By Golly, It's a Gator!

We spent the morning working in the zoo and the afternoon out in the field. A few of us went out to the Honey Island Swamp where we witnessed one adventure after another! Once again, the caterpillar hunter was amazed by the wonders of nature. Check out my day in the field below!

Challenge #1: Here is my mystery animal picture for today. Try to see if you can identify what it is!I hope you enjoy the videos below! I had a lot of fun making them, which proves that science can be fun (for any of you non-believers). I personally learned so much this week and had a great time doing so.

You don't want to miss this one! I thought the end was funny to watch, but not funny at the time since I kinda hurt my leg when one of the other teachers played a little joke on me. You will be glad to know that my leg only suffered a very minor bruise. It was really neat to see an alligator in the wild. Luckily, we were at a safe distance and despite the fact that it appears as if I am getting closer, I was never close enough for anything to happen. (Also, sorry for the smacking sound when I am talking...I had just put a piece of gum in my mouth when we spotted the alligator! Not the best timing.)

This video highlights some of the cool things we found while searching for caterpillars. One of the things we did during this particular plot was try and uproot an invasive plant called the Chinese Tallow. Invasive species of plants are not native to the area and can often completely take over the other plants. Read more here to find out why it was important for us to uproot this plant in our plot: TallowFactSheet.pdf

In the video, I also show a crawfish building a mound out of mud. I almost stepped on a bunch of these walking though the swamp. The mounds looked like little towers. Apparently, there had been a lot of water where we were walking only days before. In areas where the water dries up, the crawfish build these mounds, where they will stay until the water comes back. Female crawfish also build mounds to lay their eggs.

Leaf Rollin' Caterpillars


Remember to Recycle! As silly as this video may be, we were actually amazed at how much trash we found in the swamp. I made sure to try and pick up empty cans, bottles, and other trash during our caterpillar collections, even though it doesn't seem like it in the video. It's tough when there aren't trash cans anywhere near you though! I guess people don't realize how much of a difference one piece of trash can make...it sure does add up.

Tomorrow we leave for New Orleans. We have a busy morning ahead of us, packing up the cars with over 750 caterpillars! We will take the caterpillars back to the labs at Tulane University, where we will continue to add new ones to a database and monitor the progress of the others. Then, off to a fabulous New Orleans dinner and Jazz Fest! More to come soon! Miss you!

Here are the answers to the challenge questions the other day.
Remember the hidden caterpillar for Challenge #1? I am pointing to the caterpillar from that picture with the marker in the picture to the right. The caterpillar is a geometrid, which camouflages itself by pretending to be a stem. Sure fooled us, huh!

The answer for Challenge #2. The psychidae is similar to Psyche, the goddess of the Soul, because they both play hard to get. The psychidae creates a shelter out of sticks and wood, which the female never leaves. Once she has laid her eggs, she usually dies. That is why we had to cut them open when we were skyping, to see if they were still inhabited.