Evolution observation

[cass]

This is just an observation, but in the last few years I've noticed some odd changes within our wildlife population that I find fascinating. The most intriguing one involves our population of Toad Frogs. Where I live, we have only one species of toad - Bufo woodhousi, commonly called Woodhousi's Toad. In years past, these, and other species of toads, relied on standing water to lay their egg clutches. A warm Spring rain brought them out by the hundreds. With the long drought that has plagued us for the last few years, any rain that we do get doesn't have a chance to puddle. Yet this year, as three years ago, we are covered up with new hatched babies - they're everywhere. Evidently, they have adapted to laying/hatching their eggs in MOIST soil rather than standing water. How the tadpoles manage, is anybodies guess. It appears only the toad population has done this, as the frog population has totally disappeared. Also, out large population of Rattlesnakes (Crotalus atrox), has stopped rattling when confronted in the wild. This has already resulted in several bites in the local area. Just an observation.

 

[VPNAVY]

If I was you I would stop watching Toad Frogs. They are getting ready for the world to come to an end December 21st, 2012.

All kidding aside - it sure makes you wonder...

 

[handejector]

Interesting.
They must be finding standing water somewhere. I just don't think the tadpoles could survive otherwise.

Yet this year, as three years ago, we are covered up with new hatched babies - they're everywhere.

Have you thought about starting a Toad Gun thread? I don't recall us having one.

 

[cass]

Interesting.
They must be finding standing water somewhere. I just don't think the tadpoles could survive otherwise.

I have checked, and there is none - our water-starved soil is like cheesecloth. Perhaps the mulch around the trees can provide moisture, but not enough for tadpole life cycle.





Have you thought about starting a Toad Gun thread? I don't recall us having one.

Interesting idea! I can imagine one of the first questions: "I carry a .50 cal in the woods for grisly bear, do you think it is enough for toads?"

 

[ol' geeser]

Toads...

cass, carrying a 50 cal. for toads is a little much penetration wise...I would recommend the combination slug-buckshot load I saw the other day and a slug barreled 870....if you can catch 'em sitting still the slug will do it and you have the spreading buckshot the take 'em on the hop....(

Of course, there is always the CTG load....a good standby for almost anything that walks (or hops)

 

[Texas Star]

Australia has a major problem with some really big toads. They were sometimes a problem with filming the "Lost World" TV series in Queensland. I think the actresses were really "grossed out" over them. Cane toads...

Alas, that country has some really bad gun laws. I suppose that most there have to face toads unarmed... maybe that's why Veronica on the show carried from two to four knives. (She had a couple of throwing knives concealed in her loincloth in later seasons.) You can see her knives here, at about 1:37, as she surrenders to the bad guy in this clip from the episode, "Trophies." The clip is dubbed in Russian. Can't find the English version on YouTube, but this clip has excellent resolution. Note that her main knife here is a variant of the Fairbairn-Sykes dagger, with a wooden or leather handle. In anothe ep, she had the regular model. Remember, look at the KNIVES. You can re-run the video to stare at Veronica, played by American actress Jennifer O'Dell. You get a closeup of the dagger just before the villain ties Jen's hands. Watch for that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rf3ZSZqDSg


True toads, genus Bufo, have some nasty surprises for anyone handling them, and the tropical Poison Arrow frogs are even worse.

One of our most distinguished outdoor writers told me that he had probelms from blades rusting if he tried to skin a toad. Maybe it was frogs. Never skinned a frog, but people eat them and not just in France, so I guess they have to be skinned.

I have watched frog legs cook in a frying pan. Interesting to see, if one hasn't cut the tendons so they don't jump around.


BTW, the Crotalus atrox in Cass's post is the Western Diamondback. They never have always rattled, but if he is correct that fewer are doing so now, it may indeed be an evolutionaary step. And a dangerous one for people! Rattles probably evolved to warn bison. Now there are no more bison in most places, who knows what may happen to rattles? Most other pit vipers don't have them.

BTW, bison are not true buffaloes, although people call them buffalo. Real buffalos are like the Cape buff (Syncerus caffer) and the Asian Water Buffalo. I believe that the gaur (Bos gaurus) and the Banteng, etc. are true buffs. I don't know if they all step on toads. Or frogs. But I bet the result if they do would be a dead toad/frog! Considering how true buffs like to wallow in water, they must occasionally step on frogs. Insofar as I know, no represenative from PETA has spoken to them about that, or warned them about any endangered frogs...

