Over-educated and Underfunded
Weird, wacky and wonderful stories and sketches from biologists in the field.
10 Spooky Critters (that you may have never heard about) To Get You In The Halloween Spirit10/27/2020 By Ariana LoehrWe love Halloween. Its a time to celebrate the weird, the disturbing and the unknown (as well as a time to dress up in costume and act like a fool). So to help kick off halloween week, here’s a list of some of our favorite weird, disturbing and fairly unknown wildlife. 1. The Housemouse (Mus musculus) While mice running around your house may seem quite unassuming, mice running around atolls have gone full-on vampire. One threat that albatrosses on atolls face is that mice eat their heads while they sit on their nests. Mice are not native to many of these atolls and were most likely brought to the islands as stowaways on boats. On atolls there isn’t much for the mice to eat, so they turn to chomping on these seabirds. The seabirds are incredibly dedicated to sitting on their nest, and haven't evolved a response to predators, so they just sit and allow themselves to be eaten alive. 2. Hammerhead Flatworm (Bipalium spp.) These little flatworms are decked out in true halloween colors, but that’s not what makes them worthy of making this halloween list. Not only are these flatworms cannibalistic and capable of eating things that are twice their size, they can also cannibalize parts of their body when desperate for food. To top it all off, if you chopped them up into teeny tiny pieces they could sprout a new head and body, making them basically immortal. Now that’s just plain spooky. 3. Vampire Moths (Calyptra spp.) These moths, found throughout Asia, are known for one distinct behavior: drinking blood. Rather than using their long proboscis for drinking up sweet nectar from flowers, these moths use that proboscis to puncture skin and drink blood. Scientists believe that this behavior may have evolved from the ability to puncture fruit in combination with the need to find a source of salt to develop sexual maturity and reproduce! 4. Vampire Frogs (Rhacophorus vampyrus) Unlike the vampire moths, vampire frogs don’t actually drink blood. Instead their name stems from two tiny little teeth that they have as tadpoles that look eerily like fangs. As these tadpoles grow into adult frogs, they lose these fangs, and just look like normal frogs. It is believed that these fangs help the tadpoles to puncture and eat unfertilized frog eggs left by their mothers to help them survive in harsh conditions. 5. Lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) Sea lampreys look like something out of a terrible nightmare. And if you’re a fish, they are something out of a nightmare. Lampreys are notorious for their blood sucking nature, latching on to unsuspecting fish and scraping away at their skin to slurp up their insides. This behavior has given them the most deserved nickname as the ‘sea vampire’. 6. Giant Water Bugs (Lethocerus spp.) At 2 inches long, these insects may not seem very intimidating, but they sit in the throne at the top of their food chain with their spooky way of feeding. These bugs like to lurk in the vegetation of streams waiting for unsuspecting prey. They’ll attack just about anything that moves, from frogs to snakes to even your fingers, and inject them with immobilizing toxins and suck out all of the juices from inside their prey’s bodies. 7. Immortal Jellyfish (Turritopsis dohrnii) In terms of spookiness, immortality is high on the list. While it always seems to be just a thing of fairy tales, these jellyfish have turned immortality into a reality. When they’re starved or struggling to survive, they do not die out as most animals would. Instead, they turn back into a polyp-their first life stage. This transformation allows the jellyfish to create a lifecycle that never ends. *cue dramatic music* 8. Zombie Ant Fungus (Ophiocordyceps spp.) These fungi are known for their ability to zombify insects. By attacking the nervous system, the spores can take control over the muscles of insects, making the victim crawl to a tall vantage point before taking possession over the entire body and shooting its fruiting body through the victim’s exoskeleton. The creepiest part of this fungus, is that the victim can remain alive throughout most of the process. 9. Tongue Eating Louse (Cymothoa spp.) We all know the old adage, ‘cat got your tongue?’, but really we should be asking ‘isopod got your tongue?’ These isopods sneak in through the gills of fish, where they live until adulthood. As adults, the female will latch on to the tongue of the fish host and slurp up the blood from the fish’s tongue until it shrivels and falls off. To make things worse, the fish remains alive and has to put up with these tiny tongue vampires mating in their mouths. 10. Vampire Finch (Geospiza difficilis septentrionalis) We return to another blood drinking animal to end our list of spooky animals. The vampire finch is found in the Galapagos and has evolved to feed off of the blood of blue footed boobies. In times when other food in the islands was scarce, these birds began to feed on the parasites living tucked away in boobie feathers. Eventually, after many years of accidentally nipping some flesh in the hunt for parasites, the birds acquired a taste for the nutrient rich blood as well, giving them their incredibly fitting name.
