Stan C. Smith's Blog

Did you know this is how cashews grow? I didn't, until we learned this in Belize a few weeks ago.

Cashew trees are large tropical trees that stay green all year around. The nut itself forms at the bottom of what becomes a much larger "cashew apple" (FIRST AND SECOND PHOTOS). I know... it looks like a pear, but they call it a cashew apple. Anyway, when these cashew apples are ripe, like the one in the first photo, they are amazingly delicious! Unique and very sweet. Unfortunately, they do not store well, and therefore they do not travel well. So, they cannot be shipped for wide distribution. Basically, if you want to eat a cashew apple, you have to get it straight from the tree in the tropics and eat it on the spot. Which I did. Yum!

The cashew nut many of us are familiar with is inside the small, curved shell protruding from the bottom of the cashew apple. But that green covering over the nut contain an acid that can really irritate your skin (not if you just touch it, but if you dig into it to try to get to the nut). To remove the toxin, workers pull the nut from the cashew apple, roast or steam them, then crack open the hard shell and remove the edible nut. It's an intensive process, which explains why cashews are kind of expensive.

The THIRD AND FOURTH PHOTOS show different stages of development. You can see that the nut forms first (ants seem to like this stage), then the stem above the nut expands to become the delectable cashew apple.
Photos by Stan C. Smith

Amazingly, considering all the times we have searched for herps (reptiles and amphibians) in various Caribbean countries, I have never seen a live boa constrictor in the wild... until a few weeks ago on our recent Belize trip.

On our daily walks near one of our favorite resorts (Blackbird Caye on Turneffe Atoll), there is a tree with a hole in it that has a nice cavity that would make a great hiding spot. So, every time we walk by that tree, I go over and look into the hole, hoping to see a boa constrictor (our snorkeling guide, Carlos, told me once, on a previous trip, that he had seen a boa in there). But the hole was empty every time I checked.

This time it wasn't. After almost dancing with joy, I finally calmed down enough to take some photos. Trish might tell you that I got too close and the snake struck out at my face. And, well, she's right, it did. But it actually was striking at the camera, and no humans or reptiles were harmed in the making of these photos. :)

So, here it is... my first ever boa constrictor in the wild. Up close and personal.

Photos by Stan C. Smith

Trish and I just returned from a Belize adventure, so I'll start sharing photos and stories. On this trip, I think my favorite bird was the white-collared manakin. Not only is this tiny bird beautiful, it's also the loudest bird for its size I think I've ever heard.

For the first portion of our trip, we stayed at the charming Howler Monkey Resort. As we sat on our deck overlooking the Belize River and the tropical forest, I kept hearing this really loud clicking sound. I grabbed my camera and entered the forest to see if I could track it down. Before long, I found it—a tiny male white-collared manakin. (FIRST AND SECOND PHOTOS). He was sitting above a little area of the forest floor (called a lek) he had meticulously cleaned of debris.

The lek's purpose is to impress females, and when a female shows up, the male manakin does an elaborate courtship dance, darting back and forth over the female and clicking its wings. The loud clicking sound doesn't come from the bird's mouth, it comes from the bird whipping its specialized wing feathers together, which sounds like a sharp electrical pop.

Check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6gY63UKPYc

I also photographed a few female manakins, but they look so different that I didn't realize they were the same species until I looked them up (THIRD AND FOURTH PHOTOs). She was gathering grass to make her nest.

Sometimes the smallest creatures are the coolest!

Photos by Stan C. Smith

During another hike in our forest, I came upon these unusual fungus fruiting bodies growing from a dead log. They look like sheets of translucent jelly. Remember Fruit Rollups, the gooey, fruit-based, candy-like stuff that came in rolled sheets? That's what this fungus reminds me of.

Well, it turns out this fungus is actually included in a group of weird fungi called "jelly fungi" (those that look and feel like jelly or rubber).

This species is called wood ear, tree ear or jelly ear. It is actually edible, though I haven't tried this species. But many people, including Trish and me, and maybe you, have eaten a closely related species that is cultivated in Asia and is usually included in Chinese hot and sour soup.

