Author Archives: Susan

04/15/10

Can toads (and other animals) predict earthquakes?

The devastating December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, generated by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake, was one of the worst disasters in recorded history, with a death toll of more than 283,000.

Some of the strangest stories that came out after the tsunami were about the unusual behavior of animals before and during the tsunami. Many animals moved to higher ground well before the tsunami and at least a few people followed them. As reported in National Geographic News, the ancient Jarawa tribe of the Andaman Islands, finely attuned to their environment and to the movement of the animals, suffered almost no casualties when the tsunami hit their islands.

Recently, as reported in AOL news, behavioral biologists Rachel Grant and Tim Halliday of the Open University (Great Britain) noticed that large numbers of toads fled a breeding area five days before a magnitude-6.8 earthquake struck L’Aquila, Italy, in April 2009.

Grant had been studying the breeding habits of toads at San Ruffino Lake, which is 46 miles from the epicenter. Normally, as the full moon approached, more and more toads would come down to a shallow pool at the lake’s edge from the surrounding hills to breed. (We wrote a post, Frog Moon Dance, about her research last summer.) Grant monitored their numbers, recording the weather and other environmental conditions.

Last year, she and an assistant were tracking the toads leading up to the full moon when they noticed a surprising change. Five days before the earthquake, 96 percent of the male toads were gone. In the past, Grant had noticed that a change in the weather could keep toads away for a day or so. “But usually the day after, they come back. I’d never seen it happen where there were none for several consecutive days,” she said. Grant checked the climate records, but could find no weather-related reasons for the changes in the toads’ behavior.

In this month’s Journal of Zoology, Grant and Halliday speculate that the toads may have picked up naturally occurring magnetic fields prior to the earthquake that encouraged them to flee. Grant hopes that she’ll be able to explore the phenomenon again in the coming years by enlisting volunteers in earthquake-prone areas such as Indonesia to see if the behavior occurs again.

I find it interesting that people living in small villages around Mt. Vesuvius in Italy no longer wait for the official warnings from seismologists and scientists. They carefully observe the behavior of the stray dogs. If the strays are quiet, they are assured that the volcano is not in imminent danger of erupting.*

As we learned in the 2004 tsunami, even a few minutes warning would have saved hundreds, if not thousands, of lives. Seismologists are not always able to predict in advance the exact day of earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. Some come on suddenly, as happened with the recent earthquakes in Haiti and China. It may be in our best interests to pay closer attention to what toads and other animals may be telling us.

Common Toad (courtesy of Litchfield.com)

Common Toad (courtesy of Litchfield.com)

*From UN Special No. 637, February 2005

04/12/10

Celebrate Earth Day & Enjoy PLANET EARTH For FREE!

We’ve blogged about the spectacular new nature series LIFE, a Discovery channel/BBC co-production, which airs on Sundays at 8 e/p. This past week we were contacted by BBC Earth to help spread the word that in celebration of Earth Day, the  award-winning Discovery Channel/BBC Earth series Planet Earth will be available on iTunes in HD with a special, one-time free episode download (“Pole to Pole”) from April 12-26, 2010.  Here’s some information about the episode from BBC Earth website:

PLANET EARTH’s premiere episode, “Pole to Pole,” ties the series together with a fresh understanding of how life in every nook and cranny of the globe is connected — from the highest mountains and darkest caves; shallowest water and deepest oceans; ice-covered lands and great plains; untamed jungles and giant forests; to freshwater and the harshest deserts. The sunward tilt of Earth’s orbit dictates all our lives, creating the seasons that trigger one of the greatest spectacles in the world — the mass migration of animals. It’s a unique view of the majesty of our planet and the amazing creatures that live here.

Planet Earth garnered legions of fans and universal critical acclaim with Oprah Magazine saying, “It is the most beautiful, wondrous and truly majestic series – the best thing I’ve ever seen on TV.”

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04/7/10

Vernal Pools: Woodland Nurseries for Frogs and Salamanders

This past weekend, I went hiking with my family in Harriman State Park in New York. We’ve had a very wet spring—well, actually it sometimes seems as if we’ve been living in a rainforest. It’s possible that all this rain will means lots of frogs and toads this summer.