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The lifecycle of Ophiocordyceps unilateralis in rainforest ants.The Ophiocordyceps unilateralis is a fungus that uses ants as hosts to reach tall heights to release and spread their spores up to 30 meters. It attacks the nervous system in the muscles of the ant, controlling the ant's movement. This fungus is found in tropical areas where the warm dark rainforests help the fungi thrive. Its survival plays an important part in keeping ant populations in check, and can attack an entire colony by targeting only 3 or 4 individuals at a time. But don't worry it can't turn humans into tree climbing zombies, not yet at least.
by Vincent DiringerWhat is bright orange, tiny, and carnivorous? A snail of course! Perrottetia dermapyrrhosa was first described in 2013 after it was discovered in the limestone mountains of northern Thailand. Believed to be present in many primary forests across South East Asia, P. dermaphyrrhosa is a relatively uncommon find that this biologist was always excited to see on a rainforest hike. By Vincent DiringerWhat do you do when you’re leading a night walk on a remote island and the only thing you encounter is the common asiatic toad (Duttaphrynus melanostictus)? Easy. You pretend that they’re a rare subspecies found only on the island.
By Vincent DiringerSedili Besar, Malaysia - 2018 What do you do when you are leading an intertidal exploration and come across a bloated, decomposing sea animal on the seashore? In the case of one biologist, the answer was to immediately begin handling it manually, while the others contented themselves with taking pictures and looking for any identifying markers that could help determine the species and its cause of death. The students looked on with a mixture of awe and disgust as four grown adults became increasingly excited at analyzing a dead and very smelly mystery specimen. Deciding to share their discovery with the other biologists on the trip, they shared the pictures and all grouped up to discuss the possibilities (while one was sent to go wash their hands incredibly thoroughly). A consensus was soon formed: the animal was indeed dead, it was a cetacean, possibly a juvenile, and handling a dead animal is gross (dang Sylvia what the hell). Dolphins weren’t a rare sight in the area, but this species’ physical traits were entirely at odds with what we were used to. Some of the marine biologists on staff went back and forth eliminating the obvious candidates: it wasn’t a dugong or a common dolphin, and its physiology wasn’t compatible with that of larger cetaceans. Soon, we were left with two distinct options, the Irrawaddy dolphin (Orcaella brevirostris) or the Indo-Pacific finless porpoise (Neophocaena phocaenoides). Both species are present - yet rare - in the waters off Peninsular Malaysia’s eastern coast. An endangered species, O. brevirostris’ (Irrawaddy dolphin) numbers are low with some ~7,000 individuals worldwide. At the time of writing this post (2020), there is still no accurate estimate of the population in peninsular Malaysia. Listed as vulnerable despite no clear population estimates, N. phocaeniodes (Indo-pacific finless porpoise) has been the subject of taxonomic uncertainty. Being able to correctly identify the remains as either of these species would make it a potentially one-of-a-kind find, but also a slightly depressing one. While opinion was split on the ID, cause of death was a lot simpler to identify, with several deep gouges on the animal’s back indicating a boat strike was most likely to have cut its life short. After several days of deliberation, we were still split on the identity of this mystery creature (#TeamPorpoise) and to settle the debate one of our biologists reached out to a contact at the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum in Singapore. Based off of the pictures we provided, the carcass was identified as that of an Irrawaddy dolphin, giving #TeamIrrawaddy a win, although #TeamPorpoise is still not convinced to this day. Fancy throwing your identifying hat in the ring? Have a look at some of our pictures and comment whether you are #TeamPorpoise, #TeamIrrawaddy or start your own if you think we completely botched the ID. References
Bay, K., Braulik, G., & Tuen, A. (2013). Population estimates and distribution patterns of Irrawaddy dolphins (Orcaella brevirostris) and indo-pacific finless porpoises (Neophocaena phocaenoides) in the Kuching Bay, Sarawak. In Raffles Bulletin of Zoology (Vol. 61). Mazlan, A. G., Zaidi, C. C., Wan-Lotfi, W. M., & Othman, H. R. (2005). On the current status of coastal marine biodiversity in Malaysia. In Indian Journal of Marine Sciences (Vol. 34). 2018 carcass pictures from Charles Downing “So wait, this is you job?” A somewhat incredulous sixteen year-old asked me, “Like, you get paid to do this?”
I turned around with a sly grin, “Well, yeah, you didn’t think I was waking up at 7am everyday to take you guys on hikes and teach you field methods just for fun did you?” Don't get me wrong, working in environmental education is fun. Not only are you working in a sector that enables you to teach students about how various biomes work and contribute to the planet’s wellbeing, but you are able to do so while being immersed in the thick of it, sometimes literally (and yes I mean mud and poo). Mix that work environment with thousands of students of all ages and backgrounds discovering coral reefs, rainforests and mangroves for the first time, and you have a recipe for some amazing quotes and memorable events. Welcome to the Broke Biologists! A website hosting stories from broke biologists living around the world and looking to share their experiences with other broke biologists, well, around the world. No one goes into science for the money, but what we lack in funds, we make up for in great stories and interesting scars. |
About the AuthorsThese stories come from several biologists working in the field around the globe. Archives
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