actually bright blue, orange, and even green!

There is a Cobalt Blue Tarantula native to Myanmar and Thailand and their name is no exaggeration. This tarantula is as blue as a sapphire gemstone.

The Green Bottle Blue Tarantula of South America has bright blue legs, a lustrous green carapace, and a sunrise orange rump. It is one of the most ostentatiously colored tarantulas.

The Orange-knee tarantula of Mexico is a beautiful combination of black on the body with stripes of orange on the legs and outlining the carapace. The color-blocking on these tarantulas is truly spectacular.

The Pinktoe tarantula, the first species of tarantula to be described by European naturalists, is black on the legs and carapace, a lighter brown on the abdomen, or opisthosoma, with light pink on the last segment of their legs, hence pink toes!

And my personal favorite, the Chilean Rose Hair Tarantula from the desert of Chile. The majority of the body is brown but their carapace is an iridescent pink color.

And many other species of tarantulas that are mainly brown on their body will have shades of brown that create striking patterns such as the Skeleton Tarantula from Brazil. This tarantula is dark brown on the abdomen and legs with a light blonde on the carapace and light blonde patterning on the legs. 

And the Pumpkin Patch Tarantula from Columbia. This oddly named spider is brown on the legs and chelicerae with black and tan creating an intricate geometrical pattern on the carapace and abdomen.

The various species and sizes of tarantulas is truly astounding and that’s why it’s my fifth favorite thing about them.

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another thing I like about tarantulas!

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: Tarantulas are predators! They have a unique way of hunting their prey. Join Kiersten as she walks you through how these eight-legged wonders catch food.

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

Show Notes: 

The Tarantula Scientist by Sy Montgomery

Remarkable Animals: The Tarantula by Gail LaBonte

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This episode continues tarantulas and the fourth thing I like about these eight-legged wonders is how they hunt!

Most of the tarantulas that we currently know about are carnivores. That means they eat meat. We have yet to discover a tarantula that eats vegetables but you never know. Most tarantulas are ambush predators which means they lay in wait until the right prey comes along. They hide under cover and wait patiently until food comes to them. Some species will stay in or near their burrows to hunt while others will travel a short distance from their homes. If you’ve ever encountered a tarantula in your house at night, it was probably searching for a nice midnight meal!

What is the correct prey item for a tarantula? That can depend on the species of tarantula and how big they are, but the majority of them hunt other invertebrates. Tarantulas are opportunistic eaters which means they will consume almost anything that they can catch. Examples of common prey items are grasshoppers, crickets, beetles, wasps, cicadas, worms, caterpillars, and even other spider species. 

Sam Marshall, a scientist studying tarantulas in the wild, has been able to lure them our of burrows by dangling earthworms in front the entrance. I could go on but the list is long when it comes to invertebrates. Almost any kind of insect you can think of could be consumed by a tarantula. Hmmm. Maybe not ants, I haven’t seen any references to tarantulas eating ants.

Some of you may be asking if they eat things other than invertebrates. You may even be thinking about the bird-eating tarantulas of South America. They must eat birds if it’s in their name, right? That is a reasonable thought but…Not so much. These tarantulas are large enough to eat birds, but there is not a lot of evidence proving that they do eat birds. These large tarantulas eat bigger invertebrates, mice, lizards, and will even occasionally catch a toad. The reason they have this name is because of an illustration depicting an arboreal tarantula eating a hummingbird, but as of yet no one has seen this behavior in the wild. I’ll have more on this in a future episode.

Now that we know what they eat, let’s find out how they catch their prey. For those of you who have already listened to the episode on senses, you know that tarantulas have fairly poor eyesight. They cannot see in detail. So if they cannot see clearly, they must rely on another sense to detect prey, right? That is an excellent thought, Listeners. And that is exactly what they do! The sensitive hairs, or setae, covering their body help them feel prey items when they are close enough to successfully catch them. These hairs are extremely sensitive and as the tarantula gains experience it learns which movements indicate potential prey. They can tell the difference between a grasshopper, a moth, or a mouse. 

Tarantulas that hunt from home have another trick they use to successfully  catch a meal. All spiders spin silk and tarantulas are no exception. Other species of spiders spin large webs in open spaces to catch prey items that happen to get caught in the sticky silk. It’s an excellent way to catch prey unawares, but tarantulas do not use their silk webs in this way. However, they do set trip wires along the ground that attach to webbing laid down on the floor of their burrows. These trip wires will vibrate when something walks by it. The tarantula will sit patiently in the entrance of the burrow with one of its legs touching the silk attached to the trip wire. As soon as the silk vibrates at just the right frequency, they pounce!

Tarantulas cannot jump but they have strong chelicerae and pedipalps that aide in catching, as well as eating, food. Once they have determined that an appropriate food item is nearby they can move quickly to snatch it. They grab it with the two fangs that are attached to the end of the chelicerae and stabilize it with the pedipalps. Tarantula fangs can only move up and down, so they must rear back to expose their fangs when they are grabbing their prey. 

The fangs are connected to venom sacs that sit inside the chelicerae. The tarantula will inject their prey with venom to kill it. The venom also helps breakdown the insides of the prey into a soup-like liquid. Don’t worry, it’s likely that their prey is dead before their insides begin to dissolve. This can take a little time so the tarantula will hold their food patiently as they wait. 

After the venom has had time to work, the tarantula will crush its food with its chelicerae. The juices will squeeze out and the tarantula’s strong stomach muscles will suck the juices into its mouth, like a vacuum cleaner! I have to admit it sounds kind of gruesome, but it’s also terribly fascinating. 

Like most spiders, the tarantula can only digest liquids, but unlike most spiders they do chew their food to get all the liquid out. To make sure no large pieces of exoskeleton get into their digestive system, they have small hairs around their mouth that act like a filter keeping out those large pieces. The whole process can take up to twenty minutes, so the tarantula will pull back into their burrow or hiding spot while they eat to protect themselves from predators that might be hunting them! Once they’re done the only thing that is left is a little bit of exoskeleton.

After the tarantula has finished its meal, they take a moment to clean their mouth parts. They are very fastidious about cleanliness because the hairs around their mouths are so important in keeping them healthy.

The last question we need to answer about how tarantulas hunt is how often do they need to eat. The answer is quite mind-blowing. Are you ready? One grasshopper can be enough food for the tarantula for two months! That’s 60 days! Could you imagine if we could live off of one hamburger for two months? That is some slow digestion! 

I know this to be true, through personal experience. I had a rose-haired tarantula as a pet for 12 years and I gave her about five crickets a month. Sometimes the crickets died of old age before she even ate them! 

The way tarantulas hunt is fascinating and I know you loved hearing about it because it is my fourth favorite thing about tarantulas. 

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another thing I like about tarantulas!

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: Tarantuals live all over the world! Join Kiersten as she talks about where tarantulas live, what habitats they like, and how they got all over the planet.

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

Show Notes: 

The Tarantula Scientist by Sy Montgomery

“Tarantulas are everywhere and now researchers know why” by Mihai Andrei, ZME Science https://www.zmescience.com/science/biology/tarantula-evolution-gondwana-19042021/

https://www.heath-hands.org.uk/blog/subterranean-spiders

https://www.biodiversityexplorer.info/arachnids/spiders/theraphosidae/index.htm

https://environment.des.qld.gov.au/wildlife/animals/living-with/tarantulas

https://usaspiders.com/aphonopelma-hentzi-texas-brown-tarantula/

“The Natural History of Tarantula Spiders” by Richard C. Gallon https://www.thebts.co.uk/old_articles/natural.htm

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This episode continues tarantulas and the third thing I like about these amazing arachnids is where they live!

Tarantulas are found on every continent on the planet with the exception of Antartica. For those arachnaphobs out there this is distressing news, but do not worry they have specific habitats that they prefer and once you know what these are you can successfully avoid them. Although, by the end of this series of Ten Things I Like About, I know all my listeners will be in love with tarantulas! Okay, okay, if not love then at least in appreciation.

Tarantulas are most commonly found in warmer climates. Semi-arid desert habitat is the environment that most people associate with tarantulas, but more tarantulas are actually found in tropical rainforests than desert areas. Most tarantulas are distributed on land found 40 degrees north of the equator to 40 degrees south of the equator. This places them in warmer regions of the planet which includes Africa, southern Europe, areas of the Middle East, southern Asia, Indonesia, Australia, and all of Central and South America.

Tarantulas found in North America are typically restricted to the Southwest, including Arizona, Utah, Nevada, California, Colorado, Texas, and Oklahoma; although, the Texas Brown has been seen as far east as Missouri. A common area home to several species of tarantula in North America is the desert. Various species of tarantula are found in semi-desert areas of the Sonoran, Chihuahua, and Mojave deserts. 

There are seven species of tarantula described in Australia. They are found in Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia, and Western Australia. The habitat they favor consists of desert, temperate, and rainforest areas. They are not found in the southern coastal areas or the northern tropics. 

South America is a hotspot for tarantulas. These hairy arachnids are found almost everywhere on this continent. The warm, humid tropical forests are a great place to find tarantulas. Just north of the equator sits French Guiana, it’s about the size of Indiana in the United States and is considered by many scientists to be the tarantula capital of the world. About a dozen different species of tarantula live there including the world famous bird-eating tarantulas!

In Africa, tarantulas are found almost everywhere with the exception of the Sahara desert. This desert is home to only a handful of creatures that can tolerate the super dry environment and the extreme temperatures. No tarantula has yet to be found that is equipped to survive there. But Africa is host to many species of temperate as well as tropical species of tarantula, one of the most famous being the baboon spiders.

In Europe, one must be very careful when looking for tarantulas. You must be sure to not get them mixed up with hairy wolf spiders! The original “tarantula” was a very hairy wolf spider seen in Taranto, Italy. The name was carried to other continents by European explorers who used it to describe other hairy spiders they saw. We ended up keeping and using the word “tarantula” for arachnids in the Family Theraphosidae. There is only one known species of tarantula in the United Kingdom classified in Family Therphosidae and that is the purse web spider.

You might be thinking, how did tarantulas find their way to almost every continent in the world? Well some scientists from Carnegie Mellon University had the same question. Behaviorally speaking, tarantulas are typically homebodies, so how did they spread across the planet? Turns out tarantulas are pretty old. Like Cretaceous period running around with dinosaurs old. Because they lived during this time they inhabited Gondwana, the supercontinent that existed before tectonic activity created continental drift resulting in the seven continents we have today. Tarantulas just hitched a ride. 

There is also some evidence that tarantulas may be better dispersers than we initially thought, at least on the Asian continent. It appears that two lineages colonized across the Asian continent. Some stayed in India while others diversified across Asia while the Indian tectonic plate was still drifting toward Asia. These two lineages actually colonized Asia 20 million years apart. This information is encouraging scientists to reevaluate how they think about tarantula dispersal. 

Now that we know where in the world to find tarantulas, let’s take a closer look at where they spend most of their time. There are two main places that tarantulas live. The first is the most common and what most people think of when you think about tarantulas, underground burrows.

The vast majority of tarantulas live in underground burrows. These burrows are often self made by the tarantula, but occasionally another animal’s abandoned burrow will be used. To dig the burrow, tarantulas will use their chelicerae and pedipalps to move the soil. If they are digging their own burrow and they are a sedentary species that lives in one place for many years, they will expand the tunnels and chamber as they themselves grow! Could you imagine having to build a larger house or apartment each time we humans got bigger?

Most burrows consist of one long tunnel leading to an ovoid chamber that the tarantula uses to rest in. Often both the tunnel and chamber floors will be covered in a layer of silk that the tarantula produces itself. Some species of tarantulas have a more elaborate set up with more than one chamber and additional entrance tubes. This does give you an escape route if confronted by another tarantula or a predator. Smart thinking!

Some species will spruce up the entrance to their burrow with a structure called a turret. The turret consists of plant material and soil stitched together with silk. It sits outside the lip of the burrow and prevents ground water from flooding the burrow! What a great example of forethought…in an arachnid! Amazing! 

The second place tarantulas live is in trees! Yes, that’s right I said trees. There are a handful of arboreal tarantula species. They are found in South America, Africa, and Asia, mainly in tropical forests. Arboreal tarantulas have many different choices when it comes to finding a secure living space in a tree. Some will construct a tube made of silk that it attaches to surrounding branches. Rotted holes in trees can make a lovely abode for a tarantula to inhabit. Some will rest behind loose panels of bark. And other’s use epiphytic plants that grow in the branches of trees. Talk about a fancy high rise home. These tarantulas know where it’s at!

There is a third life style that is still being studied, but it appears that some tarantulas may live a vagabond life. They wander from burrow to burrow or hiding spot taking refuge in whatever place they can find during the day. So far, it looks like only two species may lead this type of life, but more research is needed to confirm this behavior.

That’s it for this third fascinating episode about tarantulas. I hope you liked learning about where tarantulas live as much as I liked writing about it, because it is my third favorite thing about tarantulas.  

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another thing I like about tarantulas!

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: The senses of the tarantula are complex and bind-blowing! Join Kiersten as she walks you through this amazing arachnid’s sense of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell.