 

[Stevens]

Years ago some people down there were getting high off of slime licked from the Cane Toads, you have to be pretty desperate for that. You would think they didn't have beer downunder.
Here in South Louisiana we have a growing population of Gekos I never saw one 15 - 20 years ago, now they are all over the place.
Steve W

 

[Texas Star]

Years ago some people down there were getting high off of slime licked from the Cane Toads, you have to be pretty desperate for that. You would think they didn't have beer downunder.
Here in South Louisiana we have a growing population of Gekos I never saw one 15 - 20 years ago, now they are all over the place.
Steve W

Interesting. The only gekko that I've seen lately sells car insurance on TV. I think he's a cockney, though, not from LA.

Anyone who licks a cane toad has probably already had enough beer! And then some! BTW, I've read that Aussie beer is sometimes 12% alcohol. Not the exports, though.

 

[jkc]

Crotalus atrox nor any other rattlesnake species is reliable in providing a warning rattle, and certainly evolution is not a factor, given the quite recent expansion of fairly high-density human populations in North America into C. atrox habitats and resultant interactions --- evolution takes eons, not a few generations... As to toads and other amphibians, I note that during our long term drought, Canyon Tree Frogs, an semi-aquatic species, had been absent from the vicinity of the mountain cabin where I spend lots of time for at least five seasons, until seemingly miraculously re-emerging last spring, and croaking up a storm. Before they had apparently disappeared, about this time of year, while taking a dip in a not-too-distant creekbed swimming hole, I noticed that the steep granite walls of the pool were covered with tiny (1/4" OAL) newly metamorphed Canyon tree frogs, numbering perhaps in the thousands, clustered just above the waterline. Like many other species, this overkill of reproduction insures (or has, so far...) at least some survival, and thus recruitment of new members of the species. The frogs at the mountain cabin, where there is no permanent natural water through their reproductive season, evidently get by with the roof run-off catchments and similar troughs and etc. maintained for the benefit of them and other wildlife... Point being, where there's a will, there's a way, and nature generally finds it, sometimes where we might not think to look...

 

[G.T. Smith]

RIGHT ON!!!!!

I'll tell you what, the thought of discharging a CTG load makes the hair stand up on my neck. I already like the way you think Mr Geezer Sir.
I carry a CTG and several knifes when I'm in the toad woods as backup. Can't be to careful. Maybe that's where the term "toad sticker" came from.
To answer the OP's question though, they would have to have water enough for the tadpoles to hatch and grow. I'm thinking that maybe the only evolution going on is their ability to find places like sewers or places that have enough leaking pipes to puddle up good. Too bad people can't adapt as quickly as animals sometimes.
Peace,
Gordon

 

[ialefty2]

Hmmm... when I was much, much younger we had lots of Bull Frogs, Snakes, Rabbits, Quail, small Bluebirds. No Deer, No Fireants, No Armadillo, no wildhogs, Some ticks and a little pioson oak.

Now same area(rural MS.), No Quail, or Rabbit, or Frogs, not many Snakes, or Bluebirds.
Lots of Deer, and Armadillo, wildhogs and Fireants. Lots of Ticks, and pioson oak everywhere you look.

 

[enfield]

Regardless, adaptation is not evolution.

 

[jdh]

Texas Star,

Russian?

 

[cass]

Regardless, adaptation is not evolution.

Agree! That's the word I should have used.

 

[Texas Star]

Texas Star,

Russian?

Nyet! Amerikanski! Texan.

Oh: do you refer to the video link with Jennifer O'Dell as Veronica on, The Lost World?

This used to be available on You Tube in the original English. The show featured almost all Australian actors, save for Jen (US, California) and the New Zealander who played Prof. Challenger, although Lara Cox as Finn faked a US accent, as the production company marketed the series mainly in North America. They were a Canadian company, and I forgot that actor David Orth (reporter Ned Malone) was also Canadian.

