An Interesting Thing at the Zoo

We've never seen this before, and this is a great reminder why you should visit the zoo year 'round and not just once (get a pass!) We went in the "Amphibian and Reptile House" to see our favorite giant tortoises. Once, we got to watch them get clean and for some reason my daughter wanted to watch the helper scrub the floor and hose down their habitat. It was a lengthy process! Anyway, just inside the building there is a tank with TONS of turtles. They were shedding!

This is normal, and I googled it just to make sure! I found this: http://www.turtlepuddle.org/health/skin.html

Penguins!

At our local zoo, they have recently put in a penguin exhibit. Penguins seem to be VERY popular these days, thanks to movies like March of the Penguins, and Happy Feet. Since we learn about a different animal every couple of weeks for science, I decided we should learn about penguins. It is absolutely my kids' favorite exhibit at the zoo. So I figured that it would be easy to get them into this lesson. And it was!

It's so easy to find information and children's worksheets on-line. It literally took me less than 20 minutes to find enough on penguins that was age appropriate for my kids. Here is a great penguin site. There is a link on that page for penguin activities that you can pick from. Our final "assignment" was to pick one type of penguin and learn more about it. Here are the questions. We took our questions to the zoo, and observed the penguins (again!) and read all the information provided by the zoo about their penguins, which are Humboldt penguins.

Here is some information we found online at the zoo website if you are interested (the picture is mine):

Humboldt penguins are only found along the pacific coast of Chile and Peru in South America. The total world population of Humboldt penguins currently stands at approximately 12,000 breeding pairs, with about 8,000 pairs in Chile and the remaining 4,000 pairs in Peru. The wild population has undergone a decline with the major causes stemming from human interference. These include guano collection (used in fertilizer production) in breeding areas, egg collection, hunting for food as well as competition for available fish.
Humboldt penguins have a black and white underside, with a black band along the chest. Their body is plumper in the middle because of a fat layer that protects them from the cold. These penguins weigh between 9-11 pounds with a body length of 26 inches. Like all birds, penguins have feathers, but their feathers are modified to help them “fly” through the water. These outer feathers also act like a diver’s wetsuit and keep the cold oceanic water away from the soft, fluffy down feathers that keep their body warm. Strong, stiff flippers help them swim up to 7.5 Kph (5 mph).

We had fun learning about penguins. We did not go overboard, and did just enough fact finding, coloring, and creating to keep both kids interested and engaged in learning. Isn't that the key?

A Death in the "Family"

Last week we had a tragic event occur in our "family" that was a great learning experience: two of our frogs died. They were the last of the eight to turn into frogs, so when we had to name them for the funeral services, we lovingly called them "Seven" and "Eight."

I'm not really sure what happened to them, but my best guess is that they didn't get enough oxygen in their Planet Frog habitat. We put the top on, and I'm guessing the little air holes didn't allow enough air in. It was a sinking feeling when I looked in one morning and saw that Seven was discolored, and Eight was on his back. Believe it or not, I even choked up a little when I said a few words before we buried them in our planter on the front porch. I felt so guilty. But then, having 6 out of 8 tadpoles turn into frogs AND survive is an incredible feat!

I tried to get Anna to sing her new favorite song, "The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow," but she would not. She probably doesn't remember singing, "Twinkle, Twinkle," at our dog Sandy's funeral when she was 2 1/2 and perhaps she was just too devastated to sing. But after the services for Seven and Eight, life went on, and hopefully their little bodies in the planter will grow some beautiful plants for us!

Our Tadpole Project

We have gotten more than our share of rain in Kansas and when you have puddles, you have tadpoles! Our friends collected some tadpoles from their wheat field and we were fortunate enough to obtain eight (yes EIGHT!) tadpoles for our "Planet Frog" habitat that had been sitting empty for close to two years. It didn't occur to me at the time that we might actually get them all to the frog stage without losing any, but now, I'm wondering what we will do with eight frogs! The first picture shows my son and daughter watching the tadpoles that we just brought home.

And here is a close up picture of the tadpoles and what they looked like on June 11, 2007. (Click on the picture to see them up close.) They weren't very small, but we didn't know how long it would take for them to morph into frogs. After reading extensively online, we learned that some frogs take much longer than others. We also learned that distilled water was good for the tadpoles' habitat, which was good since we have lots of that on hand! We tried collecting rain water but it was a pain! The Planet Frog habitat proved to be too small for the eight tadpoles because we had to change the water almost daily. So we split them up into two Pyrex dishes and put some rocks from our yard into these dishes. The tadpoles liked to swim under these as much as they could at the edges.

After we had the tadpoles for seven days, guess what appeared? That's right: LEGS!! Well, back legs anyway. The tadpoles still use their tails to get around, and the legs are just sort of there as if the tadpole doesn't realize it. The tadpoles didn't all get their back legs at the same time. In this picture you can see how one has more legs than the other, and some of the tadpoles had nothing at all. You might be wondering what to feed a tadpole. We were told they eat fish food, so we got the only kind available: tropical fish food, which they seem to like.

Seven days after the back legs appeared, we spotted some front legs! After hearing that tadpoles in captivity had to get a certain hormone in order to develop their front legs, I did some research on-line. Apparently, the stress of a puddle drying up (for example) releases a hormone which causes the tadpole to turn into a frog, because if it didn't, the tadpole would die without the puddle. So by the time the puddle dries out, the tadpole needs to have all legs to hop out. So what we did was place the "almost frogs" into the shallow glass Pyrex pan, and let the water naturally evaporate so that the hormone would be released. It must have worked! Once the front legs appeared, we noticed that they use these while swimming, and of course, the tail begins to disappear.

Once the tails were disappearing, we knew that we needed a bigger habitat for the frogs, and one that had a top. We went to PetsMart, where we got a new habitat and their new food: crickets! I sort of doubted that these tiny frogs would eat the crickets almost as big as they were, but the young man sounded knowledgeable so I went with it. In this picture, you can see how the frogs are losing their tails at different rates. We also noticed that the frogs were developing in pairs. At this point, we had three habitats going: one for legless tadpoles, one shallow dish for "frogs in training" and the frog habitat. We had an assembly line going that seemed to produce healthy frogs! (Or are they toads? Hmmm) The picture of these two frogs were taken 17 days after we brought them home. Time sure flies!

I'm still not sure about the crickets. We left a dead one on the rock for a "frog in training" so he could sort of check it out. I think they only eat them when we aren't watching them (or are they getting out of the habitat?) because they are disappearing, but we aren't sure where they're going! It has now been 25 days since we've had the tadpoles, and the frogs have gotten pretty active.

Yes, I AM wondering what I'll be doing with eight frogs, and I've only promised that we can keep two. The rest we will probably set free somewhere, like the turle that we set free at our lake. The kids only had that turtle overnight and still talk about it (they named it Snappy). We had a frog show up in our backyard one night ("Donut"), and I felt so bad for it that I made the kids let it go in our garden. My 4 year old daughter broke down! She could not stop crying; it was such a pitiful sight. But it made me feel good to know that she has such a BIG heart!