Similarly, common snapping turtles, Chelydra serpentina, will wiggle their unspecialized tongues to attract fish (I’ve witnessed this myself in captive specimens) but lack the worm-shaped tongue lure found in the more ambush-specialized alligator snappers, Macrochelys temminckii. On reflection, there...
ll meet self-proclaimed skunk ape expert Dave Shealy. His outpost is one of America’s top roadside attractions. You might not see the giant ape himself, but the sanctuary offers a close-up look at Florida’s fascinating wildlife, including live pythons, alligators and snapping turtles. Make...
Full sentences as titles. This is taking the information-transfer aspect of the last admirable quality to its logical extreme, although often at the expense of brevity. I was heavily influenced here by two things that happened while I was at Berkeley. First, I taught for a year in an NSF ...
I had read of turtles scavenging carcasses for minerals but this was the first time I had observed it myself. She kept at it for about 20 minutes, until all of the thin, easily broken parts of the braincase were gone. She didn’t attempt to eat any of the facial skeleton or basicra...
biting this biggish thing that from a distance looked like crumpled up paper. She was really going at it, so I got close to see what she was munching on. It was the head of a rat that our cat, Moe, had killed last week. Easty was snapping off bits of the braincase and eating ...