The Latest Wildlife Round-up

 There have just been so many exciting critters to see here in Gamboa over the past few weeks, and it's about time I did a photo dump. In no particular order:

A baby boa constrictor:

A katydid:

Our resident entomologist extraordinaire informed me that that long thing protruding from its tail end is actually an ovipositor, the bit that deposits eggs in the ground. This species needs to get its eggs reeeeeeally deep.

Leptodactylus pentadactylus, also referred to as the Smoky Jungle Toad, with my boot for size comparison:

Smoky Jungle Toad XXX edition:

They make little depressions in the ground to lay their eggs in. (The foam in the photo is egg foam.) We had inadvertently disturbed them out of it in this photo.

Trachycephalus venulosus, also called the milk frog because it exudes a milky slime when picked up:

Scinax staufferi:

Not actually wildlife, but a variety of skirted mushroom  that I've been hoping to see here:

 A praying mantis:

 A baby Bothrops asper, the deadly Fer-de-Lance snake:

Chiasmocleis panamensis, the adorable Narrow-mouthed Toad:

They are flatter than pancakes.

Scinax ruber:

One night, we were out collecting frogs and there were maybe a hundred of these guys all chorusing up a storm in a bunch of nearby trees.

Here's another piece of not-wildlife. Apparently one of the researchers' sisters brought this bunny to Gamboa and then decided she didn't want it anymore. The researcher didn't want it either, so she just turned it loose, presumably hoping it would just quietly disappear. It seems to have surprising staying power, for a domestic, and it now mostly hangs around the lab parking lot, where I worry the humans will kill it before nature will.

The yellow-headed day gecko, which actually has an orange head:

Smilisca phaeota:

Apparently, it's one of the species with paired vocal sacs, but unfortunately this male wasn't calling when I found him.

Here's an orb-weaver spider shedding its skin:

Here's the finished product:

One of the land crabs we get here:

They're in most of the streams here and they kind of gross me out. I don't know why, but freshwater crabs are just weird.

Here's a real treasure:

It's a snake. No really, that tiny little thing is a snake. A blind snake, for that matter. Kudos to my apartment-mate, who managed to spot and catch the thing as it traversed the sidewalk near our house the other day.

You can see the eyes in this one if you look really hard. They're there, they're just vestigial.

Here's some Hypsiboas rosenbergi getting it on in a puddle:

They're also called gladiator frogs because the males have spines on their thumbs.

Some variety of Anolis, expertly caught yet again by my apartment-mate:

This adorable little thing is Hyalinobatrachium fleischmanni, a glass frog:

They're called glass frogs because you can see through their bodies. When backlit, you can even see their hearts beating. You can see the internal organs in this one:

We went looking for them by the rivers out along Gamboa's Pipeline Road, a really popular spot for nature watching. We found ones calling:

Guarding eggs:

And in amplexus:

If you look closely, you can see that they both have vocal sacs, because they're actually both boys.

We also found a tiny little Craugastor fitzingeri:

This is a large male basilisk lizard sitting in a tree:

What they're really known for is their talent for running across the surfaces of ponds or streams, earning them the nickname Jesus Christ Lizard.

Here's a baby one!

An emerging cicada:

 This is something really exciting, a salamander (Oedipina complex):

My co-worker found it while we were out frogging last night. It's a really rare find here, so we brought it back to the lab for photographs. It was tiny, probably about as wide as a pencil, with a tail much longer than its body.

Anyway, that's it for now; more later!