Life, Death, and Taxonomy

“…and today we’re talking about a reptile who’s lady is the sea. But more on that later.”

We all know and share a healthy fear of snakes. They live under rocks and slither on their bellies to get around. But there are actually dozens of snake species that don’t live on land at all. Instead, they’ve taken to the sea, and many of them never grace the ground. The Yellow-bellied sea snake rides the waves all over the world. Despite their name, they are no cowards. They’re the most widely distributed snake species in the world. Adapting your body and habits to take the world by storm is the sea snake’s way in Life, Death, and Taxonomy.

Description of the Sea Snake

• Medium-length snakes with a dark brown back and a bright yellow belly spanning its entire body length(counter-shaded like many oceanic animals)
• The snake’s body is flattened like an eel’s in order to move through the water better than your typical terrestrial snake and there’s a short ridge that extends along the belly that acts as a kind of keel
• Its tail is flat and paddle-shaped so that it can swim and change directions easily in the water.
• The tail shape and the keel make it pretty tough for the snake to move around on land
• The tail is a very light yellow with black cow spots
• Its head is long and thin like a garden snake rather than the wide triangular heads of vipers
• Some forms are entirely yellow

Measure Up

Welcome to the beloved Measure Up segment. The official listener’s favorite part of the show! The part of the show when we present the animal’s size and dimension in relatable terms through a quiz that’s fun for the whole family. It’s also the part of the show that’s introduced by you when you send in audio of yourself saying, singing, or chittering the words Measure Up into ldtaxonomy at gmail dot com. We don’t have a new Measure Up intro!

1. Magnificent frigate
2. Satanic nightjar
3. Little bustard
4. Tiny-sky tyrant

Length

• Females are slightly longer at 88 cm (35 in).
• How many Yellow-Bellied Sea Snakes go into their typical max dive depth?
• Hint: Sea snakes are often observed on ocean drift lines, which are ribbons of floating seaweed, debris, and driftwood. These driftlines can stretch for miles and act as a natural meeting place for pelagic animals. 
• 56.8 sea snakes. 50 m (164 feet).

Weight

• 47 grams
• How many Yellow-Bellied Sea Snakes go into the heaviest pumpkin ever recorded?
• Hint: The pumpkin was grown by Mathias Willemijns, in October 2016 in Germany. This record had been beaten five times in as many years before it was solidified by Mathias. 
• 25,329.5 sea snakes. The pumpkin was 1,190.49 kg (2,624.6 lb).

Fast Facts about the Sea Snake

• Range: Basically along most of the coasts of the Indian and Pacific Oceans near the equator. All along the east coast of Africa and the islands there in the Indian Ocean. From Djibouti to South Africa. Then all throughout Southeast Asia, Australia, the Koreas, and even all the way over to the West Coast of North and Central America. They like warm waters close to land. It’s one of the most widely-distributed snakes in the world and is the only sea snake around Hawaii.
  • It has been seen in the Atlantic, but that’s not considered its native range.
  • It’s easy for large ships to pull in sea snakes in their ballast and take them across the globe.
• Diet:
  • They eat small reef and open-water fish.
  • They like to float on the surface of the water pretending to be floating seaweed. Fish come up to find food or shelter and are treated to an unhealthy dose of neurotoxins
  • Sea snake venom is particularly bad and will quickly cause paralysis, respiratory depression, and kidney failure – three things you really don’t want to happen when you’re swimming in the ocean.
  • Fishermen are the most common human victims. They report that the initial bite is practically painless, so they often don’t know they’ve been bitten until they start feeling dizziness, difficulty swallowing, nausea, weakness, shortness of breath etc. It can even land you in a coma.
  • It has very low LD50 levels – meaning that it takes very little to lead to death in 50% of instances in a controlled animal test.
• Behavior:
  • Sea snakes live their whole lives in the ocean, but they need to drink fresh water to survive like any snake. 
  • Initially, researchers thought that the salt gland in its head allowed it to filter salt from the surrounding water, but now they know that the snake actually just drinks rainwater that collects on the surface of the ocean. Although saltwater is less dense than fresh water, and should sink and be mixed with the salt, there is a brief period after rain where there is a brackish “lens” of water on the surface. If the salinity is low enough, the snakes can drink.
  • It can go for up to 7 months without fresh water
• It can dive for long periods of time and actually absorb oxygen through its skin rather than having to hold its breath.

Major Fact: Made for the Sea

The Yellow-bellied sea snake is a genuine ocean reptile. It’s a true sea snake, which means that it will not leave the water willingly and it’s totally adapted to life at sea. 