While hiking we found a swamp and listened to a wonderful chorus of spring peepers and (we think) Eastern American toads.

My son Jeremy listening to a chorus of spring peers, Surebridge Swamp, Harriman State Park, New York

My son Jeremy listening to a chorus of spring peepers, Surebridge Swamp, Harriman State Park, New York

We also saw lots of vernal pools, bodies of water that appear in the spring and last from two to three months before they dry up in the summer. Some types of amphibians, crustaceans, and other wildlife need these pools for breeding, hatching eggs, or as a nursery while they are young. Because they are temporary, vernal pools do not contain fish (which eat tadpoles and larvae).

When you hike by vernal pools, they don’t look like much. In fact, my sneakers got soaked as I tried to jump over one. Yet they are of critical importance to wildlife. I’ve noticed, however, a lot of comments on environmental blogs that read something like this, “Only treehuggers would want to save these mud puddles!” Yet wood frogs, some species of salamander, and fairy shrimp need these “mud puddles” in order to survive. Every year hundreds of acres of wetlands are lost (usually forever) to commercial or residential development. According to the Ohio Vernal Pool Partnership

These usually small, but very dynamic wetlands fill with water, blossom with life and host a cacophony of sounds and a plethora of life forms every spring, only to disappear into the forest floor every autumn…. A vernal pool is a place where a good naturalist can weave many fascinating stories about the amazing life forms, adaptations, and life histories of its inhabitants, and demonstrate it by a single swoop of a dip net! Vernal pool is a miniature, fascinatingly complex and fragile world, with all of its drama played out every year close to our homes, and yet most of us have never witnessed it. [Ohio Vernal Pool Partnership].

Salamanders and woodfrogs migrate from their wintering sites to vernal pools for breeding when the conditions are right, courtesy of The Vernal Pool Association
Salamanders and woodfrogs migrate from their wintering sites to vernal pools for breeding when the conditions are right, courtesy of The Vernal Pool Association

Here are some sites and articles I’ve found (you can also try putting “vernal pool” and the name of your state in google).

California

Pennsylvania

Maine

New Jersey

Massachusetts (The Vernal Pool Association)

Ohio

04/2/10

The Amphibian Avenger – Lucy Cooke

We’re proud to feature guest blogger, Lucy Cooke, The Amphibian Avenger, who tells us about herself, what her mission is, and how we can all help.

amphibian-avenger-Lucy

I love frogs. I always have. As a small child I became fascinated by the miracle of metamorphosis, catching and studying tadpoles like a true proto frog geek. As an adult studying zoology at Oxford the astonishing diversity of amphibian life seemed to me to most eloquently illustrate the incredible adaptive power of evolution.

When I heard about the global amphibian crisis I was completely horrified and keen to do something about it. I discovered that most of my friends didn’t know that over a third of amphibians are going extinct or about the horrors of the Chytrid fungus. It made me aware of how little press amphibians get compared with birds and mammals so I decided that, as a writer and filmmaker, the best thing I could do would be to spread the word. So for the last few months I have been traveling around Latin America researching stories for a documentary on the crisis and writing a blog about my findings. I’ve been to some amazing places, met some inspirational characters, and discovered some truly awesome frogs. And it’s not over yet.

I started my trip by joining an expedition into the Patagonian wilderness with ZSL [Zoological Society of London] scientists to search for Darwin’s frog – the last of the gastric- or throat-brooding frogs left on the planet and the only species of animal (other than the seahorse) in which the male gets pregnant. After the eggs are fertilised the male gobbles them up and 8 weeks later he burps up baby frogs.

I was lucky enough to see and film a daddy Darwin’s frog carrying several tadpoles in his throat sack. It was one of the freakiest things I have ever seen – a mass of tadpoles wriggling in a frog’s belly – it looked like something out of the movie Alien. It gave me goose bumps to witness something so very special but sadly so very endangered. Darwin’s frog is threatened by habitat destruction and also the rampant spread of the Chytrid fungus. It would be a devastating loss to biodiversity for such an extraordinary animal to disappear off the planet.

Since then I have licked poison dart frogs in Colombia, visited infested frog farms in Uruguay and hunted mass murdering toads in Chile.

