Nicole Alderman

My husband, kids and I all watched it together. We had to stop and go back so many times because there was just SO MUCH wrong with the animals. One chicken turned into a sprinkler. Pigs merged into one another. A cow turned into a...skeleton?... when it went in the mystery spray (Was it milk? Was it pesticides? Was it herbicides? Was it water? WHO KNOWS!).

It was all sorts of messed up on so many levels that I just couldn't resist posting it somewhere on permies.

Artificial Intelligence has some fascinating visions of the bright, bright future of farming.



I can't tell what section of this video is the most hilarious. I was going to post this in Meaningless Drivel, but AI really seems to think that pesticides and herbicides are the future of farming, and should be fed to EVERYTHING.

Burra Maluca wrote:Here's one the kids will love - the Iberian Ribbed Newt, aka Wolverine newt.

They will secrete toxins, then break their ribs and poke the broken bits out of the poisoned bits of skin so that if you pick them up you get injected with poison by the snapped bits of rib bone.

I mean, if someone wrote that in a story would you even believe it?

Duuuuuuuuude, that's crazy!

Our little newt is just this sweet little guy that you can easily catch and carry around. Just make sure you wash your hands after touching, and don't lick the newt. I had no idea there were newts that were as crazily aggressive as your newt!

I have to admit, my very favorite amphibian video has got to be the rough-skinned newt getting eaten by a bullfrog!

The rough-skinned newt is one of the most poisonous animals in the world, and is so very unassuming. It's this sweet little critter that is native to my area. But, it is so poisonous that it kills a bullfrog within seconds of being consumed...and then it walks right out of the bullfrog's mouth like nothing happened. Bullfrogs are not native to our area (they were introduced as a food source, and rather displace our native frogs). Those bullfrogs don't know to leave the newt alone, and it shows!

Burra Maluca wrote:And just to throw a spanner into the works, the most common sort we have here in Portugal are the fire salamanders, which are born live.

The old legends say they are born of fire, and their Portuguese name, salamandra, is also the word used for a wood stove.

Gotta love those dragons...

Some Caecilians have live births (the eggs hatch inside their mamas and they go through their "tadpole"--larva--stage inside her, rasping at her insides for nourishment). Other Caecilians go through their larval stage while still inside their eggs and hatch out as adults. Some are hatched at eggs, and spend time rasping at the proteins their mama exudes from her skin.

Here's a Caecilian feeding off of its mama.


And here's a live-bearing Caecilian


I learned so much from researching amphibians to teach the kids. One of the...weirdest... amphibians was the Pipa Toad. The eggs are laid on top of the mother's back, and then her skin sort of....absorbs...them. The babies go through their tadpole stage while still in eggs on her back, and then hatch out as little froggies. The video is not for the faint queasy at heart.



There are so many marvelously weird and wonderful amphibians in the world!

Another fun activity we did, was turn the whole room into an frog life cycle obstacle course. They started out under the tables as tadpoles, and then turned into frog and hopped from pillow to pillow, walked along a 2x4 "log", snapped at flies dangled overhead by parents, laid eggs under tables, and then went around again. This was a lot of fun for them, but did start getting a little chaotic after a few times around!

I love that you did presentations at schools, Steve! Over the years, my husband has brought in his axolotl and neotenic salamander to our kids' various homeschool co-op classes, and they have always been a huge hit. The kids really love learning about these amphibians! I wish we had the critters at all stages of development to show the kids. There's really something "magical" about the transformations amphibians go through, especially since there are SO MANY kids of amphibians. I was really amazed to see how different the life cycles are for different amphibians, especially the caecilians and newts!

One of the activities I did with their class was have the kids pick their own amphibian to assemble the life cycle of. I used the below sheets, cutting out each of the stages for each amphibian. Then the kids went from station to station,  finding their next life cycle picture and gluing it onto their paper. It wasn't as fun as the board game, but they enjoyed it, and many kids went around two or three times, assembling a different amphibian each time.

Ra Kenworth wrote:That's brilliant! What fun  😀
Thank you

By the way the axolot link is not working

It took me a second to figure out which link wasn't working. Was it this one:

So I used the axolotl image from here and drew boarders around it.

It's just where I sourced the image, and I wanted to give credit. Upon further inspection of the link, it looks like I forgot the : after HTTPS. Now it's there, and the link should work!

I'm glad you enjoyed the board game!

I was reading Shel Silverstein poems to my kids, and I just had to share this one.



Too bad he didn't know about giving urine to growies!

Derek Thille wrote:
You could also consider Building a Better World in Your Backyard Instead of Being Angry at Bad Guys by Wheaton and Klassen-Koop.

It's been a long time since there's been an 8 year old around here so I don't know how good an idea that is.

I actually looked at it last night (it was right next to the other books), but I couldn't remember if Paul said anything in there wasn't quite appropriate for an 8 year old, or my get her scared or worried. She easily gets scared, and she might get worried about the effects of toxic gick or other bad stuff in the world, and that might end up keeping her awake (even though the book is focused on how to solve those issues). Goats and flax seemed like a safer bet. (I probably shouldn't have given her the Resilient Gardener, because it talks about the year without a summer and the devastation that caused. Thankfully, she decided to read Raven's book, instead!)

I just asked her what she learned, and she said, "I learned about what you do with flax during the different season as months." So, she did actually read it!