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

Show Notes:

The Tarantula Scientist by Sy Montgomery

https://study.com/academy/lesson/tarantulas-anatomy-habitat-bite.html

https://www.labroots.com/trending/plants-and-animals/18796/surprise-tarantulas-color-vision

“The evolution of coloration and opsin in tarantulas.” By Satires Foley, Vinodkumar Saranathan, and William H. Piel. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, September 2020. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.1688

“Airborne Acoustic Perception by a Jumping Spider.” By Paul S. Shamble, Gil Menda, James R. Golden, Eyal I. Nitzany, Katherine Walden, Tsevi Beatus, Damian O. Elias, Itai Cohen, Ronald N. Miles, and Ronald R. Hoy, Current Biology, Vol. 26, Issue 21, pg 2913-2920

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.08.041

https://faunafacts.com/spiders/can-tarantulas-hear/

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

]

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This episode continues tarantulas and the second thing I like about these awesome creatures is their senses!

The five senses that are typically common amongst most animals are sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. We’re going to look at each one of these in relation to tarantulas. Buckle up listeners, this is going to be a crazy ride!

Okay, let’s start with vision. As mentioned in the anatomy episode, tarantulas have eight eyes. They are set just above the chelicerae. Two large eyes, that are relatively easy to see with the naked human eye, are centered in the middle of the front portion of the cephalothorax. Four eyes sit below those. These are smaller than the large eyes and sit in a line. Of these four eyes, the two in the middle will be slightly larger than the two on the ends. 

Now, if you’re keeping count that gives us only six eyes. The final two eyes sit on each side of the head. Once again, they will be smaller than the large front facing eyes, but they are bigger than the four eyes that are lined below the main eyes. This is typical of most tarantulas but not all species will be exactly the same. So based on the fact that they have eight eyes, their eyesight must be amazing! That’s an excellent deductive thought listeners, but in this case it is not correct.

Tarantulas’ eyes are capable of detecting motion and changes in light, but cannot determine visual cues in any detail. When it comes to tarantulas, more eyes does not mean better vision. But before you shed a tear for these wee animals, their eyes are perfect for how they live their lives. Most tarantulas are nocturnal, so seeing in shades of light and dark is just what they need to navigate their environment successfully.

It is commonly thought that tarantulas cannot see color. It makes sense that if you live in the shadows of night the ability to see color is not important, but there is some recent research that is challenging this thought. There are some tarantulas that are covered in bright blues and greens. For example, the Cobalt Blue tarantula of Myanmar and Thailand is a bright, beautiful sapphire blue. This is a truly gorgeous species of tarantula, to the human eye, but why would the tarantula produce a blue color if they themselves cannot see it? 

  In a research paper published in 2020, scientists analyzed the opsins in tarantula eyes. Opsins are light-sensitive proteins that are often present in animals that possess color vision. It was previously thought that these opsins would not be present in tarantulas but the scientists found some. This indicates that the tarantula can see in color, or at least some colors. We’re not one hundred percent sure why these tarantulas are blue, but the current thought is that the color is used to attract mates. Studies have not been performed with brown, red, or orange colored tarantulas so we’ll have to wait to find out if they can see in color. The closer you look at these amazing arachnids, the cooler they become. Am I right? 

Let’s move on to hearing. The question here is can tarantulas hear? H-E-A-R. (Laugh) Sorry bad pun. The answer is more complicated than just a yes or no, so let’s discuss the details. Tarantulas do not have ears in the traditional sense, but they are capable of hearing. 

As you have probably noticed tarantulas are pretty hairy. These hairs, or setae, are not just for looks, they are specialized structures that perform various functions for the tarantula. One of those functions is to detect vibrations. The setae on the legs are highly sensitive to air-borne vibrations. Quoting from a scientific paper published in Current Biology in November 2016 titled “Airborne Acoustic Perception by a Jumping Spider" these setae “are air-flow mechanoreceptors sensitive to the particle-velocity component of airborne stimuli”. Plainly said, the setae on the tarantula’s legs vibrate when sound waves hit them and this transfers information from the environment to the tarantula. I think that’s pretty cool! 

(As a side note, this experiment was performed with jumping spiders, which are not a type of tarantula, but the setae of both arachnids are so similar that we can make educated assumptions that this ability also applies to tarantulas.)

What’s even more amazing is that these setae can help the tarantula differentiate between predators and prey. According to scientific experiments, typical predators of tarantulas produce low-frequency sounds when they move. When those sounds hit the setae they vibrate at a specific rate. When the tarantula feels those vibrations they know they need to go into defense mode. Prey items produce different frequency sounds and when the setae vibrate at those rates the tarantula knows to go into hunting mode! I think it’s outstanding that these little hair-like structures can do so much!

Next, let’s investigate the tarantula’s sense of touch. This sense is related to the setae that covers their whole body. Essentially the tarantula’s entire body is one big sensory receptor. But it can be aided by the silk that they produce. Tarantulas that live in burrows often spin a flat web covering the ground that makes up the tunnels and chambers of their burrow. These webs help transmit vibrations to the tarantula’s sensitive legs. It tells them when a larger predator may be present or when a smaller prey item is near by. This is the same for tarantulas that live in trees, our arboreal tarantulas, it’s just not done on a burrow. 

These setae are so sensitive that any movement in the air can provide information to the tarantula. A slight breeze, the flap of a predatory bird wing, or a rain drop can all impart important information through the sensitive setae covering the tarantula’s body.

The last two senses are smell and taste. These are combined in the tarantula, or as far as we know they are (It is a bit difficult to ask them how that cockroach tastes), and once again these senses rely on the setae. The chelicerae and the pedipalps are the two anatomical structures most closely involved in taste and smell. For more information about those two anatomical structures, please listen to the first episode on anatomy. These two structures are covered in, you guessed it, setae, but these setae are different from the ones on their legs. These setae are chemoreceptors. The structure of the chemoreceptors is different from the setae used as mechanoreceptors that sense vibrations. The chemoreceptor setae are curved, double-layered, open to the environment at the end, and innervated at the base. This structure allows odors to infiltrate the setae so the tarantula can determine what they have encountered. Is it a prey item they wish to eat, a dirt clod or leaf they need to ignore, or the scent of a known predator they need to hide from? 

It’s been wild ride into the world of tarantula senses, and I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have because it is the second thing like about tarantulas. 

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another thing I like about tarantulas!

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: Tarantulas are a frequently misunderstood animal so join Kiersten as she illuminates what makes them so cool! We start off with anatomy.

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

Show notes: 

The Tarantula Scientist by Sy Montgomery

https://study.com/academy/lesson/tarantulas-anatomy-habitat-bite.html

https://www.britannica.com/science/book-lung

https://www.tarantulasdemexico.com/en/anatomia_en.htm

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… This is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

My name is Kiersten and I have a Master’s Degree in Animal Behavior and did my thesis on the breeding behavior of the Tri-colored bat. I was a zookeeper for many years and have worked with all sorts of animals from Aba Aba fish to tigers to ravens to domesticated dogs and so many more in between. Many of those years were spent in education programs and the most important lesson I learned was that the more information someone has about a particular animal the less they fear them. The less they fear them the more they crave information about them and before you know it you’ve become an advocate for that misunderstood animal.

This is the first episode of tarantulas, my first misunderstood animal, and my first favorite thing about tarantulas is their anatomy! I’m not kidding listeners! This is one fascinating animal and o ne of the best ways to get comfortable with a misunderstood animal is to understand how they work, so let’s get started with the tarantula’s anatomy.

Tarantulas are classified as arachnids which means they are invertebrates that have eight legs. This puts them in the company of spiders, scorpions, harvestmen, ticks, and mites. Many people clump spiders and tarantulas together, but spiders and tarantulas are classified separately by scientists because of some anatomical differences and we’ll touch on these toward the end of this episode.

As invertebrates, tarantulas have an exoskeleton. This is a hard outer shell made of chitin that gives their body shape. To grow they must shed this exoskeleton periodically in a process called molting.

The most iconic attribute of tarantulas is their hair. This may be the biggest reason they creep people out, but this hair is super cool. The bristles are not made of of the same thing animal hair is made out, so technically not hair. Tarantula bristles are made of chitin, the same thing their exoskeleton is made of and there are four types of bristles. One type is the setae which all tarantulas have and these bristles act as sensory organs detecting chemicals, feeling vibrations, and sensing wind direction. The next type of bristles are the scopulae. These are found at the end of their legs and allow tarantulas to cling to surfaces. There are two other types of bristles that some but not all, tarantulas have, both are used in defense. One is the stridulating bristles that tarantula can rub together to make a hissing sound when threatened! How cool is that! And the fourth bristle is the urticating bristles that    can be detached from the abdomen and thrown at predators. These bristles are itchy and can irritate the nose, eyes, and mouth of a predator for hours.

Starting with the easily seen anatomy, tarantulas have two segments of their body the prosoma and the opisthosoma. The prosoma is the front portion of the tarantula, also known as the cephalothorax, where the eight legs are attached, where the eyes and mouth sit, and where the pedipalps attach. The opisthosoma is the back portion of the tarantula, often called the abdomen, where the lungs are housed and the spinnerets are attached.

Let’s take a closer look at the prosoma. The most notable appendage attached to the prosoma are the legs. Tarantulas have eight legs with seven segments on each leg. At the end of the legs are small tarsal claws that aide the tarantula in climbing and sticking to surfaces. These claws are retractable which means they can be extended when in use or brought back in when not in use. Depending on the species, there are two to three tarsal claws. 

Pedipalps are the second most obvious appendage attached to the prosoma. These are leg-like appendage at the front of the prosoma. They are often mistaken for legs but pedipalps are used to help catch and hold food, smelling, and feeling vibrations. They do not help the tarantula walk. Males will also use these to transfer sperm to the female during breeding season.

  The chelicerae are also on the prosoma but these are not as obvious unless you are holding the tarantula upside down, which I would not recommend, they really don't like that! The chelicerae kind of look like hairy beaver teeth and house the fangs and venom glands. They are also important in chewing their food. This chelicerae are so strong that they can sometimes use them to help move dirt in a burrow or even break roots that may get in their way. Another use for the chelicerae is for grooming. Tarantulas are very tidy and clean animals that use their chelicera, or mouth parts,   to groom their pedipalps and legs.

The eyes, eight of them are also found on the prosoma of the tarantula. They are located on the top, front portion of the prosoma just in front of the fovea, a depression in the middle of the carapace which the top of the prosoma. Tarantula eyes are mainly used for judging brightness of light rather than clear visual images. 

The prosoma also houses internal organs vital to the tarantula’s survival. As we covered before, the mouth is found here and the mouth leads to the esophagus and the stomach. The stomach is kinda like a vacuum, sucking food through the mouth and the esophagus. The underside of the fovea is where the suction muscles of the stomach are attached. 

The tarantula’s brain is also housed here in the prosoma. Their brain is definitely different from mammalian brains but it is just as important in processing environmental information. Their brain is divided into two ganglia, or bundles of nerves, that control nerve channels throughout the entire body. 

There are also large retractor muscles housed in the prosoma and these help anchor and control the mobility of the legs. These muscles are also anchored to the fovea just like the stomach muscles.

Alright, let’s move on to the second section of the tarantula’s body, the opisthosoma, or the abdomen. This is often the largest portion of the tarantula’s body. On the outside, the spinnerets poke out the back and these four appendages help produce and spin silk. 

There are four openings on the opisthosoma that connect to the tarantulas lungs, allowing oxygen transfer. And the anus is also found on this structure, because everyone poops!

Okay, let’s go inside the opisthosoma. Inside we run into the intestines. The glands that help produce silk are also found here. If it is a female tarantula her ovaries are housed in the opisthosoma. Last but defiantly not least, the lungs and heart are found here as well.

Now the tarantula has some of the coolest lungs around. They are called book lungs. Why? Because they look like the pages of a book. This is an old style of lung that does not expand and contact like our lungs. It’s actually a series of thin plates that are highly vascular and the entire surface area of the plates can transfer oxygen and carbon dioxide. This is where the slits in the opisthosoma become important. These slits allow the oxygen in and the carbon dioxide out.

Now these lungs are highly reliant on the pumping of the heart. The heart moves the hemolymph throughout the body of the tarantula. Hemolymph is the tarantula’s equivalent of mammalian blood, but the hemolymph does not stay in a maze of arteries and veins like our blood; instead, the heart pumps the hemolymph through arteries in the body that release the hemolymph directly into the body to oxygenate and feed the cells of the body. That’s why it looks all goopy when you squish a bug.

The tarantula relies on the thin plates of the book lungs being coated in hemolymph to help keep them oxygenated. It is incredibly important that both sections of the body get hemolymph and the pedicel is the structure that connects the prosoma to the opisthosoma. Sections of the heart, stomach and nervous system also run through the pedicel.

I know this a a lot of talk about tarantula anatomy, but I want to discuss one last really cool thing about their legs before I end this episode. The legs are all attached to the prosoma and every leg has about thirty muscles that move it, but the muscles can only retract the legs they cannot extend the legs.  We’ve all seen tarantulas walking, so how do they extend their legs? Their hemolymph! They rely on the pressure created by the hemolymph pumping through their body to extend their legs! How truly amazing is that!

In the beginning of this episode I said we’d talk about why scientists classify tarantulas and spiders in different families. Now that we’ve talked about their anatomy we can revisit this. There are two anatomical differences between tarantulas and other spiders, one is the book lungs. Tarantulas have book lungs while other spiders have more modern lungs. The second difference involves their mouth parts. Tarantulas can only move their mouth parts up and down while other spiders can move their mouth parts side to side. These two differences are significant enough to cause scientists to classify them in separate families. 