One of its most obvious aquatic adaptations is it’s body shape. Sea snakes have flat bodies like an eel. Their body tapers to a keel like a boat, to help with aquadynamics. 

On most snakes, ventral scales on their bellies are the largest scales. But ventral scales are comparably small on sea snakes because of this tapered keel. 

But it gets more interesting when you look at what’s underneath the surface. 

The first oddity is their lungs. Unlike eels, sea snakes do not have gills and have to return to the surface to breathe. But they spend as much as 90% of the time underwater. How do they do this?

The average snake has a pair of lungs that runs from their neck to halfway down their body. Sea snake lungs are much longer, running almost the full length of their bodies. 

Most sea snakes can hold their breath for up to 30 minutes. But true sea snakes like our friend the yellow-belly can last for longer. They may last as much as 90 minutes underwater.

We used to think that sea snakes didn’t need to drink fresh water, but that’s not true at all. But where do they get fresh water in the ocean? On the ocean, of course. 

That’s right. On the ocean. Precipitation gathers on the surface of the ocean, and sea snakes are apparently able to drink the precipitation like someone who only likes the heads of beer. When there isn’t any ocean dew, they can survive without water for about three months. 

Ending: So go with the currents, tour the world’s oceans, and don’t drink saltwater like the yellow-bellied sea snake here in Life, Death, and Taxonomy.

“…and today we’re talking about a lost boy that lives in caves and doesn’t want to grow up. But more on that later.”

Living in the pitch blackness of the caves of southern Europe is a tiny eyeless Chinese dragon that can regrow its arms and sense prey using electricity. Intrigued? Well that’s not even the half of it. The olm is the world’s longest-living salamander and has taken Gloria Gaynor’s call to survive as it grows strong and learns how to get along – without food and light and stuff. But sometimes the neutral gin is the way to live a long life here in Life, Death, and Taxonomy.

“…and today we’re talking about the largest shelled reptile that lives on land maybe! But more on that later…”

A strange reptile that lives on a strange type of island will surely deliver in the weird department. Islanders are known for showing some interesting adaptations that mainlanders may find funny. But when you’re surrounded by the ocean, it pays to be unique and self-sufficient. The Aldabra Giant tortoise is a sizable, shelled, super-reptile large enough for a child to keep as a steed. But being large and in charge of your domain is one way  to make a path through Life, Death, and Taxonomy. 

“…and today we’re talking about slimy yet satisfying frogish fish, but more on that later.”

While other fish are relegated to the vast oceans, lakes, and rivers that cover 70% of the planet, some decided that it wasn’t enough room. Bent on total global domination, the Atlantic Mudskipper wants to be where the people are. By using its mighty pecs to drag itself onto land, the skipper slaps its way out of the waves and into our hearts as one of the only voluntary fish out of water here in Life, Death, and Taxonomy.

Description

• The mudskipper has a froggish face and a body that tapers down to the tail.
• Mudskippers have bulging frog-like eyes on the tops of their heads. 
• They have a large dorsal fin that’s followed by a smaller fin ray. 
• They also have small but strong pectoral fins. 
• Mudskippers come in a modelled brown in varying shades. They also have black or white specks all over their backs.

Measure Up

Welcome to the beloved Measure Up segment. The official listener’s favorite part of the show! The part of the show when we present the animal’s size and dimension in relatable terms through a quiz that’s fun for the whole family. It’s also the part of the show that’s introduced by you when you send in audio of yourself saying, singing, or chittering the words Measure Up into ldtaxonomy at gmail dot com. We don’t have a new Measure Up intro!

1. Snow leopard
2. Coyote
3. Impala
4. Binturong 

Length

• 16 cm (6.3 in) 
• How many mudskippers go into the length of the Kwanza River in Angola?
• Hint: In 2016, Oscar Scafidi and Alfred Weston achieved the world record fastest time to travel the length of the river in a kayak, which took 32 days 12 hours.
• 6,034,285.71 Mudskippers. The river is about 600 miles (960 km) long.

Weight

• 0.5 to 65.3 grams
• How many mudskippers go into the weight of the volume of diamonds produced by Angola in 2019?
• Hint: Angola is rich in natural resources like diamonds and oil, but it’s also one of the worst places in the world for malnutrition. They had a childhood mortality rate of 74.7 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2019. The world average is 38 per 1,000. Part of the reason for this disparity is deep government corruption. 
• 27,871.4 mudskippers. 9.1 million carats.

