The Animal Kingdom

Animals are fascinating. I hate science and all of that (but I actually liked chemistry because it was math), but when there are stories of creatures in the wild like the ones I have read lately, it really makes you realize that after so much research, we still don't know a lot about animals!

For example, my frog. Let me preface this by saying that my pet frog is 19 years old. He may be older because I bought him when I was in 4th grade, and obviously he was living before that. His name is Eon Abner Fritz (yes, I was in 4th grade when I named him), and he is cute. He has a little mole on his right side, and cute little eyes and hands. My mom takes care of him for me in NY because I refuse to put him on a plane to bring him to FL for fear he may die from the altitude. I have looked up the lifespan of an African Water Frog, and it said 5 years. I wonder why Eon has lived so long?! I love to play with him and let him jump around on my hand.

Two stories I have read recently have to do with sharks, gators, and snakes. El Mundo (Espana) reported that scientists have tracked a Great White named Nicole from South Africa on its migration to Australia and back for 9 months. The main point of the article was that by tracking her with a GPS transmitter, the scientists have realized that populations of Great Whites might have even less numbers than thought before since now we know that they migrate to and from South Africa and Aus., rather than just staying around those areas; the 2 biggest known populations are on these coasts, and now we know that they are interconnected. The migration was 11,100 kilometers (roughly 6,897.2202338 miles). If you don't know Spanish, you can still look at the pictures in the article.

The other story was in the Miami Herald (that I read courtesy of Marsha) about a snake that was eating a gator whole in the Everglades. This is one of the craziest pics I have ever seen. Apparently the snake just blew up trying to eat the gator (snout first too). Can you imagine what the gator was thinking? Or the snake? Why did he get himself into that mess? Marsha and I had a long conversation about this. Scientists are trying to figure out what lead the snake and the gator to fight. Wow.

One last thing to add: my coworker Mike gets these silly totally useless facts every day on this free website full of stuff. Here is what he emailed me the other day: There is a substantial wild population of golden hamsters living in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Scientists speculate that all the domesticated golden hamsters in the world descended from a single female with twelve babies, which were dug from a burrow in Syria back in 1930. How neat!

I always talk about how interesting people are, but animals are too.