This channel is for the naturalist! Whether budding naturalist just starting to get interested in animals or lifelong profesionals, we hope to inspire an interest and excitement about our planets biodiversity!
Hi! This is really amazing video and absolutely we need this!. Thank you very much. I had also some practised on mgcl2 but I didn't get success 😅 I was a little bit impatient after applied it. I will try next time while watching you.
Cool video(s) man. I only recently started herping again after getting back into the natural world. Videos like these are useful for knowing what to look for when I go out in my area
omg i have a prac exam coming up and we have to use dichot keys to identify shells and other things and I was struggling so much with the shells but this video has finally made me understand. thank youuuu
Love the editing style and high quality footage, you earned a subscriber! I'm a big herp enthusiast so its great seeing these little guys in vivid detail. Btw, the eggs at 6:22 are wood frog eggs! Mole salamanders tend to lay smaller amounts of eggs, the egg jelly is thicker, and they most often attach them to sticks underwater (versus a large floating clump). Edit: I'm pretty sure the eggs you filmed right after the wood frogs that have little developing tadpoles are mole salamanders (probably spotteds)
I believe those ants are some kind of myrmica species! They’re definitely not Formica as the large ant in the left center is actually a queen which is definitely semi claustral. You cant ID myrmica past species without microscope pics sadly. Awesome pics though!
Never even heard of a solenogaster, nor did I imagine how interesting their biology would be at first glance. Tracks with most of nature, the closer you look at something the more you realize the natural world is boundlessly complicated and fascinating. Nature is an onion but under each layer you might peel back you just discover another layer. I think my favorite thing about nature is no matter how small and innocuous an animal might seem, as a population each species tends to have a profound effect on the much larger picture of how nutrients are cycled around the planet, solenogasters bearing no exception. The fact each population seems to function in such a manner that increases homeostasis for the entire biosphere spans the gap of between scientific inquiry to spiritual biological determinism. Like Earth is itself an organism, each of its species cells of the body. If such an impossible to prove assertion as evolutionary determinism were the case it makes me wonder what our role in such a super organism would be. If human beings are the awakening of a super organism's mind, such a being would need to learn, make mistakes, and adapt. If concepts like national parks are indicators of progress, perhaps our role on Earth is ultimately to be the stewards of this being, changing environments to enable life to adapt and flourish on this planet and eventually across the cosmos. Mollusks making me trip this morning.
In my town we close a road at a specific park every year so that the salamanders can migrate. Every April you visit the park late at night to watch them.
In the central Philippines (Visayas) fisherman collect rare cowries, murex, cones and slit shells etc by using tangle nets (lumen lumen). Fishermen simply fold up long, wide mesh 2-5 cm worn out fish nets into a loose sausage shape, tied at intervals and weighted down to keep net on bottom. The mollusks become enmeshed in the folds. The tangle nets become an artificial structure habitat that the larval veligers attach to and use as shelter during daytime as they grow. Sunlight is still detectable at down to 600 hundred feet or so where these rare deep water species are collected. Tangle nets are deployed on reef drop-offs (cliff and steep slopes) with buoy markers. As mollusks are nocturnal and rest in cavities during day time is when the nets are pulled up after leaving them for many weeks up to months at a time. High price of fuel and new environmental laws have reduced this method of collecting nowadays.
The rare species of cowries are for most part inaccessibility to their natural habit in very deep water beyond scuba level. Some of the rarest are only obtained from commercial fishing trawls and traps. South Africa and Philippines are have the diverse varieties of rare cowries. Australia though has highest prices paid for cowries. One recent species has sold upwards of around 50k.
North America has the highest salamander diversity in the world, its not even close either. Africa and South America have very few species and Australia has none. Its really only Asia that can compete and its not in diversity but size, the largest salamanders are in Asia.
Neat video! Bit further north than you so I have to wait a little bit before the salamanders start coming out around here. Curious which salamanders you filmed where you found them and how many you moved before filming. Also curious what you're using for the aquatic footage. I'm starting to think about non-disastrous strategies to stick the end of my lens into pools for still photos. Looks like you were transferring critters from the pools into a small enclosure?
Some of the salamanders were filmed directly where they were found with a few moved a couple feet (like onto the log they were under) for better lighting. Yea, I have a mini tank that I use for some of the aquatic footage. Everyone was placed back carefully where they belong after I got a couple shots of them!
Thank you! Salamanders live out west too. If you want to find some, I'd look on iNaturalist to find parks in your area where people have found salamanders.
Depending on where that makes sense, they arent really much of a desert or prairie animal. I live on the coast though and get a lot of salamanders, though the diversity isnt as high as the east.