The series is still popular in Eastern Europe and in Brazil. Indeed, most recent fan fiction about the series is in Brazilian Portuguese. So, the episodes have been dubbed in several languages. Sometimes, the dubbers actually have voices similar to the real stars.

Many of the sharpest clips are those dubbed in other languages. There's a good one of Finn as the captive of the bad guys who replaced her friends in this dimension, until she escaped and killed the demons, after which her friends (Lord John Roxton, Marguerite Krux, and George Challenger then reappeared as themselves. Only the demon Zoth escaped to the Void, probably to return, had the series had a fourth season. Zoth was Finn's mortal enemy as he had destroyed most civilization in her century. (Finn was from the 21st Century, and escaped the horrors of New Amazonia to be wth the others via a cave that Challenger had rigged as a one-shot time vessel.)

A Czech friend gave me the link to see that scene in her language. (She has better English than most Americans.)

I have the DVD's for all three seasons of the show and have seen that episode, "Trophies, second season) many times. I know what the actors are saying. For instance, when Avery Burton tells Veronica to come out from hiding, she says softly, "If I do, it will only be to kill you!". She later escaped and did kick the devil out of him. And Ned Malone survived.

That was him lying on the ground, who Burton threatened to shoot if Vee didn't surrender. Did you detect that he was using a Ruger Blackhawk in a show set in the early 1920's? I guess the Australian prop house didn't have a Colt SAA available that day. The Ruger was also in the episode, "Finn", which introduced that character.(Third Season) Challenger was normally the only one with a SA Colt, and he either had one or a good Italian copy.

I'll try to locate the German and Czech versions of the scenes where Zoth has Finn captive. It's a little weird to hear a girl born in Canberra and now living in Sydney speaking those languages, but it's culturally interesting.

The Russian version is the sharpest of that clip now on the Net, I think. YouTube used to feature full episodes of TLW, but they were removed for copyright reasons. I guess the shorter clips are okay, and the producers told fans that writing fiction about the characters was permitted.

Apart from being dubbed in Russian, did you like that clip? Jen is a good actress, and she answered a couple of questions from me on her own site, which has since been revised. BTW, she is a physical fitness buff and instructor, and she has warned that using the computer too much strained her eyes. I think it's also affected my vision. I need to be on the computer less, wnich is hard for me, as I love boards like this one and I'm a writer, too.

BTW, Jen told an interviewer that she was a little jealous of her co-stars, because they had guns, while she had to rely on her knives. (Finn used a small crossbow.) That was a refreshing thing to hear an actress say!

Sorry to go on for so long, but that's why many of the best TLW show clips now on YouTube are dubbed.

 

[jdh]

It was fun in Germany to be invited to a German home and see a dubbed American program on the TV. Of course we had seen them enough times to have the dialog memorized. I had a couple German friends convinced I could understand German by reciting the words in English as they were said in the dubbed sound track. Of course when it came time for after dinner conversation...let's just say I had to learn quicker than I was really ready. I'll bet you that now, thirty years later, I would have a hard time to order off the menu in German.

 

[G.T. Smith]

easy.....

[Q I'll bet you that now, thirty years later, I would have a hard time to order off the menu in German.[/QUOTE]

Oh, that would still be easy for me after 41 years, "ein bier bitte"
Peace
gordon

 

[Texas Star]

It was fun in Germany to be invited to a German home and see a dubbed American program on the TV. Of course we had seen them enough times to have the dialog memorized. I had a couple German friends convinced I could understand German by reciting the words in English as they were said in the dubbed sound track. Of course when it came time for after dinner conversation...let's just say I had to learn quicker than I was really ready. I'll bet you that now, thirty years later, I would have a hard time to order off the menu in German.

jdh-

I can understand a little German, but I know what they're saying here because I did memorize (more or less) the English version. Some of you may want to see how much you can understand. I like Lara Cox's real voice better than the dubbed one, but it's okay. If you want to hear the slightly longer Czech version of this clip, PM me or post.


Lost World - Lara Cox - YouTube


I can read German gun and hunting catalogs pretty well, including some Puma knife brochures. But if this Aussie actress can really speak German, she's welcome to come over and translate for me.

 

[cass]

I recall watching The Lone Ranger series dubbed in Hebrew. Now that was funny stuff!!