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Snakes, crabs and bats June 10, 2018

June 10, 2018

La Selva seems to be to venomous snakes what Palo Verde is to mosquitoes. Except the worst the Palo Verde mosquitoes will do is make you scratch yourself bloody, while the venomous snakes at La Selva are, well, venomous. Two nights ago, the professor who’s basically my co-supervisor came into my lab to tell me that, FYI, she’d been struck at by a young terciopelo* right outside my cabin. It missed, but people are reporting two or three snake sightings a night around the labs and cabins. Apparently, this is worse than usual, and people are saying it’s probably a combination of it being time for young snakes to spread out, a bunch of wild rodents in the lab clearing, and the extra leaves and branches on the ground from the storm. Personally, I haven’t seen any snakes other than one terciopelo that was curled up behind a building that someone pointed out to me, and I’d be happy to keep it that way.

I have seen some less alarming animals. That same night, a land crab got into the lab:

I love how it looks like that beetle is backing the crab up against the wall. 😀

And today, I was getting ready to collect this rolled-up leaf

to look for insects when a bunch of disc-winged bats flew out of the top! I didn’t get a good look at the bats, but they have little suction cups on their wings that they use to hold onto smooth surfaces like leaves.

*This is basically a fer-de-lance, except someone seems to have decided that ‘fer-de-lance’ should only be used as the name for a closely-related species that only occurs in the Caribbean. On the other hand, that part of the Caribbean includes islands that actually speak French, unlike Costa Rica and the rest of Central America. Terciopelo apparently means ‘velvet’ in Spanish, which is a pretty good description of how its skin looks, even if it isn’t your typical scary venomous snake name.