A number of people have expressed confusion over whether the large salamanders called “mud puppies” really are puppies. Sometimes this leads to unsuitable gifts for small children.
Real puppies are warm and fluffy and playful. Mud puppies are cold, wet, and apt to bite really hard. There is no truth to the belief that they grow up into dogs. Mud puppies they are, and mud puppies they shall remain.
You are unlikely to find real puppies swimming around under the ice in winter. What you’d be seeing under those circumstances are almost certain to be mud puppies.
And there really is no point in trying to train them to do tricks. They don’t like it.
Jambo! Mr. Nature here; and today our safari takes us to South and Central America in search of the invisible–well, almost invisible–glasswing butterfly. I’d never heard of them until today. But God’s Creation is so vast, no one will ever know the whole length and breadth of it.
These butterflies have transparent wings, which help them elude predators. Even the caterpillars are partially transparent. We do see color around the edges of the wings; but hey, if it didn’t work, the glasswings wouldn’t be here.
Transparency turns up in other animals, too. I used to go to our local pet store and watch in fascination the “glass catfish” swimming back and forth. Their skin and muscles are transparent and you can see their bones.
As Rev. D. James Kennedy used to say, “Ain’t chance grand?”
I’ve wondered about this animal ever since I saw it in a picture book when I was six or seven years old. It’s called a cuscus–“common spotted cuscus,” if you want to be formal–and it’s hard to look up in the Internet because the computer keeps trying to direct you to “couscous,” which is something altogether different.
The cuscus lives in trees in the jungles of New Guinea and mostly comes out at night, when it’s difficult to see them: they’re very shy. There are also a few in Cape York, Australia. They have prehensile tails, very similar to a chameleon’s.
Byron the Quokka has been dropping subtle hints about being able to do his contest-runner job better if a cuscus might be hired to assist him. “You just want more pictures of cute animals to pump up viewership,” I parry. “So that’s a bad idea?” Well, he’s got me there. Anyway, if you can’t trot out a cuscus or a potto now and then, what’s the point of blogging?
Fantastically varied realms of nature brought to you by God the Father, who created it all.
Here’s a walking worm… walking.
Let’s re-visit this Mr. Nature outing, shall we? No one’s going to fight over this (famous last words).
https://leeduigon.com/2016/11/04/the-incredible-walking-worm/
The Peripatus, the “walking worm,” is one of those way cool little animals that most of us in the Northern Hemisphere are never going to encounter, even on a lucky day.
I wonder if an encounter with a walking worm would make it a lucky day.