I hope you’ve enjoyed this look at tarantula anatomy because it is my first favorite thing about this misunderstood animal. 

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Episode 15: Vaquita: Conservation

Summary: The vaquita is balancing on the edge of extinction. With only 10 left, can we save these beautiful porpoises? Join Kiersten as she talks about the conservation efforts surrounding the vaquita.

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

Show Notes: 

https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/west-coast/science-data/vaquita-conservation-and-abundance

https://seasheperd.org/milagro/

Robinson, Jacqueline; Kyriazis Christopher; Nidenda-Morales, Sergio; Beichman, Annabel; Rojas-Bracho, LOrenzo; Robertson, Kelly; Fontaine, Micheal; Wayne, Robert; Lohmueller, Kirk; Taylor Barbara, and Morin, Phillip. “The critically endangered vaquita is not doomed to extinction by inbreeding depression.” Science, May 2022: Vol 376, Issue 6593, pg 635-639; DOI:10.1126/science.abm1742

Vaquita: Science, Politics, and Crime in the Sea of Cortez by Brooke Bessesen

Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Vaquita Conservation Organizations

porpoise.org

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This episode continues the vaquita and the fifth thing I like about the vaquita is how much effort we are putting into conservation of this species! Regrettably, this will be my last episode about the vaquita. I wanted to do a full ten episodes but we know so little about this animal that I could only gather enough information to do five episodes. Also, a word of caution about this episode, it will be hard to listen to and it was incredibly emotionally for me to write, but this is an important part of the vaquita’s story and must be told. Have some tissues handy.

At the posting of this episode, in December 2022 there are only 10 vaquitas alive in the Sea of Cortez. They are the only vaquitas alive on the planet. There are no individuals in captivity. We have the slimmest of chances to save them from extinction and the odds are not on our, or their side, but we haven’t given up.

Conservation efforts concerning the vaquita began in 1972 when the United States gave them protection under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. In 1975 Mexico also listed them as endangered. By this time, it was determined that the gill net fishing in the Sea of Cortez was greatly impacting not only the totoaba fish the nets were intended to catch but also the vaquita. 

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s website gill nets are described as a wall of netting that hangs in the water column, typically made of monofilament or multifilament nylon. Mesh sizes can vary depending on species that you wish to catch but they are designed to allow the fish’ s head to get through but not the body. As the fish struggles to get free it gets more and more tangled keeping it captured until fishermen retrieve the nets. This type of fishing is not manned, it is a passive form of fishing that means fisherman can come by at different times to retrieve the fish caught in the nets. Commercial fisheries have been using this method to catch the totoaba, a fish that can grow to 6 feet long and is in great demand in Chinese markets, since the 1930s. 

These nets are huge risks to oxygen breathing animals that live in areas where they are used. Animals such as sea turtles, sea lions, dolphins, whales and porpoises can all die when caught in these nets because they become trapped under water and suffocate. 

In 1996 vaquita were listed as critically endangered by the International Union of Conservation of Nature, aka IUCN. In 1997, the first reliable estimate of the vaquita population was obtained through a cooperative Mexican-American survey. A total of 567 individuals were estimated by this survey. In 2008 another survey found only 245 vaquitas. This is a loss of 57%. That’s 322 individuals in eleven years. 

Now gill net fishing for totoaba had been outlawed in 1975 because of the severe decline seen in this species, but the swim bladder of this fish can bring a very high price on the black market, so fisherman were willing to risk punishment for the huge payday. In 2010 the totoaba were listed as critically endangered by the IUCN. Gillnets are still used illegally to catch this fish and these nets are also the main reason vaquitas are balancing on the edge of extinction.

In the last episode, I mentioned the Sea Shepherd Organization and the conservation efforts they are involved in. Let’s start with two projects focused on helping keep the vaquita safe in the Sea of Cortez.

Operation Milagro is a program in which the Sea Shepherd ships work in conjunction with Mexican authorities to crackdown on illegal fishing in the Sea of Cortez. The ships go out on daily tours looking for illegal fishing activity. When they spot someone or something suspicious they contact the Mexican Navy to investigate further. This is a band-aid on a fatal wound but the volunteers of Sea Shepherd are willing to do everything they can to help this marine mammal. 

Another project they are involved in, now that gill net fishing has been outlawed in the Sea of Cortez, is retrieving ghost nets. These are nets that have been abandoned by fisherman but still remain in the waters. They may not be used for fishing anymore but they still pose a threat to the aquatic life in the sea. 

Sea Shepherd ships use specialized equipment to find these nets and haul them aboard freeing any animals caught but still alive and untangling those that have perished. They throw these individuals overboard with heavy hearts knowing that they may help feed other animals in the water. The nets are dismantled and sent to an organization that is making shoes out of them. Parley for the Oceans has joined forces with Adidas to turn ocean trash and gill nets into running shoes.

The question that haunts conservationists is whether all of this work is too little too late? With only ten individual vaquitas left on the planet, are our efforts to save them from gill nets even worth it?

For those of you that remember the basics of high school genetics you probably know that when you have a small pool of mammalian genes, inbreeding can cause some serious problems. If animals, especially mammals, breed with family members that have genes that are too closely related it leads to genetic diseases, infertile offspring, underdeveloped offspring that may not survive, and other serious problems. 

A new study looking at the genetics of the vaquita sponsored by NOAA Fisheries, UCLA, University of Washington, United Nations Development Program in Mexico, the Center for Research in Ecology and Evolution of Disease in France, and Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences in the Netherlands may have an answer for us. The study published in May 2022 used tissue samples collected by Mexican researchers beginning in the 1980s. In an article on the NOAA Fisheries website, Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho, a co-author of this study, is quoted as saying, “Genomics gives us clues into the species’ past but also lets us peer into the future. Despite the small numbers, the species could recover if we stopped killing them.”

What the study reveals is that the vaquitas population has always been small, compared to other marine mammals, fluctuating between 1,000 to 5,000 individuals over a period of 250,000 years. Why does this give researchers and conservationists hope for their survival? Quoting from the NOAA Fisheries article, “Smaller populations have less genetic variation from one animal to another, and fewer harmful mutations. Over time, when two animals with harmful traits occasionally mated, they produced compromised offspring that likely died. That process gradually purged many harmful traits from the population.”

The scientists involved with this research ran computer simulations based on the archived vaquita genetic samples. The simulations found that if we immediately stop the deaths of vaquitas in gill nets, they have a chance to recover. We can still save this amazing mammal from extinction, if we stop using gill nets in the Sea of Cortez. 

I hope that they next thing we hear r about the vaquita is that their population numbers are on the rise. If not they will most likely become extinct by the end of 2023.

Thank you for joining me in learning about the vaquita.

Please visit porpoise.org to find out even more about the vaquita and to discover what you can do to help this unique animal.

Join me next week for a look at our first misunderstood animal, tarantulas.

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: Scientific research into the natural history of animals is incredibly important. Join Kiersten as she talks about the ways we are researching the vaquita.

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

Show Notes: 

Vaquita: Science, Politics, and Crime in the Sea of Cortez by Brooke Bessesen

Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Vaquita Conservation Organizations

porpoise.org

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This episode continues the vaquita and the fourth thing I like about the vaquita is how we are researching them!

There are two incredibly important ways we are researching vaquitas. If you’ve listened to the preceding episodes you know that vaquitas are very shy animals. They are notoriously hard to spot when looking for them from boats, but visual observation is one of the best ways we have of studying them. 

Researchers with a lot of patience, have actually compiled an identification guide using the dorsal fins of the vaquitas. Each dorsal fin is unique unto its owner. They have a particular curve, a notch or scar from some injury or encounter in its life that makes them easy to recognize. The dorsal fin always breaches the surface each time a vaquita needs to breath, so it makes them the perfect identification tool.  

To study an animal that lives in the water you need a boat or a ship that can get you where you need to go. Most researchers can’t afford to buy a boat or even rent a boat when they need to gather data, and some research institutions do not have their own boats either, but luckily, there are non-profit conservation organizations that are often willing to save a seat for a scientist. 

The Sea Shepard is one of those organizations. The Sea Shepherd’s main goal is to protect marine wildlife all over the world. Since the time we have determined that the vaquitas population is declining, the Sea Shepherd Organization has been involved. I’m going to discuss the vaquita conservation efforts this organization is helping with in the next podcast, but they are always happy to provide spotting opportunities to researchers. 

The Sea Shepherd organization has several ships of different sizes that they pilot for the various missions they are involved in. Some of these ships have been used in the Sea of Cortez for both conservation efforts and research opportunities. These ships are often staffed by volunteers that help scan the horizon for animal activity in the water. High-powered military binoculars called Big Eyes are mounted to the deck of most of their ships and are capable of swiveling to search the horizon easily. These binoculars have a magnification power of 25x150 which allows for visual clarity at exceptional distances helping scientists see activity clearly up to a mile away. Which is a good thing because the shy tendencies of the vaquita make it hard to approach too closely.

Volunteers and scientists will also use their own personal binoculars, as well ,increasing the chances of spotting vaquita activity. Since the Sea of Cortez is one of the most biologically diverse bodies of water on the planet, many variety of animals are often spotted and each sighting is documented and rejoiced no matter what species it is. Visual sightings are only one way we are currently studying the vaquita, though.

The second way we are researching the vaquita has to do with sound, but it’s not sound that we can hear. All porpoises use echolocation to hunt for food. The vaquita does this too. Using special equipment, researchers can use their echolocation calls to find the vaquitas.

Mexico’s National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change, also known as INECC, is using devices called c-pods to “listen” for vaquitas in the Sea of Cortez. Brooke Bessesen, in her book Vaquita: Science, Politics, and Crime in the Sea of Cortez, describes c-pods as “self-contained ultrasound monitors that select tonal clicks and record the time, duration and other features of each click to 5-microseconds resolution.” These devices are essentially recording the echolocation calls of the vaquita.

Okay, how exactly do they work? These are water proof devices that run on batteries and record data onto memory cards that can be removed to access the data later. They are deposited throughout a chosen range within the Sea of Cortez, specifically within the Vaquita Refuge area. Passive acoustic monitoring technology, also known as PAM, is loaded on these devices. This technology triggers the recording function whenever it detects the sounds of vaquita echolocation clicks. The c-pods used by INECC can run for up to five months recording every encounter the whole time.

The c-pod can record vaquita clicks up to 1300 feet away and  also documents time, duration, center frequency, intensity, bandwidth, and can even extrapolate a frequency trend. When analyzing the data, researchers need to focus on individual clicks and the number of clicks emitted by vaquita to obtain the most precise analysis of the data. These c-pod excel at this type of recording. 

C-pods are typically deployed from mid-June to mid-September. This is the off season for fisherman. This time of year is chosen because there is much less traffic on the water which decreases the odds of these expensive research devices being accidentally, or purposely, caught up and carried away by fisherman. 

To make sure the incredibly important data these devices record can be used, precise maps must be kept as to where the c-pods are positioned in the water. Each device is attached to a rope with a buoy on the end to mark where it has been dropped. Every few weeks employees of INECC with the help of local fisherman employed during the off season will retrieve the c-pods and replace them with fresh units. The c-pods will be placed in different areas throughout the Sea of Cortez. Moving them around has provided us with a more accurate idea of how much of this area is used by the vaquitas. It has also offered us a more reliable count of how many vaquitas are living in the Sea of Cortez.

I find it interesting sounds that we cannot hear have given us the most accurate count of an animal that is so difficult for us to see!

Thank you for joining me on this journey into how we are researching the vaquita it is my fourth favorite thing about the vaquita. 

Please visit porpoise.org to find out even more about the vaquita and to discover what you can do to help this unique animal.

Join me next week for an in-depth look at the conservation status of the vaquita and the efforts we are taking to ensure the survival of this mysterious porpoise. 

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: Did you read that title right? Yes, you did. Some ants make slaves of other ants! Join Kiersten to find out how.

For my hearing impaired followers, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

Show Notes: 

“Tales from the Ant World” by Edward O. Wilson

“Adventures Among Ants” by Mark W. Moffett

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

In the last episode we talked about communication and how pheromones allow ants to give each other important messages and instructions. This is an amazing adaptation that makes them one if the most efficient organisms on the planet, but it does have a downside. Relying on pheromones as your main source of communication can lead to loop holes that others will take advantage of and by that I mean enslavement. Yep! Some ants enslave other ants. It’s not exactly something I like, but it is incredibly interesting. So, the fourth thing I find interesting about ants is how they use and misuse pheromones to their greatest advantage.

We discussed how ants know who is allowed to come in and out of a colony in the last episode. When ants emerge from their pupal stage their body oils absorb the unique smells of their colony. This gives them the key to re-enter their colony when they venture out, and it helps protect the colony from intruders, but it can also be used to enslave them. 

Let’s find out exactly how this works. The workers of ant species specialized to be slave-makers will raid colonies of other species. Workers from Polyergus lucidus or Formica subintegra will raid the colony of a vulnerable species such as Formica subsericea. When they raid the colony they have one target, the pupae. The adults of the colony being raided certainly put up a fight and ants on both sides of the battle will lose their lives but the raiders will retrieve at least some of the pupae they were after. That pupae is taken back to the raiders colony and settled in with the nursery there. Within a few days or weeks, the raided ants will emerge and soak up the scent of their new colony. They believe this is their home. It’s where they are meant to be. They accept the raiders as their sisters and the raiders accept them as their own. So, the enslavement isn’t like what we think of from the human perspective. It is a bit more like capture and domestication of wild animals.

