Quote of the Day--Origins of Nature's Beauty

"How can we explain the fact that animals which consistently try to remain hidden, or to repel others by their aspect, so often appear attractive, or even beautiful to us, which is the opposite of what we might expect? Should we not more often find them severely plain or repulsive, as some of them are? However, the elements of beauty--form, color, pattern and texture--are not absent from creatures that try to hide, to warn, or to repel. Feathers have such a pleasing texture that birds are seldom ugly. We enjoy the bright colors that so often proclaim unpalatability or venom. The pigments that color the exposed surfaces of animals tend to be deposited in definite patterns rather than at random. Fear need not diminish our enjoyment of cryptically or aposematically colored organisms, for most are not harmful; they ask only to be permitted to live in peace. When we add to all this our pleasure in using our eyes, recognizing forms and patterns, it is not difficult to understand why creatures that shun observation, or warn that they should not be molested, so often attract us by their beauty."
--A.F. Skutch, in his 1992 collection of essays Origins of Nature's Beauty (pp. 27-28)
This is the first of a series of interesting, usually natural history quotes I plan to post from time to time. Enjoy!

EBT Nest With NINE Eggs!

Read about it here, complete with video of hatchlings! Amazing!

Disappearing Box Turtles

I stumbled across this blog post. Its a few years old, but when you're dealing with animals capable of living 160+ years in the wild, a few years isn't that long. I'm not exaggerating when I say 160+ years old. It's actually been documented. The pictures here are of Boxie, a local celebrity in her hometown in Massachusetts. Every once in a while, somebody finds her and it makes the local news. As you can see, she's had initials and dates carved into her plastron (something that is painful for the turtle, as the shell is made of living tissue, so don't do it yourself). Unlike many other turtles with initials and dates carved into their plastra, the second round of carving was documented in letters, giving it credibility. The first two young men to carve their initials and dates into her were killed in a war a few years afterwards. The next person to carve his initials recognized those of the two fallen soldiers, and wrote a letter to their families. These pictures were taken in 2005(not by me).

The war the two soldiers died in?

That would be the Civil War. Although it shows the wear of years, you can still make out the year '1861'. In order for these carvings to have been made, she had to have been full grown at the time, something which would take 15-20 years in Massachusetts, so at a minimum, her hatchdate would have been sometime in the 1840s, possibly sooner.

She hasn't had an easy life, yet keeps plodding on.

Respect your elders.


Thanks to Sandy Barnett for the photos and the story of Boxie.

Happy World Turtle Day!

Happy World Turtle Day! Over the next couple of days, I will be releasing my first transmittered turtles and re-starting the blog after it's hiatus over the past couple of semesters. Check back for photos of the transmittered turtles and random bits of Georgia natural history.