Fast Facts

Mudskippers are native to West Africa in countries like Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon and Ghana.

Mudskippers enjoy mangrove swamps and tidal flats. 

They are able to hibernate in burrows during cold seasons. Sometimes their burrows can get low on oxygen and the fish will gulp fresh air and replace the air in their burrows. 

These frog fish are carnivorous and enjoy the way of the ambush predator. Like other fish, they use the move “hydrodynamic tongue,” which is using water suction to pull prey into their mouths. If done right no can defend.

They’re able to retain moisture with mucus that covers their body.  

Major Fact: A Fish Out of Water

This is a phrase typically for being out of your element, but for most fish it means “soon to be dead.” But the mudskipper is very good at not being dead when out of the water.

In fact, it regularly lugs its tiny body out of the water and onto the mud to find food and muddier pastures. They actually spend the majority of their days on land.

But don’t fish have gills that can only get oxygen out of water? Wouldn’t they flop pathetically to their deaths?

Well, yes it has gills, and it does need water in order to breathe – so it can’t really dry out.

But it has the ability to close its gill chambers and trap water inside for convenient breathing on the go.

So before going to work in the morning, the mudskipper will pack a lunch of breathing juice. But it also has another ability called “cutaneous respiration”, which basically means that it can breathe through its skin.

While it spends most of its day on land, that land isn’t the gobi desert. It is almost always skipping across very moist surfaces like moss, mangrove roots, and, you guessed it, mud. So it can always either do a good bit of skin breathing when it needs to or replenish its breathing juice.

Lastly, it can also gulp air into its mouth, which is lined with blood vessels set close to the surface of the skin and easily absorb oxygen.

So it can breathe on land because of its hole control and special skin, but how can it move around? Don’t fish tend to flop helplessly?

Yes, but these don’t.

Thanks to a pair of specialized pectoral fins (the ones on the fish’s sides) as well as another pair of pelvic fins (near the fish n’ hips) it can move on land.

The pectoral fins are actually fused together, which creates a kind of suction cup that allows the mudskipper to climb up rocks – like other gobi fish.

It kind of moves like a chimpanzee by placing its tiny pelvic cups on the ground, bringing its longer pecs around and swinging its body forward.

It can also use its tail to book it if need be, which also helps it jump.

Ending: So gulp some air, get out of your comfort zone, and work out your pecs like the mudskipper here in Life, Death, and Taxonomy. 

“…and today we’re talking about Moto Moto and why he doesn’t like you. But more on that later.”

A beast lies in a river bed. He is confident when the waters run against his mouth. And he has no fear of turbulent waters. You can’t take him by his eyes or pull his nose with a snare. This behemoth is no chaos monster, but he does sow chaos in the riverways of Africa. The hippopotamus seems like a rotund herbivore that only threatens the grass, but he’s really a mighty mammal to be feared and respected. But big and imposing is one way to rise above the food chain in Life, Death, and Taxonomy. 

“..and today we’re talking about the most direct path imaginable. But more on that later…”

When you’re a little bird surrounded by larger predators, you need to have a strong support network to fend off the baddies. Just like Flik in a Bug’s Life, the least terns have realized that there is true strength in numbers. By giving much stronger opponents the business as a group, terns can turn away even the fiercest of predators. But sometimes standing your ground is the best way to survive here in Life, Death, and Taxonomy.

“…and today we’re talking about an ocean journey that puts Finding Nemo to shame! But more on that later…”

Some animals are born, live, and die in one place. Their homes are never far away and they’re familiar with all they survey. But some species travel great distances, driven by some unknown impulse. A journey can change you, and it does just that for the European eel. But their travels force them from carefree days in sunny streams, into the shadows of the sea. But in the end it’s only a passing thing, this shadow, even darkness must pass in Life, Death, and Taxonomy.

Measure Up 

Welcome to the beloved Measure Up segment. The official listener’s favorite part of the show! The part of the show when we present the animal’s size and dimension in relatable terms through a quiz that’s fun for the whole family. It’s also the part of the show that’s introduced by you when you send in audio of yourself saying, singing, or chittering the words Measure Up into ldtaxonomy at gmail dot com. We do have a new Measure Up intro!

Length

• Their upper end is 1 m (3 ft 3 in). Some have been found over 4 ft.
• How many European eels go into the length of the USS Cyclops?
• Hint: The ship went missing in 1918 on a trip between Salvador in Brazil and Baltimore, Maryland. It is thought that a combination of a cracked engine part, overloaded cargo, and bad weather sank the ship, but no wreckage has ever been found. 
• 165 eels. The ship was 542 ft (165 m) long. 