In the north temperate zones of North America, Europe, and Asia ant slavery is common especially in the subfamily Formicinae. Oddly, slavery is known in only temperate areas. Five species of Polyergus ants are known to be slave-makers and these ants range across North America, Europe, Russia, and Japan. All of them enslave ants in the genus Formica.  

Let’s follow a specific raid detailed by Mark W. Moffett in his book Adventures Among Ants. At Sagehen Creek Field Station in the Sierra Nevada of the United States, Moffett and his graduate student watched a raid between Polyergus breviceps, also known as Amazon ants, and Formica argentea. The Amazons were raiding the Formica colony. They watch as the Amazons forced their way inside the Formica colony and then head out the other side with the pupae of the Formica. They flipped a rock to find out what was going on inside and expected to see a war going on between the raiders and the Formica, but that is not what they saw at all. The only fight they saw was one Formica ant in a tug of war with a n Amazon over a pupa, but all the other Formica were just walking around, business as usual. These species of Formica only fight raiders by putting up blockades of dirt. Once the raiders destroy those blockades and enter the colony, the residents just give up and let the Amazons raid the nursery.

Mark and his student followed the Amazons back to their own colony and were amazed at what they saw. The Amazons were greeted by adult Formica slaves that took the pupae that they’d just raided from them and scuttled off with the stolen pupae. Other adult Formica ants exited the Amazon colony and picked-up the raiding party and carried them back into the colony where they would be waited on hand and foot. The majority of the time, the Amazons never did anything for themselves they just laid around maybe grooming one of their sisters as the Formica slaves did everything in the colony.

A quote from Moffett’s book explains everything we need to know about the fate of the stolen Formica pupae, “Assimilated into the wrong society, the ants are duped into a life of servitude, doing all the drudge work their masters won’t: building nests, foraging for prey, harvesting honeydew, slaying free-living Formica that enter their territory, and taking care of the brood. The Amazon slavers’ only job is to go on raids, replenishing the store of Formica pupae as their enslaved workers age and die.” End quote.

The other side of this raiding behavior is also quite interesting. The Amazon ants can’t actually take care of themselves. The literally can’t do anything but raid Formica nest to steal pupae. They cannot create nests, they cannot find food for themselves, the cannot take care of themselves. They must have slave ants to do it for them. 

Moffett tells his readers about an instance when he dropped a piece of his turkey sandwich near an Amazon worker. She walked right by completely ignoring it, not knowing it was a tasty bit of food. It remained where it fell until a Formica slave ant came upon it and took it to the colony. 

The Amazon raiders are so out numbered when they enter a Formica colony that, if the Formica actually fought back, the Amazons would lose, but these species have evolved in this unusual dance for years. The Amazons are now dependent on the Formica for survival. Maybe the Formica have accepted the raids as just another day in the colony.

Polyergus aren’t the only ants that make slaves. It seems to be spread through the ant kingdom. In Yosemite National Park, Edward Wilson came across a raid in progress. The raiders were Formica wheeleri and they had four different species of Formica spread throughout their colony with some of the enslaved ants participating in the raid on another nest. 

You would think that slave-making would be a dead end evolutionarily speaking for the ants that adopt this behavior, but it doesn’t seem to be causing any of them to go extinct yet. It can degenerate into social parasitism though. Strongylognathus testaceus has completely lost their raiding warrior spirit. The newly mated queen simply moves into a colony of another species and sets up shop right next to that colony’s queen. The host colony workers take care of both queens. When the parasitic queen lays eggs the host workers take care of them as well. The adult parasitic ants just kind hang out with the other workers but don’t do any work at all. Talk about the couch surfing friend that just won’t leave!

How did slave making evolve in ants? No one is sure of an answer, but the most accepted hypothesis is that the first slave-makers were competitive species that raided other colonies for whatever they needed and took the pupae as part of their booty and most likely ate them. Some of the pupa survived and became the first slaves. Evolution and survival took over from there. Nature can be so very interesting.

Thank you for joining me for the fourth episode of ants. I know it was a choice to listen to this specific episode based on the title, but I am glad you did listener’s, because my fourth favorite thing about ants is how the use of pheromones have evolved into something so surprising.

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another exciting episode about ants.  

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, my very own piano playing hero.

Summary: How do ants organize all those colony residents? Join Kiersten to find out the amazing answer to this question.

For my hearing impaired followers, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

Show Notes: 

“Tales from the Ant World” by Edward O. Wilson

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

I feel like we have already talked about so much cool stuff about ants and we are only on episode three. This is going to be quite an exciting series on ants. The third thing I like about ants is how they communicate.

Most of us have probably seen a line of ants moving from one place to another at some point in our lives. We may have stopped to take a look and wonder what they were doing or just walked on by without too much of a second thought.  Either way, your brain probably took a moment to puzzle over what they were doing, where they were going, or how they knew where to go.  

Communication is the key! So, how do ants communicate? Two types of chemical substances lead ants through their lives. Pheromones which are chemical substances passed back and forth between individuals of the same species and allomones which are chemical substance used by other species and used by social invertebrates to hunt prey or avoid being prey.

A quote from Edward O. Wilson about ant communication states, “Among all of the organisms that live by smell and taste, ants are the virtuoso of chemical communication.” End quote. Just a heads up, of you haven’t already figured this out, I will be quoting E.O. Wilson a lot in this series, but he’s learned so much about ants and he is always eager to share that I just can’t help myself. Ants have created a unique chemosensory world that no other creature known to humans can surpass. 

Let’s look first at how those ants traveling in a line know exactly where to go? When an ant colony needs resources they send out scouts to find what they need. When a scout finds what they want, they eat or drink their fill and run back to the nest in as straight a line as possible. The scout always knows where her nest is regardless of how far away they have traveled (we will discuss this in a moment). When she arrives at the nest, the scout will puke all over the floor. No serious, she will gurp up a small portion of what she ingested in front of a few ants and then turn around an head back. Some of her sisters will immediately follow her out. But why? She just came in the house threw up all over the floor and then left! What is going on? 

When that scout regurgitated the resource she found she created a pheromone that simply stated, “I’ve found what we need! Here it is! Follow my trail to find more!” Who can resist an invitation like that? The original scout laid a scent trail for herself by dragging her stinger along the ground to follow back to the resource and now her fellow workers will also follow that trail to help gather more of what they want. E.O. Wilson encourages you to experiment with some sugar water to see this phenomenon for yourself. You can use a drop of sugar water near a line of ants and watch what happens when they find it! Please use common sense if you choose to do this. Be careful to keep yourself and the ants safe from harm.

How do ants identify these chemical signals? Do they have a nose to sniff them out? Sort of. They do not have a nose like a mammal that sticks out on the front of their face. They have antennae. These structures are attached to the heads and protrude out into the environment. The first segment of the antenna is called the scape and it is typically the longest and support the other shorter segments. Collectively this structure is called the funiculus. The funiculus is the “nose” of the ant. It is covered in tiny hairs, knobs, and plates, that detect various chemical substances. The funiculus neurologically transmits the identity and quantity of the substance to the brain. 

The information transferred to the ant’s brain must be analyzed in a matter of seconds with unerring precision to ensure survival of the individual and, more importantly, the colony. Based on the sensory information received, the ant chooses her actions quickly and decisively relying on instinct and current circumstances. If you watch a line of worker ants traveling out and back to the colony, you won’t notice how they are communicating with each other the entire time because they are doing so without hesitating or slowing down. Slow-motion photography reveals the continuous movement of the antennae of each ant. They are swinging their antenna back and forth constantly, “sniffing” each ant they pass, the chemical trail they are following, and their surroundings. 

What happens if an ant from another colony tries to enter a different colony? It’s not a great day for that ant, she will be stung to death. This brings up the question, how do ants recognize each other? They all look the same to us. Do they all look the same to each other? Visually, maybe. But they don’t all smell the same. Using their keen funiculus ants can smell a faker.

Each ant carries a specific colony scent with them everywhere they go. Yes! Ants have BO and it is super important to their acceptance. The ant’s body oils absorb the particular scent of their colony. It’s an identification card or work uniform that says you belong here. If an ant with the wrong odor tries to come into the colony the smell gives them away and they will be attacked immediately.

Okay, I think it’s clear that pheromones are extremely important to ants, but how do they create these pheromones? In the summer of 1958, Edward Wilson decide to answer this question. He chose to investigate this using a colony of fire ants in his lab at Harvard. Fire ants are incredibly good at coordinating search and retrieval expeditions for food resources, so they were the perfect candidate for this research. We know ants lay trails using their stingers. So the best place to look of the origin of the pheromonal substance is in the stinger venom, right? This is were Edward Wilson looked first, but no dice. When he created trails using the venom of a fire ant, no one seemed to care. This was the case with several other glands he found as well. Continuing his search, he finally found something with the potential to be the pheromone producer. A small organ connected to the stinger. The Dufour’s gland. It’s a sausage-shaped speck that is barely visible to the naked human eye. 

Could this be what he was looking for? Turns out it was. It was first described in 1841 and Edward Wilson was doubtful that it was what he was looking for, but sometimes serendipity provides. To confirm his unlikely hunch, an experiment was devised using a Dufour’s gland from a sacrificial fire ant. He crushed the gland and drug a line near the colony. The ants flipped out! They streamed out of the colony and ran up and down the line like their butts were in fire. This was definitely what they were using to create their scent trails. 

The next step was to determine what chemical the Dufour’s gland contained, and then maybe we could talk to the ants. Edward Wilson teamed up with some Harvard chemists who used gas chromatography to determine what was in there. They determined that is was a terpenoid pheromone but as they purified it more and more to find the base chemical it lost it’s potency. It turns out that the substance the scout was using to lead her sister’s back to the resource was a combination a pheromones used to excite, attract, and to lead.

So how many pheromones are involved in ant communication? Edward Wilson’s best guess is between ten to twenty different pheromones. The exact number depends of the species. The most amazing part of this is that ants can create new messages by varying the amount of the pheromones released. For example a harvester ant out foraging encounters a group of fire ants. The harvester ant can release the alarm substance methyl heptanone to, hopefully, repel, the fire ants but also call for help from her nest mates. The intensity of the pheromone tells her reinforcements how far away she is and when they come closer they pick up their pace to rush to her rescue. With one pheromone she’s given three different instructions.

Can ants understand the pheromone language of other ants? Sometimes and this leads to a whole load of trouble for certain ant species, but we’ll tackle that topic in a future episode. We went from something as simple as a scent trail to a whole new animal language in this episode about ants. I’m super excited to share this episode with you, because my third favorite thing about ants is how they communicate.

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another exciting episode about ants.  

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: How do ants create new colonies? Join Kiersten to find out the amazing way new ant colonies are born!

For my hearing impaired followers, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

Show Notes: 

“Tales from the Ant World” by Edward O. Wilson

“Ant Biology” Ants Canada, https://www.antscanada.com

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

On to episode two of ants, listeners! The second thing I like about ants is the life of a colony. I had no idea how complicated the life a colony was when I started researching this topic. Each species of ant will have specifics that differ based on how they obtain resources and where they choose to live, but the basic structure of the life cycle of a colony is essentially the same for all ants.

It all begins with a virgin queen. When a colony reaches a certain size, and that size varies with each species, the current queen will lay an egg, or several, that will develop into a new young queen. She will develop wings, and as soon as she is able, will take flight from the existing colony. Her first flight is also her nuptial flight. She will emerge form the colony structure and alight on a leaf or rock and release a pheromone that says “Hello! Here I am!” And the males will come flying. Typically they want to mate with males of a different colony, but when males are scarce they will mate with males of their own colony. Diverse genetics is not something most insects have to worry about like mammals must. Depending on the species, the queen will mate with one or multiple males. Regardless, the queen will mate only once in her life.

Sometimes mating takes place in the air and sometimes it takes place on that leaf or rock. Either way, they will each go their separate ways once the deed is done. The queen will wonder off looking for the perfect place to start her new life while the male, having completed the only thing he was born to do, will die or become food for a predator. Sorry, gentleman.

For the new queen, no longer a virgin but with a spermatheca full of sperm (a quick aside: a spermatheca is a pouch in the abdomen where queen ants store the sperm obtained during mating) she follows her instincts to find the best home for her new colony. Based on species it could be a rotten log, a perfect dirt mound, a tree branch, or any number of other places. If she survives the nuptial flight, and that is a big IF, and she finds the perfect colony-building site, another big IF, she will break off her wings and settle in to begin pumping out eggs. 

It can take a queen anywhere from 24 hours to a week to lay eggs. The first eggs laid will be the first workers in the colony, so…they will be female. That’s right! It’s a woman’s world in the ant universe. Disney Pixar’s A Bug’s Life  is wrong, it would have been a female ant that saved the day while the males just laid around doing nothing! All working ants in a colony are female. And here comes the harsh truth about the males: According to E. O. Wilson, one of the foremost authorities on ants in the world, quote “Adult males, with the exception of competing for access to virgin queens, and the food and grooming they receive from their sister workers, are pathetic creatures.” End quote. Males have small brains and big genitalia. They are only necessary during the nuptial flight and mating success is not guaranteed, only death is guaranteed. Once again, gentleman, I’m sorry, but it is a pampered life of eating and eating until it’s time to go have some intimate time with a queen, so maybe it’s not so bad, even if it is a short, short existence. 

