A Salamander Party

Dark-sided salamander (Eurycea longicauda melanpleura)

Lately I have been finding lots of salamanders at the Ozark Natural Science Center where I work out on the trail with children. It is amazing how few children have ever seen a salamander. Many of them ask me what a salamander IS when I tell them we are going to look for them. I try to explain that salamanders are amphibians but are shaped a bit like a lizard. Truly, they are nothing like lizards. Reptiles are fast on their feet and have the sharp eyes of a predator. The salamander has short stubby legs and it walks awkwardly, as if it is trying to swim or slither but its legs are in the way. In the water, salamander move with the grace and fluidity of a water snake, well really more like a leech. Though you make not think a leech can be graceful, when a large leech swims it looks like a rippling ribbon. Salamanders ripple similarly, like a silk rope.
I had heard that a group of children had spotted a group of cave salamanders near the mouth of Counterfeit Cave the day before. So I hiked with my group of a dozen fifth graders across the river and up the mountain at the Ozark Natural Science Center in search of the cave salamanders. When we arrive at the bluff shelter and began exploring the mouth of the shallow cave there, I told the children to look under rocks with me if they wanted to find salamanders. I did not know if we would find any but I had high hopes.

A dark-sided salamandert, missing much of its tail!

Before long a young girl squealed, "I found one!" I rushed over and was please to see a yellow and black salamander frozen on her palm. I snapped some pictures and looked it up in my favorite amphibian guide: Amphibians and Reptiles of Missouri by Tom R. Johnson. When getting the book out I always have to explain to the children that animals don't pay attention to state lines and the land of Northern Arkansas is more like the mountains in southern Missouri than it is like the plains and swamps of southern Arkansas. With the book in hand I identified the salamander as a species of long-tailed salamanders, called the dark-sided salamander (Eurycea longicauda melanpleura). This tiny salamander's tail looked half as long as it should have been which is common because they distract predators by moving their tails. The missing tail can grow back so it is better to loose a tail than a head. These are lungless salamanders and absorb oxygen through their skin; therefore, we decided that the oils on our hands could cause the poor creature to no breathe properly. For the rest of the day we kept our hands off the amphibians.

A slimy salamander and a cave salamander (Eurycea lucifuga)

I had barely finished reading about the dark-sided salamander when a pair of boys managed to lift up a huge flat rock to discover two more salamanders: a bright orange cave salamander and a bluish-black slimy salamander. Though they wanted to touch them, these larger salamanders were much faster and I insisted we did not want to harm them. Like its smaller cousin, the cave salamander is also lungless and can be harmed by the oils on human hands. The slimy salamander (Plethodon albagula) is also lungless but it has an interesting defense, it excretes a whitish gluey substance when handled that its nearly impossible to wash off of hands and clothing.
While reading about these salamanders, a curious boy flipped over another rock a little further away from the mouth of the cave to discover a zig zag salamander. Both the slimy and the zig zag salamanders are in the Plethodon genus. All Plethodon salamanders lay eggs in underground caves or crevices where they protect their babies until they hatch out as tiny salamanders, skipping an aquatic tadpole stage! (Read more about Plethodon's here!)
I felt lucky to have seen so many salamanders in one day. But as we hiked back down the mountain I heard a girl say, "It is easy to find salamanders, you just have to look under rocks!"
I stopped walking and turned to the children for a final lesson.
"All these salamanders you saw today are in danger of becoming endangered. Amphibians, especially lung-less salamanders are very sensitive to pollution. They are the first to go when an environment is disturbed. All over salamander habitats are being destroyed by cities, buildings, roads and landscaping. All types of pollution is killing them too. Because they eat insects, and people use pesticides to kill insects, all types of pesticides can kill them too. Even the acidity from pine and cedar trees can make their aquatic home too acidic. Also, the fish people populate ponds with will eat amphibian eggs. Salamander populations are decreasing for many reasons. If we don't protect their habitat, they will not survive. They will become extinct."