 But probably the most shocking story I have come across is that of the endangered Lake Titicaca toad, also known as the aquatic scrotum frog after its exceedingly wrinkly appearance. This monster of the deep has become the key ingredient for Peruvian backstreet Viagra. In downtown Lima I filmed juice bars where they put this toad in a blender and then drink it. A fashion which is pushing this unique amphibian to the brink of extinction.

Drinking frog frappe in downtown Lima from Amphibian Avenger on Vimeo.

I’ve still got Panama and Costa Rica to go and will be posting from these two countries that have already been forced to brave the first wave of Chytrid. So if you like frogs then follow my blog – I think you’ll enjoy my adventure. Frogs need champions to help raise their profile and the necessary funds to save them. So, please spread the word amongst your non-frog loving friends – it’s written not just for frog geeks and they may well learn something new and start to care about the little green guys nearly as much as me.

To follow Lucy’s adventure on her blog, click here.

03/25/10

Atrazine Turning Frog Princes into Frog Princesses?

Last summer, we wrote a post, Rachel Carson’s Legacy, about troubling chemicals called endrocrine disruptors, potentially harmful to both humans and frogs, that are in herbicides and pesticides, as well as in plastic, cosmetics, and many consumer products. We followed up with a post about Berkeley professor Dr. Tyrone Hayes‘ studies of one endocrine disruptor, Atrazine, a widely-used weed killer, and its effects on frogs. Some of these effects included “intersex” frogs—male frogs that developed with female characteristics.

Recently a new study by Dr. Hayes has brought increased media attention to this issue.  As reported in the article, Weed Killer Creates Mr. Moms (Science News), Atrazine was added to water in the laboratory’s frog tanks in concentrations of 2.5 parts per billion—the same amount that might be found in rivers and streams, downstream of cornfields, golf courses, or domestic lawns, where it is used as a weed killer.

Dr. Hayes and associates found that one-third of the frogs raised in the water with Atrazine behaved like females, even sending out chemicals to attract other males. Out of the  forty frogs he studied, four had high levels of estrogen, and two actually developed female reproductive organs.

The EPA has determined that up to 3 parts per billion of Atrazine are safe in U.S. waterways. But according to Dr. Hayes’s studies, that’s too much. Even minute amounts potentially harm frogs—and humans as well. Endocrine disruptors have been associated with various cancers and reproductive birth defects in boys.

Recently, sixteen cities in six Midwestern states sued the Swiss corporation Syngenta, which manufactures the chemical, for the costs of expensive water filtration systems needed to keep drinking water safe.

Scientists at Syngenta continue to assert that Atrazine is completely safe (despite the fact that it’s been banned in Europe).   When I looked up the topic on google news, I found two Syngenta-sponsored sites with names such as “Atrazine Safe to Wildlife” and “Atrazine and Frogs.” Their website denies the “baseless activist” claims.

As Randall Amster writes in his post, Silent Spring Has Sprung, on Truthout, and reprinted on the Huffington Post, these denials from Syngenta are similar to the backlash Rachel Carson received from chemical companies when she exposed the dangers of DDT in her groundbreaking 1961 book Silent Spring. He writes:

In [Silent Spring], Carson famously argued that the pesticide DDT was responsible for negative impacts on the environment, animals and humans alike, despite disinformation spread by industry and government officials about its purported safety and utility in agribusiness. Silent Spring is often credited with starting the modern environmental movement, yet today we are facing equivalent challenges and similar campaigns to conceal the potential dangers of toxic chemicals in our midst.

Below is a video from the Huffington Post Investigative Fund about atrazine:

See also the New York Times article, “Berkeley Scientist Studies Raise Corporate Hackles.”

03/16/10

LIFE: New Discovery Channel Series (and one amazing toad)

For fans of Planet Earth, a new Discovery Channel series called LIFE premieres  Sunday, March 21st, 8 p.m.  e/p. The 11-part series, filmed in HD and narrated by Oprah Winfrey, covers reptiles and amphibians, mammals, fish, bird, insects, creatures of the deep, and primates.

Click on the picture below to see a video excerpt from (episode #2).

toad-discovery-life

This waterfall toad is unable to hop away from predators. So how does it escape from a hungry snake? You’ll have to watch the video to find out how nature has compensated this toad for being hop-less. Talk about a leap of faith!