Let’s say our queen has been successful and she is on her way to creating her colony. Eggs have been laid, once they hatch she will clean and feed them as larva until they become pupa and then turn into adult ants. These ants will be workers, probably a combination of some minors, that will stay in the nest to care for the queen and more eggs, and some majors that will exit the colony in search of food and water. Once we are at this stage, the queen just keeps going. She will lay the eggs and the worker ants will keep the colony running. The various tasks performed by the worker ants varies by species, but you will typically have indoor and outdoor workers. In some species age determines your job. Young, new workers remain in the colony taking care of the queen and the eggs, larvae, and pupae, while the older ants will venture outside to hunt for resources. We will look at a few specific species of ants in future episodes.

The queen is able to decide when to make females and when to make males. How does she do this? Remember that spermatheca? This pouch in her abdomen is attached to her oviduct by a tube that has a valve. The queen is able to open and close that valve at will. When she wants a fertilized egg, she opens the valve. When she wants an unfertilized egg, she lays an egg without opening the valve. Fertilized eggs will become females while unfertilized eggs become males. 

Let’s take a quick moment to think about this, the queen only mates once in her lifetime and she can lay thousands, maybe millions depending soon how long she lives, of eggs in her life, so it must be a lot of sperm transferred in that nuptial meeting. It’s amazing that one moment of contact gives her what she needs to produce an entire colony. 

How long can a queen live? That varies greatly depending on the species. Some will live only 2 to 3 years while some can live 15 years. The oldest known queen was kept by a German scientist for 29 years. 

Ants go through a complete metamorphosis. This means they go through four stages of growth, the egg, the larva (where they are fed by adult ants), the pupa (this a more dormant stage where they are changing into the adult), and the adult. The egg, larva, and pupa stage are cared for by adult workers making sure they are clean, fed, and moved/rescued should something happen to the colony. 

When workers get older, they do not get to retire to a life of luxury, they usual just die on their feet. Other workers will pick them up and take them to the “trash pile” and leave them to desiccate. Sometimes, when needed, they will be dismembered and eaten. If you die outside the nest you may be brought back as a food resource or left to be scavenged by predators. Not much crying over the loss of a sister in an ant colony. 

When the colony reaches a certain size, the queen will lay eggs that become fertile females, up until then she is the only fertile female in the colony. When these fertile females hatch they will venture forth to begin the colony-building process a new.

Thank you for listening to episode two of ants, listeners, I hope you see why my second favorite thing about ants is the life of a colony, because what a fascinating journey this episode has been!

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another exciting episode about ants.  

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: Ants are some of the most misunderstood animals on Earth. Join Kiersten as she begins a new series about these fascinating insects.

For my hearing impaired followers, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

Show Notes: 

“Tales from the Ant World” by Edward O. Wilson

“Adventures Among Ants,” by Mark W. Moffett

“In Search of Ant Ancestors,” by Ted R. Schultz, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2000 Dec 5;97(26):14028–14029. doi: 10.1073/pnas.011513798

“The abundance, biomass, and distribution of ants on Earth,” by Patrick Schultheiss, Sabine S Nooten, Runxi Wang, and Benoit Gurnard. PNAS, 119 (40) e2201550119, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2201550119

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… This is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

My name is Kiersten and I have a Master’s Degree in Animal Behavior and did my thesis on the breeding behavior of the Tri-colored bat. I was a zookeeper for many years and have worked with all sorts of animals from Aba Aba fish to tigers to ravens to domesticated dogs and so many more in between. Many of those years were spent in education programs and the most important lesson I learned was that the more information someone has about a particular animal the less they fear them. The less they fear them the more they crave information about them and before you know it you’ve become an advocate for that misunderstood animal.

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This is the beginning of a new series about a misunderstood animal that every one of us has encountered. Ants. Ants are one of the most misunderstood animals on the planet but they are so fascinating and very successful. In this series we are going to find out what makes them tick. The first thing I like about ants is their origins.

As I begin this series I actually have a red, angry fire ant bite on my thumb. The irony is not lost on me that I am about to embark on a ten episode series dedicated to lauding the amazing attributes of ants to lure you into loving them while I have an itchy, painful welt from an ant bite on my thumb. These animals are truly fascinating so I bet I can get you to fall in love with them despite the nasty bites we’ve probably all experienced. Let’s get started from the beginning shall we?

The classification of ants is as follows:

Kingdom Animalia (Animals)

Phylum Arthropoda (Arthropods): invertebrate animals that have a segmented body and jointed appendages

Subphylum Hexapoda (Hexapods): a six-legged arthropod 

Class Insecta  (Insects)

Order Hymenoptera (Ants, Bees, Wasps and Sawflies)

Superfamily Formicoidea (Ants)

Family Formicidae (Ants)

The scientific names will vary based on species.

When did ants first appear on the planet?  They have been on the planet between 100 -150 million years ago. The specific timing has been hotly debated for many years until and amber sample was found by some rock hounds in 1966. This sample was discovered in Cliffwood Beach, New Jersey in the United States. It seemed an unlikely place to find what scientists needed to determine the origins of ants and it took twenty more years after the initial discovery to clarify whether this sample was of an ant or not. In 1986, it was confirmed to be the amber fossil of an ant solidifying the origins of ants in the mid-Cretaceous period, 90-94 million years ago. By the mid-Eocene period, approximately 50 million years ago, ants had achieved their current level of abundance.

How many ants are on the planet today? In the summer of 2018, Edward O. Wilson, one of, if not the, foremost experts in the study of ants said in his book, Tales from the Ant World, that there are 15,438 species of ants in the world that have been recognized and given a Latinized name. Edward O. Wilson described 450 of known species of ants so I think we can take his word for when he says he’s fairly certain there are approximately 25,000 species in existence today. A study published in 2022, says 15,700 species of ants have been identified. The numbers do see to be going up! The ant taxonomists working at Harvard University which has the world’s largest collection of ants believe the figure to be between 25,000 to 30,000 different species of ants. To sum it up, there are a lot of ant species out there!

Ants actually make up two-thirds of all insect life on Earth. We don’t know have many individual ants are walking around on the Earth at this very moment, but it is in the billions possibly trillions. They are found on every single continent except Antarctica, but as soon as they figure out how to live in snow and ice, they’ll be there too.

They inhabit every habitat the planet has to offer from forests of all kinds, mountains ranges, deserts, prairies, and wetlands. There are even ants that scavenge for food underwater. They live underground, in the branches of trees, and inside caves. The eat seeds, fungi, animal protein, and insect protein. They are hunters, farmers, ranchers, and enslavers. They have one matriarch and live for the good of the colony. Ants are unbelievably complicated life forms and I can’t wait to take you on a journey you won’t forget.

Thanks for joining me for the first episode of ants. My first favorite thing about this misunderstood insect is their origins.

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next we for another exciting episode about ants.  

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: What does conservation look like for the Aba aba? Join Kiersten to find out!

For my hearing impaired followers, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

Show Notes: 

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

We have made it to our tenth and final episode of Aba aba. I hope you have enjoyed our journey with Gymnarchus niloticus, come on you have to admit, it is fun to say that, because I have had a blast talking about this amazing fish. The tenth thing I like about this unbelievably cool fish is conservation.

As any of my longtime listeners know, I typically use the last episode to talk about the conservation status of the current animal or plant that we are discussing. This is the whole reason I started this podcast in the first place, to bring awareness to the animals and plants with whom we share this planet. We have to learn to live together if we are going to be good stewards of this amazing planet. Before we can learn to live together, we have to know what’s out there that is worth fighting for, and all the animals and plants I talk about are worth fighting for.

Let’s talk about what conservation looks like for the Aba aba. When we look at the IUCN Red List, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, Gymnarchus niloticus is listed as Least Concern. This means that no conservation efforts need be taken at this time. The last time that the overall population of the Aba aba was assessed was in 2019, so this information needs some updating. The North African population was last assessed in 2007 and is also listed as Least Concern, but once again we need updated information for this population. The Western African population was last assessed in 2006 and is currently listed as Least Concern. The Eastern African population was last assessed in 2003 and is listed as Vulnerable. Vulnerable means that adult population numbers are decreasing. 

Overall and in the Western and Northern populations the population trends are unknown, so the Least Concern classification may be incorrect. What’s interesting is that the Eastern population that is labeled Vulnerable also has no population trend data. What does this mean? It means we really don’t know how many aba aba are out there and if they are holding their own as our plants changes.

The IUCN does list the threats to the Aba aba and those include dams, water pollution related to the military and agricultural industry, logging and wood harvesting destruction of habitat, and overfishing. Natural climate impacts are droughts. The Aba aba relies on the seasonal flooding of rivers for breeding season. The overfishing impacts the Eastern population because the local humans use Aba aba as a food source in this region.

Currently there are no conservation plans being implemented in any regions of residence, with the exception of small grassroots campaign in the Eastern population region informing local fishers about the risks of overfishing the Aba aba. 

Another threat to the wild population of the Aba aba in collection for the aquarium industry. Gymnarchs niloticus is a fascinating fish that many people fall in love with when they see them in a zoo or aquarium or learn about them from educational resources like this podcast. It’s great to develop an appreciation for nature after learning about a specific specie, but letting that appreciation grow into a need to possess that species can be disastrous. As I talked about in the last episode, Aba abas are not suitable for the home aquarium, but the market still exists.

Some people think they can make it work even if they don’t have the correct size tank, or offer the type of food they need, or realize how dangerous Aba abas can be. They purchase a fish. And when it dies, they purchase another and so on and so on. Most of the time the Aba abas collected are so small and fragile that they are bound to die in transport or in the home aquarium.  Collectors will come back for more and they aren’t just taking a few out of each nest they come across, they are taking all the babies and may even kill the adults to sell for food. 

There is some discussion about how to create an aquaculture program with Aba aba in response to the use of Aba abas as food. Whether this would work or not is yet to be seen since no one has tried to raise Aba abas in a captive situation. One study implied that using Tilapia and Aba aba in a dual aquaculture program might work. Tilapia breed easily and in large numbers in captivity already. The Aba aba could be held with the Tilapia, eat some of the young but not all of them. This situation only deals with one side of the process though. How do we get the Aba aba to breed in captivity? Until that problem is solved, I do not think we’ll be aquaculturing Aba aba anytime soon.

So what can we do right now to help the Aba aba? First, do not support the set trade. Let them stay wild. Second, tell their story. The best way to ensure that they survive into the future is to get people to care about them, and, as you know listeners, you must know about something before you can care about it, and when you care about it, you’ll fight for it.

Thank you for joining me to learn about the Aba aba in this series. My tenth favorite thing about them is conservation. I hope you take this information about the amazing fish and tell everyone you know about them, so we’ll have them far into the future.

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me in two weeks for another new series about and unknown or misunderstood creature.  

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: Do Aba abas make good pets? The short answer is no, but join Kiersten as she discusses why this animal should not be on your next pet list.

For my hearing impaired followers, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

Show Notes: 

Seriously Fish: https://www.seriouslyfish.com

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

We’ve reached the second to last episode of Aba aba and I find myself in a quandary. This isn’t something I like about the Aba aba but it is a topic I think we need to address, so the ninth thing I would like to talk about the Aba aba is the possibility of having it as a pet.

Whenever I start a new series for this podcast, I typically know at least a little about the animal. Even if I know a lot, like about bats, I always do extra research to make sure I offer you the best and most up to date information, I can. When I picked the Aba aba, it was one of the animals I thought of first when I decided to make this podcast, I did my extra research. I have personal experience with this animal, as I have mentioned, so I knew quite a bit about its behavior, diet, and life cycle, but you can always learn more, right? As I started researching for Aba aba I did find scientific research papers but the majority of information I found about this fish came from home aquarium sites. This surprised me because this fish gets big, really big and isn’t fit for the home aquarium. 

At the zoo we had a 250 gallon tank with multiple canister filters attached and our Aba aba wasn’t  anywhere near full grown. Our aquarium was only a temporary home for him while the aquatic area of the zoo was under renovation. The 250 gallons tank would not be able to host him as he got bigger. 

Many of you may have had, or currently have, fish aquariums in your home. I have had some as well, both freshwater fish and saltwater fish. The largest we had was a fifty gallon saltwater tank, and I thought that was enormous for a home aquarium. So when I saw aquarium hobbyist websites talking about the Aba aba I was a little wary. 

The Aba aba is a terrible choice for a pet. Beyond the large tank, and when I saw large tank I mean a 2000 gallon tank to house a full grown Aba aba, and extensive filtration set up you need to provide a clean environment for a fish of this size, you have to provide large food items, not just fish flakes for the Aba aba. Food such as silverside fish and freshwater shrimp. Aba abas are also a dangerous pet to have in your home. Their feeding behavior is intentionally brutal, as a predator you don’t want your prey to get away. Once a fish is sucked into the Aba aba’s mouth, they most likely won’t get out again. If that happens to be a human finger, you’ll be one short for the rest of your life. 

I truly enjoyed taking care of our Aba aba at the zoo, and I can see what  might attract a person to this amazing animal. They are mesmerizing to watch. The constant rippling of the fin is captivating. Watching them rearrange the aquarium furniture is a delight. Offering them various enrichment items and seeing them interact with each one figuring out the puzzle of the new item is rewarding. I personally think they have cute faces, but you have to remember this is a wild animal and they are not like your typical fish you buy at the pet store. This is a predator, a problem solving predator. And you just brought it into your home.

