@markscherz / markscherz.tumblr.com
I get a lot of asks on tumblr, and I of course cannot expect you to scroll through my erratic post history on tumblr before you ask anything (though you can browse my tag #Answers by Mark, if you want). So instead, I have pinned this post that has an FAQ, which you can refer to before submitting a question, to check if it has been asked before.
The phenomenal Microhyla nepenthicola, a species I hoped but did not plan to see during my short trip to Borneo. It’s a pretty small frog. I got the great pleasure of seeing several last night, just outside Kuching!
Day 166
City Bus
@markscherz is this like safe??
Yes in the sense that there is very little chance of transfer of any kind of sexually transmitted diseases here. No in the sense that those are an invasive toad species, Rhinella marina, in Australia where this photo was taken, and the python may not be resistant to their poison so it probably shouldn’t try to eat any of them.
i need to stand ankle deep in a creek about this
Surprise! Did you know some toads glow under UV lignt? I sure didn't! This is a Couch's spadefoot toad (Scaphiopud couchii) showing off this fantastic ability.
i feel like i have to @ the frog guy on here since no one else has.
Scaphiopus in particular have really beautiful fluorescence, yes!
Excellent hobby do recommend
Borneo is pretty cool so far you guys. Some pretty A+ frogs.
Today I got to Mulu National Park in Malaysian Borneo (Sarawak), and one of the first animals I found was this incredible turtle, Heosemys spinosa! What an animal!
This is how it was sitting when I found it:
What a privilege to behold such a creature!
I’m here for the tenth World Congress of Herpetology, where about 1500 herpetologists from across the world are assembling in Kuching to talk about reptile and amphibian research! Super excited for the weeks ahead!
how did the turtle feel about being handled?
It was spectacularly chill, actually. Sometimes they can get feisty, but she was lovely!
Today I got into the rainforest in Malaysian Borneo (Sarawak), and one of the first animals I found was this incredible turtle, Heosemys spinosa! What an animal!
This is how it was sitting when I found it:
What a privilege to behold such a creature!
I’m here for the tenth World Congress of Herpetology, where about 1500 herpetologists from across the world are assembling in Kuching to talk about reptile and amphibian research! Super excited for the weeks ahead!
free museum trips are wasted on unappreciative middle schoolers. let me go
Make friends with museum people and we can sometimes get you a behind the scenes tour :)
Can confirm
Are you going to BECOME a frog??????
I am not at liberty to disclose what is or is not going to happen, so I can neither confirm nor deny my Ascension to Frog.
Forgive me for vagueblring, but I have received SO much exciting news in the last week that I am not allowed to talk about, that I am going a little crazy!
So tune in on 5 September when the biggest news of my career so far will drop!
“How-dee-do” is the polite way of addressing a toad for the first time.
Some are dancing, some are giant, some sing, and others rain down: vintage frogs and toads.
@markscherz pls confirm
Confirmed
A tumblr-celeb who's a dane??? now that's surprising:0
You work at the national history museum? How's your work curated into working at a museum? Did you imagine ending up with this kind if work when you were a student or did it just, sorta happen?
(I've been there before but that was 20 years ago so I assume things have changed since then haha)
I'm not Danish, as the name probably gives away. I have German-British parentage/ancestry and American citizenship (much to my own bemusement).
Natural history museums have two parts: the public part that people think is the museum, and the collections, which are the actual museum. Generally somewhere between 0.1% and 1% of the contents of a museum are ever displayed to the public. I work in the herpetology collections of the Natural History Museum; a collection of 60–80 thousand reptile and amphibian specimens, some of which date back to the 18th century. It is the perfect place for my work, because a lot of what I do is study evolution and genetics, especially from museum specimens. All of my fieldwork involves collection of new material for deposition in museum collections. So I could not fit in better.
The dream for me, since starting my Master's, was to land a joint curatorship/professorship position, where on the one hand I could work with a museum collection, and on the other hand I would have the academic environment. Such positions are *extremely* rare globally, and just by chance I hit the jackpot when the NHMD advertised that they were wanting a vertebrate curator who would also be a tenure-track assistant professor. I got the dream job, and now I'm three years in, and soon hopefully got be going through the final tenure assessment.
Hey hello random scientist guy, what is a frog/lizard species someone could realistically have for a name.
I have given a few such names in a previous ask, so I would first point you there. That list only had frogs, but reptiles names could easily be added. For instance, I know a person named Timon, named after Timon lepidus, and Draco Malfoy is clearly named after the genus of gliding lizards from southeast Asia, Draco. There are thousands of names available here, so it is hard to narrow down which to mention.