Ozark Zig Zag Salamander (Plethodon angusticlavius)

We walked on in silence. I let it all sink in.
Then a boy asked me, "What would happen if we did not have nature."
"We could not exist," I answered solemnly.
"Because we ARE nature," another boy said.
I turned to him and smiled, "You are SO right!"

The Great Journey of Cheese!

Last week Beth, the executive director of the Ozark Natural Science Center, wrote an article about our ONSC motto "take what you need, and eat what you take!" The children repeat the motto before every meal at ONSC. Beth tells of how we encourage children to put only what they want to eat on their plate and then eat everything. The idea is to teach them to not waste food. Any waste they have is put into a clear plastic "compost bucket" and is shown to the children before the meal ends. If there is a lot of waste, we make a point to illustrate what is being wasted. Suppose the wasted food is mostly grilled cheese sandwiches, we illustrate the journey of that the cheese made:

"So where did this cheese come from," I ask the cafeteria of children, finishing their food.

"From a cow," a child answers.

"Okay, from cow, but it takes a lot to raise a cow, right, so let’s take another step back. What goes into raising a cow?"

"It has to be fed," a boy says.

"What do cows eat?"

"Grain," a girl answers.

"Okay, so grain has to be grown, right? What goes into growing grain?"

"A forest has to be cut to plant the grain," one child suggests.

"And the ground has to be fertilized," says another. "And watered!"

"Great, so then the grain is grown, but how does it get to the cow?"

"Someone has to harvest it," a child says. "And then it goes onto a truck and is transported to the cow!"

"Awesome, so all of that energy goes into just getting the cow its food. The cow also has to have water and maybe medicines and people to care for it. Eventually that cow grows up, has a baby, and is able to be milked. Then what?"

"The milk has to be made into cheese."

"Do you think the cattle farmer makes the cheese?"

"No...It has to be shipped to a cheese factory!"

"So the milk is moved by trucks to the cheese factory, and what type of energy is used in that truck?"

"Gasoline."

"Right, fossil fuels. And what goes into getting that fossil fuel? Where does gasoline come from?”

“The ground?”

“Exactly, it has to be mined out of the ground, trees are chopped down, the ground to turned up, and people work hard to get the raw fuel out of the ground. Then it is moved to a refinery where it is made into gasoline. Finally it is transported to a gas station and put in the truck. Still with me?”
Heads nod.

“Once the milk gets to the cheese factory it is processed by machinery. What powers that machinery?”

“Electricity.”

“Where do we get electricity?”

“Solar!”

“Wind!”

I laugh, “I wish, most of our electricity some from one source, a much more dirty source.”

“Coal,” someone says.

“Yeah, coal is mined and then it is burned, creating pollution, to power the machinery. The machines are operated by workers and the milk is made into giant blocks of cheese. But we don't buy giant blocks of cheese, do we? So where do those giant blocks of cheese go?"

"To a packaging place?"

"Yes, to yet another factory where the cheese is cut into smaller pieces and put into plastic bags. But then we don't pick up cheese from the factory so where does it go next?"

"It has to be trucked to a store."

"Well, usually it goes to a distribution plant first and then to a store, but yes. And there it is purchases but our cooks, driven all the way out here to the science center, cooked, and served to you.”

I take a deep breath and let some of this information sink in before I continue, “So if you waste the cheese on that sandwich, you are not just wasting cheese, but all of the time, energy, and resources that went into making the cheese and bring it to you!"

Jaws drop, these children have never pondered where their food comes from in such detail. Seeing their shock faces I know they will never think of food the same way again!

Ozark Natural Science Center Blog

The Ozark Natural Science Center's blog is going through a beautiful transformation. Staff members from the science center are writing articles, giving the blog a new face.
 As a staff member, I wrote an article called "Green Your Heart" for the center's blog.
It is posted on the ONSC website at: http://onsc.us/2011/11/green-your-heart/
Also check out my fellow co-worker Caleb's post about the harvest at:
http://onsc.us/2011/10/happy-harvest/
Look for more from the staff at ONSC regularly on the center's website. http://onsc.us/