You cannot house it with other fish, as the Aba aba will most likely eat anything you put in with it, so you will have a tank with only one fish. That isn’t typical what most home aquarists want. The Aba aba in unsuitable for a community tank. That includes keeping it with other Aba abas as they are solitary species in the wild with the exception of breeding season when they briefly tolerate each other's company to fertilize eggs and deposit them in a nest. 

I finally looked at what one of the hobby sites had to say about the Aba aba as a home aquarium fish, I was pleasantly surprised. This is what the Seriously Fish site had to say about Gymnarchus niloticus, quote “…the species is simply not suited to the home aquarium in any respect. If you see these for sale, and they are undoubtedly amazing looking fish, ask yourself if you have the money, facilities, and knowledge to house a species that can grow to 5 1/2 feet in length and could remove your hand as an adult.” End Quote. I can’t agree with this statement more. Leave the Aba abas captive care to the professionals.

  I think I have made my point with episode nine of Aba aba. Thank you for listening and taking this little bit of advice seriously because the ninth thing I thought we needed to talk about involving Gymnarchus niloticus is the home aquarium. 

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another exciting episode about the Aba aba.  

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: Have Aba aba impacted human culture in the areas they are found? Join Kiersten to find out!

For my hearing impaired followers, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

Show Notes: 

“Some Ecological Factors of the Tropical Floodplain Influencing the Breeding and Conservation of Gymnarchus niloticus (Cuvier 1829): A Review,” by Oladosu O. O., Oladosu G. A., and Hart A. L. https://core.ac.uk/downloads/pdf/158459099.pdf

“Gross Anatomy and Histological Features of Gymnarchus niloticus (Cover, 1829) from the River Niger at Agenebode in Edo State, Nigeria,” by M. O. Agbugui, F. E. Abhulimen, and H. O. Egbo. International Journal of Zoology, Volume 2012, Issue 1, June 19, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/3151609

“Morphology of Aba Knife Fish (Gymnarchus niloticus) (Cuvier, 1829)”, by S.O. Ayoola and C. E. Abotti. World Journal of Fish and Marine Sciences 2 (5): 354-356, 2010.

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

Through the last few episodes I think I have painted a pretty good picture of the Aba aba’s anatomy and natural history. I have fascinated you with the amazing way they hunt and today, I thought we’d investigate how this fish impacts human culture. The eighth thing I like about the Aba aba is how much humans value this fish.

Animals of all kinds impact other animals that reside in their habitats. Aba abas are no exception to this and they have become important in many indigenous human cultures that live where these fish are found.

The first thing you may think of when speaking about how fish impact people is as food. And no doubt, we, as do many other animals, eat fish. Aba abas are highly prized as a food fish. They can grow quite large, creating a lot of meat. A five foot long fish means a bunch a meat. They are an oily fish, but several sources say they are tasty. Smoking them seems to be delightful way to eat them. In West Africa they are also eaten raw.

Some cultures also gift them, alive or dead is not entirely clear, my guess is probably both. Suitors will gift them to a bride’s family symbolizing respect and goodwill. Nothing like a long, electrical fish to start off a relationship right! Certain cultures, such as the Yoruba of West Africa, will also present them to community leaders as a sign of respect during community celebrations. 

The introductory paragraph of the scientific paper “Gross Anatomy and Histological Features of Gymnarchus niloticus from the River Niger at Agenebode in Edo State, Nigeria,” states: Gymnarchus niloticus commonly known as the Nile knife fish, trunk fish, or aba is one of the most valued fishes along the River Niger by the inhabitants of Agenebode and Idah. The trunk fish is highly valued for its good taste, rich nutrients, though oily flesh, ability to grow as large as 25kg, highly valued in customary rites for marriage and community celebrations. End quote.

In Yoruba it is known as Eja Osan while in Hausa it is known as Dansarki which means son of a king. These names are a sign of respect for this amazing fish. (Do please forgive me if I mispronounced any words.)

Since Gymnarchus niloticus is such a large fish and edible, a lot of research is going into whether it would be a good candidate for an aquaculture fish. Is raising them in a farming situation beneficial for protein production and economically sound? The answer is not yet decided but it would be extremely difficult to do in an aquarium situation since the fish get so big and they are aggressive to other animals. 

Someone did discover that polyculturing Aba aba with Tilapia might be possible. They can be kept together in the same space, feeding the tilapia food and then letting the Aba aba eat the tilapia fry. Tilapia grow quickly and create a lot of fry. The Aba aba can eat the tilapia fry but not all of them. Then both species can be harvested. Whether this is possible long term allowing Aba aba to reproduce is unknown, as they are a solitary species, it may not be functional.

It is worthwhile investigating though. Current fishing practices of Aba aba often includes killing the adult and harvesting the young from the nest. This is an unsustainable fishing practices and to help this fish and humans weather the future of changing climate, we will need to work together. Some researchers believe that the Aba aba is a good candidate for an aquaculture food fish. It grows quickly and is a hefty fish, but it needs specific conditions and is a carnivorous fish, so much more planning and research needs to be done.

Another way fish impact humans live is in our home aquariums. Keeping fish can be a rewarding and relaxing hobby, but is the Aba aba a good candidate for the home aquarist? I will answer this question next week.

Thanks for listen to week eight of the Aba aba. My eighth favorite thing about Gymnarchus niloticus is their human cultural connection.

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another exciting episode about the Aba aba.  

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: Is the tuatara a lizard? We have hinted at it for a few episodes. Join Kiersten to find out if the tuatara is or is not a lizard.

For my hearing impaired followers, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

Show Notes:

“It’s not a lizard or a dinosaur: the tuatara is something else entirely,” by Bec Crew. Australian Geographic, https://www.australiangeographic.com.au

“New study shows modern tuatara are little changed from 190 million year old ancestors.” Harvard University Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. https://www.oeb.harvard.edu

Parietal Eye, https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/veterinary-science-and-veterinary-medicine/parietal-eye

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… This is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

During the last few episodes of tuatara, I have asked the question of whether the tuatara is a lizard or not a lizard. Today we are going to answer that question. The fifth thing I like about the tuatara is the unusual quirks that make them a unique reptile.

We have established that the tuatara is in an order of reptiles all by itself, Order Rhynchocephalia. This means that they have no living relatives. That in itself doesn’t mean they are not lizards, it just means they are not related to any living lizards. So let’s look at a few more attributes of the tuatara that will help us answer our question.

In the last episode we discussed the third eye, or parietal eye of the tuatara. Now other species of reptiles, mainly lizards, have a third eye as well. Certain iguanas, skinks, and monitors have a parietal eye, but their third eye is primitive and is not visibly seen at any stage of their development. The basics of the eye are there but it is hidden under a scale. The tuatara’s eye is much more developed and is exposed in young hatchlings. For more in depth discussion of the tuatara’s this eye, please listen to the previous episode.

There are several things about the tuatara’s skeleton that also sets it apart from lizards. 

One is the teeth. The tuatara has three rows of teeth. One row in the lower jaw and two in the upper jaw. When the tuatara bits down the lower teeth fit into the groove between the two rows of upper teeth. That is very unusual and as far as we currently know, no other reptile has a tooth formation like this. The teeth are fused to the jaw and have no roots, which is unlike most lizard teeth. Tuatara teeth are not replaced during their lifetime and as they age and their teeth wear down, they have to switch to softer prey. 

Another strange and interesting thing about the tuatara’s jaw is that when it eats the jaw doesn’t open and close in the typical chewing motion of most animals. It moves forwards and backwards slicing their prey like a saw. Locals of the islands where tuatara live always know when the reptiles have been hunting because they find birds with their heads sawed off. 

Another unique attribute of the tuatara skull is the complete lower temporal bar that closes the lower temporal fenestra. The temporal fenestra is the opening in the skull behind the eye socket. Most modern lizards do not have a complete temporal bar. Researchers believe the complete bar in the tuatara is used to stabilize the skull during biting. It’s a unique jaw motion and it makes sense that the skull needs a bit more support.

As we travel down the skeleton of the tuatara we see some more unique features. The spine is made up of hourglass shaped vertebrae. This shape can be found in fish and amphibians but is unique reptiles to the tuatara. Each vertebrae has a tiny hole through which a rennet of the notochord passes. This was typical in early fossil reptiles but not in modern ones. 

Could there be more unique features of this amazing reptile? Yes. We are not done with the odd features of the tuatara. Their ribs have some unique features as well. They have extra ribs, or rib-like bones, called gastralia that are not attached to the ribcage. These are also found in a few lizards and crocodiles. The tuatara have unicate processes on the actual ribs that are indicative of birds, and are found in modern bird skeletons, but are found only in the tuatara in the reptilians.

The pelvis and shoulder girdles of tuatara are also completely different from lizards. Tuatara have a different rotational angle that allows them to push their body up off of the ground to move, should they choose to, where as lizards have a more sprawling motion when they walk. Tuatara don’t often hold themselves up to walk as it is tiring.

Tuatara are also equipped for a cooler habitat than lizards. They have a unique hemoglobin structure that allows them to survive very cold temperatures.

One last unique attribute of tuatara that I will mention in this episode is how long they live. Tuatara can live up to one hundred years! That is definitely longer than any lizard we know of today.

  So knowing about all these different and unique attributes of the tuatara, we come back to the question of whether they are lizards or not lizards. Science says, no they are not lizards and those that study the tuatara are definitely offended when they are called lizards. If anyone ever asks or incorrectly refers to the tuatara as a lizard, you can now politely inform them that they are incorrect. Tuatara are not lizards, reptiles yes, lizards no.

My fifth favorite thing about the tuatara is that they are truly not lizards.

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another exciting episode about the tuatara.  

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: How does the Aba aba find its food? Join Kiersten to find out!

For my hearing impaired followers, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

Show Notes:

“The Mechanism of Object Location in Gymnarchus niloticus and Similar Fish,” by H. W. Lissman and K. E. Machin. Journal of Experimental Biology (1958) 35 (2): 451-486.

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

I know I left you with a cliffhanger last week and we will remedy that now! This is week seven of Aba abas and the seventh thing I like about this super cool fish is the way they hunt. 

We know that Aba abas are carnivores and that they eat aquatic insects, small fish, and fresh water crustaceans. We also know that they have tiny eyes and relatively poor eyesight. There is not much discussion of olfactory functions in animals that live underwater, and I found no mention of the sense of smell when deep diving the Aba aba. Sooo…we can rule out Aba abas using sight or smell to help them find their prey. What does that leave them with for hunting? Let’s find out!

Something I haven’t mentioned about Gymnarchus niloticus, yet, is that they are an electric fish. This little quirk was discovered by Hans Lissman in 1950 when he received a living specimen as a wedding gift. As he watched the Aba aba swimming in the aquarium he noticed that they could swim backwards and forwards equally well. It never ran into the sides of the tank or into anything placed inside. He wondered how it was navigating so well, thus began some of the first European studies into electroreception in fish. 

Electroreception is the biological ability to detect electrical stimuli. Electrogenesis is the ability to create electrical fields. Both of these abilities are important to the Aba aba. There are two types of electrolocation. I know, there’s a lot of electric words here, bare with me. One type of electrolocation is passive. When using passive electrolocation the predator senes the electric field that the prey item creates. On the other hand, or fin shall we say, is active electrolocation. Here, the predator creates its own electric field and uses the distortions other objects create in its field to target prey or notice obstacles.

Active electrolocation is practiced by three types of fish that we currently know of including Order Gymnotiformes, the knifefishes, Family Mormyridae, the elephantfishes, and our friend Gymnarchus niloticus. All of these fish are considered weakly electrical fish because they do not use their electric fields to stun their prey. Electroreception and electrogenesis are more common in aquatic animals as water conducts electricity more easily than air. 

An electric fish creates an electric field with an electric organ modified from muscles in the tail. The tissue of these modified muscles are called electrocytes and they have evolved at least six times among various fish species. These organs are used for everything from prey detection to communication, mating, and even stunning prey items. The electric field created by this tissue can emanate in short bursts, as in the elephantfishes, or as a continuous wave, as with the knifefishes.

To detect electric fields generated by other creatures, our Aba aba, elephantfishes and knifefishes use sense organs called Ampullae of Lorenzini. They are electroreceptors that form a network of mucus-filled pores in the skin of various fishes. They evolved from the mechanosensory lateral line organs for early vertebrates. Most modern fish and mammals have lost this adaptation.

How does this work in the Aba aba? This is truly amazing! The Aba aba makes its tail negatively charged while its head will stay positively charged creating a symmetrical electric field around its body. To keep this field present its back must remain straight. That’s why it has the long dorsal fin that they use to swim. This fin structure allows it to keep its body completely straight when in motion. 

This electrical field it has created allows the Aba aba to navigate around obstacles and underwater features it cannot see. It also allows it to find nearby prey items. It can sense the distortions that these objects or prey items create in its own electric field. It can actually sense this distortion on its skin with the Ampullae of Lorenzini organs. The Aba aba’s brain is larger than other species of fish, this is true of all electric fish, so they can process the data provided by their various electroreceptive organs. 

If nothing else about the Aba aba has convinced you of their absolute awesomeness, this is it! This is one of the most amazing ways to interact with your surroundings and to hunt for prey that I have ever come across.

In my personal experience, I never felt any electrical shocks when working with my Aba aba at the zoo. They do not use their fields to stun prey, so they never send it out from their body. It is not something that humans can feel. I am not sure if other small fish can sense it either since that would make hunting with it extremely difficult. You’d never catch anything to eat if your food could tell you coming.