Lifespan

• They can live up to 80 years but one specimen called the Brantevik Eel lived to be 155.
• How many Brantevik Eel ages would it take to cross the Milky Way Galaxy at lightspeed?
• Hint: The Milky Way is where you and I and all the animals we’ve ever covered live.
• 645 eel ages. It would take around 100,000 years to cross the galaxy at lightspeed.

Fast Facts

• Range: Lives in the lakes and rivers of Western Europe, Russia, Scandinavia, and even North Africa and Turkey.
• Diet: fish, mollusks, crustaceans, insects, worms.
• Behavior:
  • They can climb dams and even go up on land for short periods to eat slugs and worms.
  • Eels can live up to 85 years in captivity with one Swedish eel lived for 155 years
  • They are critically endangered, but researchers aren’t sure why. One potential factor is the number of dams that have been built in Europe (over 24K). The eels can climb dams but this drastically impedes their migratory life cycle.
    • They have also been used as food in the past and may still be exported to Asian markets
• Catadromous – migrating from fresh water to the sea to spawn

Major Fact: Called to the Sea

Where do eel babies come from?

It’s a question that has baffled science for ages, all the way back to Aristotle, who thought they spontaneously grew out of the mud.

A Tik Tok account called Colethesciencedude brought this to internet attention. But he leaves out a major fact about the European eel that makes this phenomenon sound way more mysterious: They have a complex life cycle with six different stages.

We know a bit more about eel reproduction that Cole leads us to believe, but eel reproduction is still weird and amazing. 

Cole also mentions their reproduction “has to do with the bermuda triangle,” which makes this eel even more mysterious. 

Technically, they go to the Sargasso Sea, which is an area of the Atlantic Ocean that overlaps with the Bermuda triangle, but also includes miles of ocean North and east of the Bermuda triangle. The sargasso sea is an area of ocean that has four currents that form an ocean gyre, or a giant circle. 

These unique conditions make that part of the ocean weird. Most notably, it often sees very little to no wind movement, which vexed early sailors. The sea also has a unique type of seaweed called sargassum seaweed, which is the nastey slimy seaweed that tickles your leg and freaks you out whenever you swim on the Atlantic coast.

Between the lack of wind and the tangle of seaweed that sailors thought could gum up boats, the sargasso sea came to be known as cursed, and it’s often linked to Bermuda triangle lore. 

But the seaweed is what’s very interesting to our friend the eel. Eels start life as eggs in the seaweed in the middle of the sargasso sea. They hatch as flat, transparent, larvae called leptocephalus. These little leaf-shaped larvae are carried eastward on ocean currents toward Europe.

It takes them two years to get there and they can travel as much as 6000 km. When they reach coastlines… “What? Leptocephalus is evolving?”

The eel changes to it’s next form called a glass eel. They’re still transparent, but they take on a more familiar eel shape. A handful looks like rice noodles. 

They hang out on the coast until they are ready to move inland upstream. But before they do that, they have to go into stealth mode. They change once again into a stage called an Elver which are brown and better at camouflaging in in-land streams. 

Elvers are relentless in their journey. They may come out of the water to cross fallen branches or rocks that block their path. They may even cross land like a bullseye snakehead.

Once they find a nice two bed two bath home with a white picket fence, they stay there to eat and grow. This is when they enter their next stage called yellow eels. They stay like this for up to 20 years. 

At some point, they start to feel the sea-longing and heed the call of the Valinor and begin their journey into the west. At this point, they turn into silver eels because “all will fade to silver glass, a light on the water all souls pass…”

Amazingly, their body chemistry changes to live in salt water after years of fresh water living. They also skip the lambda bread, because their stomachs shrink to streamline themselves for travel. Their pupils grow so they can see in the darker ocean as hope fades into the world of night.

When they reach their spawning grounds, they release eggs, which are fertilized externally. The eels are thought to clump together to fertilize the eggs. The eggs nestle into the sargassum to start the cycle again. Then white shores call to the adults and their grey ships pass into the west, because they die. 

Cole also mentioned that they could not get them to breed in captivity. He’s right that they tried to do it for a while, but they did do it in 2006. But it was very involved. They had to simulate a 4,000 mile journey and changes between salt and freshwater.

Ending: So wriggle over your obstacles, be catadromous and be elver vigilant like the European Eel here in Life, Death, and Taxonomy.