Fish gotta swim and bird gotta fly; insects, it seems, gotta do one horrible thing after another. –Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. These are among the most common invertebrates in the environment but are rather inconspicuous because of their size. They are about 1/16th to 1/8th inch long, have three pairs of legs, a moderately long […]
Springtails (subclass Collembola) Read More »
Great horny toads!! — Yosemite Sam Generally known as horned toads or horny toads, these are small, squat lizards that have short tails with spines on the head and fringed scales on the sides of the stomach. Nostrils are present in the front of a blunt snout – the tail is about one third of the
Greater Short-Horned Lizard (Phrynosoma hernandesi) Read More »
Platypus? I thought it was pronounced platymapus. Has it always been pronounced platypus? –Jessica Simpson One of the informal rules of OOTW is that I had to have seen the critter or plant, but we’re bending the rule a bit in honor of Steve in the Seattle office who is soon moving to Australia. And
Duck-billed platypus (Ornithorhynchos anatinus) Read More »
The dwarf or white-bark pine is the species that forms the timber-line, where it is so completely dwarfed that one may walk over the top of a bed of it as over snow-pressed chaparral. John Muir This is a slow-growing and long-lived pine found in the mountains of southwest Canada and the western U.S. It
Whitebark Pine (Pinus albicaulis) Read More »
“What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.” – Werner Herzog The taxonomy of this fish has been controversial and while the species name pectoralis has remained constant scientists have struggled with the genus. It has been classified in the genus Macrurus, Albatrossia, Coryphaenoides
Giant Grenadier (Albatrossia pectoralis) Read More »