They do have to be cautious about other species of electric fish that use this method of hunting because if their electric fields are similar they can interfere with the Aba aba’s detection. Most fish that use this form of perception can create a jamming avoidance response. If two electric fish with very similar wave discharges meet, each fish will shift its discharge frequency to increase the difference between the two. This prevents them from jamming each others perception. My mind was just blown! Can you believe that?

This one snuck up on you didn’t it? This is probably the coolest adaptation of the Aba aba. That’s why the way Gymnarchus niloticus hunts is my seventh favorite thing about them. 

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another exciting episode about the Aba aba.  

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: What does the Aba aba eat? Join Kiersten and a guest co-host to find out!

For my hearing impaired followers, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

Show Notes:

“Morphology of Aba Knife Fish (Gymnarchus niloticus) (Cuvier, 1829)”, by S.O. Ayoola and C. E. Abotti. World Journal of Fish and Marine Sciences 2 (5): 354-356, 2010.

“Aspects of the biology of juvenile Aba, Gymnarchus niloticus (Cuvier 1829) from Eye Lagoon, Lagos, Nigeria,” by FV Oluwale, Ugwumba AAA, and OA Ugwumba. International Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Studies 2019; 7(30): 267-274. www.fisheriesjournal.com

“Some Ecological Factors of the Tropical Floodplain Influencing the Breeding and Conservation of Gymnarchus niloticus (Cuvier 1829): A Review,” by Oladosu O. O., Oladosu G. A., and Hart A. L. https://core.ac.uk/downloads/pdf/158459099.pdf

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This is episode six of Aba aba and the sixth thing I like about Gymnarchus niloticus is their diet. We have talked a bit about this is the past, but we will add a bit more detail of what Aba abas like to eat in this episode.

I have a guest co-host with me this week as I have had some dental work done and need help with all this talking! My husband, Georgiy, is helping me today. Welcome Georgiy, and thanks for helping me out!

Georgiy: Absolutely! Hi!

Kiersten: I know you’ve been listening to this series…right?

Georgiy: Riiight…

Kiersten: Of course you love it. What’s your favorite thing about the Aba aba so far?

Georgiy: The scientific name. Let me try to pronounce it. Gymnastic nalarcus?

Kiersten: (laughs) Not even close! Gymnar-kus niloti-kus.

Georgiy: (laughs) Gymnar-kus niloti-kus

Kiersten: I like that too, but I like everything about the Aba aba. Can you tell our listeners what you’ve learned about what the Aba aba eats?

Georgiy: I know they are carnivores, so they like to eat meat. 

Kiersten: Definitely!

Georgiy: When they are small, 2 to 3 inches in length, they eat insects found in the water and very small fish. A study done in Nigeria found that 36% of juvenile diets were made up of aquatic insects. 

Kiersten: Really?

Georgiy: Yes! 32% of the diet was made up of fish.

Kiersten: Interesting. Did it say what kind of insects and fish?

Georgiy: No. They looked at stomach contents of dead juveniles, so they only found small parts of the digested prey.

Kiersten: Hmmm. It sounds like the juvenile Aba aba is a specialist feeder on insects?

Georgiy: Yes! Exactly. Another study showed that Aba aba young that have used up their egg yolks will eat the midge larvae that are in the nests with them! The adult midges lay eggs on the grasses that the male Aba abas use to make their nests!

Kiersten: Wow! That’s so smart. I love it! Bring the food to you. Does their diet change as they get older?

Georgiy: Yes. As they get older, and larger, they can eat bigger prey items. They will eat more fish, such as silversides, tetras, or African catfish, and add crustaceans to their diet. They will still eat insects but this makes up very little of the diet when they are adults.

Kiersten: That sounds like a smart survival plan.

Georgiy: Yes. The Aba aba are not competing with each other for food sources and they don’t risk injury by hunting something larger than themselves. What did you feed them at the zoo?

Kiersten: Ooo. Good question! We fed them silver side fish and shrimp. The nutritionist made sure we varied his diet so he got the right type of nutrients to keep him healthy. The nutrition staff made the diet for us and weighed out just the right amount of food, so he didn’t get overweight, but also didn’t get too hungry. He never turned his noise up at anything we offered him. It was one more thing I like about working with him. We never had to worry about him not eating.

Georgiy: How did you feed him?

Kiersten: This was also fun! Since his eyesight was not great, we fed him with tongs so we never had to remove decaying fish form the tank. That can get pretty gross and can be detrimental to his health. We offered him one piece at a time with tongs that were about 12 inches long. We just dipped the fish or shrimp into the water and it was only a matter of moments before he found it.

Georgiy: That sounds fun.

Kiersten: It was fun, but we had to be careful because if he accidental got one of our fingers he could really hurt us. When Aba abas eat their prey they suck the food into their mouths with a quick forceful suction. If you remember my bite story from last week, the popping sound, that was the suction action he used to pull the prey item into his mouth. If it had been something smaller than my arm he could have bitten off my finger.

Georgiy: Whoa!

Kiersten: Yep! Once an Aba aba has sucked in a prey item they clamp their mouths shut and use their bony tongue to help guide the food down their esophagus whole!

Georgiy: That cool!

Kiersten: It actually is pretty cool.

Georgiy: How do the find their food in the wild?

Kiersten: That is a great question and I will be answering that in next week’s episode.

Thanks for helping me out with this episode Georgiy, I really appreciate it.

Georgiy: My pleasure. Thanks for having me!

Kiersten: I hope you all enjoyed this episode about the Aba aba diet because it is my sixth favorite thing bout them.

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another exciting episode about the Aba aba.  

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: To get a thorough understanding of the Aba aba join Kiersten for a look at this amazing fish’s anatomy.

For my hearing impaired followers, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

Show Notes:

“Gross Anatomy and Histological Features of Gymnarchus niloticus (Cover, 1829) from the River Niger at Agenebode in Edo State, Nigeria,” by M. O. Agbugui, F. E. Abhulimen, and H. O. Egbo. International Journal of Zoology, Volume 2012, Issue 1, June 19, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/3151609

“Studies on the Biology of Gymnarchus niloticus in Lake Chad: Age Determination and growth; Meristic and Morphometric Characters,” by V. O. Sagua. https://aquadocs.org

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

I can’t believe we are half way through Aba aba already, but here we are at episode five. The fifth thing I like about Gymnarchus niloticus is their anatomy. Up until now, we’ve talked about some of the very interesting parts of the Aba aba’s body, but in this episode we’re going to talk about the Aba aba’s anatomy as a whole. 

If we start from the inside out, we already know that the Aba aba has a bony skeleton as it is classified as a ray-finned fish which has an internal bony skeleton. That is going to include a skull, elongated with small sharp teeth in the lower jaw and a bony tongue. Last week we discovered that bony-tongues fish have teeth in their tongues, but Gymnarchus niloticus is an exception to this. Instead of having teeth in the tongue they have teeth in both the lower and upper jaws. Their bony tongue is used to hold prey still for easier swallowing.

The teeth, though sharp, are not triangular, but peg-shaped. They look like a flat-head screwdriver bit that fits into a power drill. The lower mandible is rounded and is deeper than the upper. The upper jaw does have teeth, as well. The upper jaws teeth are also peg-shaped. The bottom jaw teeth number around 24 teeth while the upper jaw has only 10 to 12. There is only one row of teeth on both jaws. The structure of the jaw gives the Aba aba a perpetual smirk.

Let me inject a funny story here as it pertains to the teeth of this amazing fish. As you know, listeners, I worked with an Aba aba at the zoo and one day, I was cleaning the algae off the glass of his tank. This was a precarious job and typically entailed two people, one to clean the glass and one to watch where he was in the tank. Well, this day we were all busy but the algae on the glass had become a bit more unsightly than we liked so I said I would clean it alone. That was the day I got bit by an Aba aba. 

It was a bit more startling than terrifying, I must say, as he caught me off guard hiding in the plastic plant nest he’d built in the center of the tank. I thought I knew where he was but he got my upper arm as is it slipped below the water line just next to the nest. A scary sucking sound ending with a pop and a sting told me I’d just been bitten. He tagged me on the underside of my upper arm just below my armpit. It didn’t hurt much, or bleed that much either, it felt more like a scrapped knee, but the bite was wicked cool. It looked like a dotted circle and I hoped it would scare, because that would have been one heck of a scar to talk about later, but it healed up perfectly fine with nothing left to show for the exciting moment. 

I had a hard time finding research that described the internal skeleton of the Aba aba fish, with the exception of one study detailing the number of vertebrae. With ten specimens examined the number of vertebrae averages about 117 from the base of the skull to the tip of the tail. 

Internal organs include the typical fish guts with research paying particular attention to the gastrointestinal tract. The GI tract consists of long and longitudinally organized organs. I mean they have a long tubular body so this makes a lot of sense to me. It begins with a tubular oesophagus, followed by a long tubular stomach, two pyloric ceaca, and straight intestine, and the cloaca. The intestine is neatly folded and compacted to sit nicely within the fish. 

A single lung arises from a slit in the right side of the pharynx which is on the right side of the fish. The lung and pharynx are held together with sheaths of connective tissue and blood vessels. 

Let’s move to the external anatomy of this fish. Beginning at the head, we have a two nostrils for intake of oxygen. The eyes are next and are relatively small. Aba aba fish do not depend heavily on eyesight. Continuing toward the tail of the animal we come to the gills next. There are four sets of gills on the left and right sides. The gills are small and bony with prominent gill arches, 11 gill rackers, and 63 pairs of fused gill filaments. One operculum, the gill covering sits over the gills to protect them with a slit opening to allow water to pass over the gills.

The head has no scales but there are small cycloid scales on the entire body. Cycloid scales are round, smooth edged scales that overlap. To tell you the truth, the scales on the Aba aba are so small it’s hard to see them. It gives the impression of a smooth skinned fish. 

The one fin is the dorsal fin and it runs the length of the top of the fish from behind the head to the also the tip of the tail. The very end of the tail is blunt and lack a fin. There are no hard spines in the fin and is the main means of propulsion. The fin flows in a serpentine motion allowing the Aba aba to move forward and backwards very quickly. That’s how he tagged me!

To summarize, Aba abas have a long slender body with no scales on the straight head, no caudal fin, anal fins, or pelvic fins. The long dorsal fin extends down the entire body from the head to the end of a blunt tail. No spines in the fin. The entire body, not including the head is covered in small cycloid scales. 

Inside the mouth we have peg-shaped teeth on the top and bottom of the jaw with a bony tongue. Small nostrils and eyes adorn the head. That is the Aba aba in a nutshell. 

I hope it paints a good picture of this extraordinary fish for you because my fifth favorite thing about Gymnarchus niloticus is its anatomy.

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another exciting episode about the Aba aba.  

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: Join Kiersten as she discusses the classification of the Aba aba a bit more closely to find out what it can tell us about this amazing fish.

For my hearing impaired followers, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

Show Notes: 

“Introduction to the Actinopterygii” https://ucmp.berkeley.edu

Bony Tongue, EBSCO Research Starters: https://www.ebsco.com

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

    This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

In episode four, we're going to jump back a bit to episode one and delve into more detail about about the class, order, and family of the Aba aba. The fourth thing I like about Aba abas is their classification. In episode one I briefly described the classification of this fish, but I think we should investigate the class, order, and family of Aba abas a bit more closely.

First for my first time listeners, or for those who are not students of biology, what is classification?  It a system that scientists and researchers use to connect all living things but to also individualize all living things. Whether flora (plants) or fauna (animals) we are all related through physical characteristics. 

Way back in the day, like way back in the 1700s, Carl Linnaeus was a Swedish biologist and physician who developed a binomial nomenclature (a two part name) to organize every living thing into groups. It helped man understand the natural world around him. We still use this classification system today, even though the attributes we use to organize individual plants and animals into their groups has evolved over the years. In the beginning, naturalist used things like appearance and behavior to place animals and plants into the same groups, but now we look at genetic similarities to classify living things.

The two part name consists of the genus and the species. This helps make sure that when you are talking about an individual animal or plant with another researcher you are talking about the same plant or animal. Animals often have different common names around the world and even have different names within the same country. For example, fireflies are known as fireflies, lightening bugs, and glow-worms. These common names vary depending on what region of the United States you may be visiting, but we’re all talking about the same insect. The Aba aba is known as Aba aba, African knife fish, Frankish, freshwater rat-tail, or aba fish, so researchers refer to it as Gymnarchus niloticus. 

If we take a few steps back in the classification we can learn even more about an animal. So let’s do that now with Gymnarchus niloticus. When we look at the Class level of this animal, Actinopterygii, we know that it is a ray-finned fish. What exactly does that tell us? Well, Actinopterygii are fish that possess fins that are made of webs of skin supported by bony or horny spines. We also know that fish in this Class usually have complex skeletons of true bone. Ray-finned fish are the dominant aquatic vertebrates in the water today. They make up about half of all vertebrate species known and are found in every aquatic habitat from the deepest depths of the ocean to freshwater streams and ponds. 

So this level of classification lets us know that Aba abas have a bony skeleton and some sort of webbed fin on their body. It’s a great start. The next step is the Order. This will narrow down things ever more. Aba abas are classified in Order Osteoglossiformes. In Ancient Greek this literally means ‘bony tongue’. Members of this Order have toothed to bony-tongues. They are also known for the forward part of their gastrointestinal tract passing to the left of the esophagus and stomach (in all other fish it passes to the right). They can vary in size ranging from 2 centimeters up to 8 feet or 2.5 meters. 

Up to the early 2000s we thought that Osteoglossiformes were fresh water fish only. All of the 245 known living species of bony-tongued fish are found in freshwater. In 2008 several marine bony tongued fish fossils were discovered in the Danish Eocene Fur Formation. Maybe there are some extant marine osteoglossiformes in the ocean we haven’t found yet. I guess we’ll have to wait and see!

Okay, back to the Aba aba. What does bony-tongued mean in relation to our fish? Bony tongued fish have teeth on their tongues. When they catch prey they use their toothy tongues to crush the prey items against the teeth on the roof of their mouths! Yikes! It sound so cool and so very scary. 

The next step to Gymnarchus niloticus, is the Family, Family Gymnarchidae. The Aba aba is the only fish in this family which it makes it unique, but we already knew that!

I know that scientific classification can be a confusing subject, but I hope this episode helped you understand the Aba aba a bit more. The classification of animals can be very helpful and enlightening and the class, order, and family is my fourth favorite thing about the Aba aba.

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another exciting episode about the Aba aba.  

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: How do Aba aba make more Aba aba? Join Kiersten to find out about the reproductive behavior of Gymnarchus niloticus.

For my hearing impaired followers, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

Show Notes: 

“Abundance, Distribution, Morphometric, Feeding Evaluation and the Reproductive Strategies of Gymnarchus niloticus in the Lower River Niger at Agenebode, Edo State Nigeria,” by Mo Agbugui, Fe Abhulimen, and Ao Adeniyi. J. Apple. Sci. Environ. Manage Vol. 25 (8). 1371-1377, August 2021.

“Gymnarchus niloticus Cuvier, 1829

“Some Ecological Factors of the Tropical Floodplain Influencing the Breeding and Conservation of Gymnarchus niloticus (Cuvier 1829): A Review,” by Oladosu O. O., Oladosu G. A. And Hart A. I.

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… This is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

Episode three of Aba aba is here and we are talking about reproduction. The end of episode two hinted at reproduction kicking off with the rainy season so that’s where we’ll begin. Join me for the third thing I like about Aba abas, reproduction.

It all begins when two Aba aba love each other, no really, it all begins with the rainy season. In the continent of Africa many animals rely on the abundance of the rainy season. This season brings rain that is a necessary resource for survival of all living things, as well as flooding the rivers. Flooded rivers overflow into flood plains where food becomes abundant. Terrestrial invertebrates are often caught off guard and drown leaving them to be consumed by aquatic carnivores, like the Aba aba. The Aba aba already lives in the water but when those waters rise nutrients increase and aquatic vegetation gets thicker. Then it’s time to start looking for a mate.

In studies performed in the Lower River Niger, two breeding peaks were observed. One from May to July, the other from October to January. The breeding behavior of Gymnarchus niloticus is heavily dependent on the flooding of the rivers. Beyond the food resources that increase at this time the aquatic plants that increase are important for the nest making of the Aba aba.

Now, the males of the species are the ones that make the nests. This is not uncommon in fish na the Aba aba is no exception. Their nests can be pretty big, but that is not a surprise for a fish that can get 5 feet in length. The male Aba aba makes a nest with uprooted aquatic plants. He pulls up the plants himself and weaves them into a floating nest that can be 1 meter, or 39 inches, in width. The perimeter of the nest is molded with the mud from the roots of the plants. It is expertly woven. It will be anchored to other plants and have an opening through which the male can enter and depart when needed. A little bit of the top of the nest will stick out of the surface of the water. If the nest becomes dislodged the male will remain with it as it floats down the river.

Inside the plants the male will create a bubble nest. This portion of the nest is made of air bubbles and this is where the eggs will be nestled.

The nest is important for several reasons: The first is to attract a mate. The ladies are attracted by large, well made nests, so the gentlemen will take their time picking the right plants for just the right nest. A few studies have indicated that they prefer plants in Family Poaceae, which are the grasses. The oblong leaves of the grass are perfect for weaving. We have to remember that this animal is weaving a nest. An animal that has no hands is weaving a nest. How extraordinary it that!

The second reason the nest is important is that this is where the eggs will be hidden and held until they hatch. Eggs are between 7mm-8mm, some papers have even said 10mm. That is a very large fish egg. 

Once the eggs are in the nest and fertilized, the male aggressively protects the nest from all predators. It will not hesitate to attack any living thing that comes near, including humans. These guys have no fear, especially when protecting their young. 

As I mentioned before, the nest have an opening for the Aba aba to enter and leave. When they are inside the nest, the male has been seen agitating the water around the eggs. We are not sure why they do this, but it could be to make sure the eggs are well oxygenated and/or keeping the eggs clean of debris. Either way the male is doing a great job keeping the eggs healthy.

I did not find any reference to how long it takes the Aba aba fry, that’s right baby fish are called fry, to hatch and leave the nest. They will remain in the nest until the yolk is completely absorbed. Until then they are vulnerable to predation and they will stay in the nest under papa’s protection. The fry have long gills to help absorb oxygen from the water, but will also gulp air from the center of the nest as well.

How many eggs are we talking about here? Good question! I love it when you think ahead listeners. Females can lay 800-1000 eggs in a nest. That is a lot a fry to keep track of, but it’s actually a low number compared to other species of fish. Aba aba seem to put more energy into larger, but fewer eggs, and more parental involvement to ensure future generations’ survival. 

I could not find any information about how many nests a female will visit in one breeding season. This may be due to the fact that it is difficult to follow them in the rivers where they live, especially during the rainy season when sediment is stirred and flowing freely in the rivers, or it could be that no one has pursued this avenue of study.  

Male and females both have singular reproduction organs. The males have a single testis and the females have a single ovary. This probably limits the amount of eggs they can lay and fertilize. 

Aba abas will complete this reproductive cycle twice a year in the wild following the rainy seasons. In captivity, it may be a different story. The Aba aba I worked with at the zoo was a male. We know this because we gave him enrichment toys such as weighted pool toys and copious amounts of plastic aquatic plants. The only thing he ever did with them was make a floating nest. He would weave the plants together and then shove the pool toys up inside the nest. Sometimes he used the nest like a hammock. Just relaxing inside it and not moving at all. Several times he gave me gave me heart palpitations as I thought he was dead, but it was just one more thing that made me like him.

I’m so happy you joined me for episode three of Aba abas because my third favorite thing about them is their reproductive behaviors.

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another exciting episode about the Aba aba.  

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: Where are Aba aba found? Join Kiersten as she tells where you can find these amazing fish.

For my hearing impaired followers, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

Show Notes: “Gymnarchus niloticus” Global Biodiversity Information Facility, https://www.gbif.org

“Gymnarchus niloticus, Aba aba” Seriously Fish, https://www.seriouslyfish.com

“Morphology of Aba Knife Fish (Gymnarchus niloticus) (Cuvier, 1829)”, by S.O. Ayoola and C. E. Abotti. World Journal of Fish and Marine Sciences 2 (5): 354-356, 2010.

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… This is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This is the second episode of Aba aba, or Gymnarchus niloticus, and the second thing I like about this little known fish is where they are found. Let’s talk about where in the wild this fish is naturally found and what kind of habitat they tend to like best. This episode may be a bit shorter than most, but I promise to make up for it in future episode of this series.

In episode one we found out that the Aba Aba is found in Africa. They can inhabit bodies of fresh water in the Nile, Turkana, Chad, Niger, Volta, Senegal, and Gambia basins. It is wide spread throughout West African countries of Egypt, Benin, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, South Sudan, Sudan, Uganda, and Gambia. It has been reported in Cameroon, where it is an introduced species, but identification here still needs further confirmation. By widespread I mean that they can be found in various bodies of freshwater such as lakes and rivers in these areas but they are sparsely spread. 

These fish need fairly large territories, remember that can get up to five feet in length and weigh 42 pounds, and spend most of their lives as solitary individuals, so therefore, they are sparsely spread throughout their natural habitat.

Now that we know where in the world to find these amazing fish, what kind of habitat are we looking for? We know they like freshwater and can be found in lakes and rivers. They will most often be found in areas with dense aquatic vegetation. They use this to hide from larger predators and to help camouflage themselves from prey items. 

In rivers, they favor the edges of the water near the banks to keep out of the rushing currents toward the middle. Don’t get me wrong, they can swim well, but the edges host the plants they need to rest in during the day. Aba aba are nocturnal, so they are most active at night and they spend their days resting in the vegetation. They can use the plants a bit like a hammock, supporting them while they sleep.

Aba aba fish have very small eyes and are a bit sensitive to light so this is another reason to live in and around thick vegetation. 

Their behavior is seasonally influenced by the rains of this continent, as are many species of animals that live on the African continent. When the rains come breeding season begins, but you’ll have to wait for the next episode to find out the unique breeding behaviors of the Aba aba.

That’s it for the second episode of the Aba aba. Thank you for joining me to find out where this amazing fish lives because it is my second favorite thing about them. 

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another exciting episode about the Aba aba.  

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Summary: What’s an Aba aba? It’s our next unknown creature! Join Kiersten as she introduces us to the Aba aba fish.

For my hearing impaired followers, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

Show Notes: “Gymnarchus niloticus” Global Biodiversity Information Facility, https://www.gbif.org

“Gymnarchus niloticus, Aba aba” Seriously Fish, https://www.seriouslyfish.com

“Morphology of Aba Knife Fish (Gymnarchus niloticus) (Cuvier, 1829)”, by S.O. Ayoola and C. E. Abotti. World Journal of Fish and Marine Sciences 2 (5): 354-356, 2010.

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Aba aba Fish

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… This is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

My name is Kiersten and I have a Master’s Degree in Animal Behavior and did my thesis on the breeding behavior of the Tri-colored bat. I was a zookeeper for many years and have worked with all sorts of animals from Aba Aba fish to tigers to ravens to domesticated dogs and so many more in between. Many of those years were spent in education programs and the most important lesson I learned was that the more information someone has about a particular animal the less they fear them. The less they fear them the more they crave information about them and before you know it you’ve become an advocate for that misunderstood animal.

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

Welcome back, listeners! In this new series after summer break, we will be heading back into the water. Don’t worry we will not need a bigger boat! Okay, I had to throw in a reference to Jaws, being that it’s fifty years old this year, and also one of the reasons that an entire generation of people fear sharks. But that is another series all together. 

This episode is the first in a new series about a fish. The Aba aba fish to be specific. Never heard of it? That’s exactly why I picked it as my next unknown creature. This first thing I like about the Aba aba fish, is the Aba aka fish. We will start off this series with an overview of this wicked cool fish to whet your appetite to learn more.

The Aba aba fish, Gymnarchus niloticus, is also known as the African knife fish, Frankish, freshwater rat-tail, or aba fish. It is a long, slender bodied fish with only one fin. The dorsal fin runs from the back of the head to the tip of the tail on the top-side of the body. This is their only fin and the reason they are called knife fish because they kinda look like a knife if you used the head as the handle. 

Aba aba are typically black to gray to brown on the top half of the body while the underside is a paler color, such as white or beige. They are covered in very small scales that do not stand out making it look like they have smooth skin.

Adults can reach a length of five feet or 1.6 meters and weight 42 pounds or 19 kilograms. That’s a pretty big freshwater fish.

Classification of the Aba aba is as follows-

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Actinopterygii (the ray-finned fish. These are fish that have lightly built fins made of webbings of skin supported by thin bony spines)

Order: Osteoglossiformes (this is an order of ray-finned fish known as the bony tongue fish and we will delve into to this in more detail in a future episode)

Family: Gymnarchidae 

Genus: Gymnarchus (meaning naked bum)

Species: niloticus (meaning from the River Nile)

  They are the only fish in the family Gymnarchidae and in the Genus Gymnarchus which makes them special. 

In the wild the Aba aba is found in the freshwaters of Africa. They live n the lakes and rivers of the Nile, Turkana, Chad, Niger, Volta, Senegal, and Gambia basins.

This fish is an obligate air breather which means they need to gulp air form the surface of the water to supplement the oxygen that they get from the water. If they cannot do this, they will suffocate. There are other species of fish that are also obligate air breathers. Typically this adaptation is found in fish that live in waters that are thick with sediment or have seasonal changes that can increase the sediments levels in the water. Gulping air gives the fish a clean source of oxygen.

Aba aba are predators hunting for other small fish, crustaceans, aquatic insects, copepods, frogs, and snails. The diet is dictated by the size of the Aba aba but they are carnivores throughout their entire lives.

This amazingly cool fish is nocturnal and because they are most active at night they have an adaptation that makes them even cooler. No way, you say! How could they get any cooler than they already are? Well, they are electric! Didn’t see that coming did you?

Aba aba are capable of generating a weak electric current that helps them find prey in low light. Yes! Aba aba are electric fish.

I became fascinated by this fish when I worked with one at one of the zoos where I worked. As soon as he was transferred to our department, he quickly became one of my favorite animals to feed, clean, and develop enrichment for. That’s right these fish are great problem-solvers and we had to give him things to rearrange inside his tank to keep him busy. It was my pleasure to work with him and I like to think he appreciated the attention we gave him, as well.

That is it for the first episode of Aba aba. I hope the overview of this animal has you excited to learn more because my first favorite thing about the Aba aba IS the Aba aba.

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

Join me next week for another exciting episode about the Aba aba.  

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.