Wood ear has medicinal value. This fungus improves blood coagulation and decreases blood cholesterol levels. It is a really popular edible mushroom in China, which might be part of the reason heart disease is relatively rare in China. Hmm... maybe I should start collecting and eating the stuff.

The first photo doesn't really show how translucent these fruiting bodies are. So, on the same dead log, I found another wood ear that happened to be situated where a beam of sunlight fell directly on it. I crouched low to get a photo showing how the sunlight filters through the fungus.

Photos by Stan C. Smith

Several weeks ago, Trish and I drove to southern Missouri to spend a night at the Wildwood Springs Lodge, a one-of-a-kind resort built in 1922 and lovingly restored for the purpose of having live concerts in the lobby. We've seen numerous concerts there, like Amazing Rhythm Aces, Leon Russell, Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Foghat, Head East, Poco, and many more. This time it was North Mississippi Allstars. Great fun in a grand resort that's over a hundred years old (FIRST AND SECOND PHOTOS).

Anyway, as we were leaving the next morning, we stopped at Maramec Spring Park. The park is built around an astounding natural freshwater spring, where 100 million gallons (363 million liters) of water flow straight up out of the ground each day, creating the Maramec River (THIRD PHOTO).

To get a better feel for what this gushing water looks like, check out this 30-second video I recorded (Trish shows up at the end of this video): https://youtu.be/tvAToTwsqSc?si=-WTGep9TbrJAQhI9

Missouri has about 4,500 recorded springs. The top ten largest of these combined spit out over a billion gallons of water each day. This fresh, clean water coming from below ground is typically at about 57 degrees F (14ºC), even during the scorching days of summer.

Because of this perpetually cool water, some of these larger spring sites have been chosen for trout hatcheries. Trout are not native to Missouri, and they could not survive in the warm water of most of our rivers, but they do well in the cold water near these large springs, and trout fishing is popular in these areas.

Maramec Park has one of the trout hatcheries, and it produces a lot of trout, about 500,000 rainbow trout per year. The FOURTH PHOTO is from one of the trout-rearing pools near the spring's source:

Trish and I just returned from a Belize adventure, so I'll start sharing photos and stories. On this trip, I think my favorite bird was the white-collared manakin. Not only is this tiny bird beautiful, it's also the loudest bird for its size I think I've ever heard.

For the first portion of our trip, we stayed at the charming Howler Monkey Resort. As we sat on our deck overlooking the Belize River and the tropical forest, I kept hearing this really loud clicking sound. I grabbed my camera and entered the forest to see if I could track it down. Before long, I found it—a tiny male white-collared manakin. (FIRST AND SECOND PHOTOS). He was sitting above a little area of the forest floor (called a lek) he had meticulously cleaned of debris.

The lek's purpose is to impress females, and when a female shows up, the male manakin does an elaborate courtship dance, darting back and forth over the female and clicking its wings. The loud clicking sound doesn't come from the bird's mouth, it comes from the bird whipping its specialized wing feathers together, which sounds like a sharp electrical pop.

Check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6gY63UKPYc

I also photographed a few female manakins, but they look so different that I didn't realize they were the same species until I looked them up (THIRD AND FOURTH PHOTOs). She was gathering grass to make her nest.

Sometimes the smallest creatures are the coolest!

All photos by Stan C. Smith

Someone once asked why I go to so much trouble to answer such weird questions. To paraphrase George Carlin… The reason I answer these questions myself is because I’m the only one whose answers I accept. :)

Okay, think about this. There are plenty of green birds, green reptiles, green amphibians, green fish, green insects… why aren’t there any green mammals? Wait… the Grinch is green. Is the Grinch a mammal? Honestly, I don’t know what he (or she?) is supposed to be. Anyway, the Grinch is fictional, so we still have no green mammals. There may be some mammal species humans haven’t discovered yet, but it’s fair to assume none of them will be green, based on the approximately 6,640 mammal species known so far that are not green.

The closest we have to a green mammal is the two-toed and the three-toed sloths. Their fur sometimes appears to be green. But this isn’t part of the sloth’s natural pigmentation. Instead, sloths have a symbiotic relationship with green algae. The sloths provide the algae with a nice place to live, in the special grooves of their hairs where there is moisture. In return, the algae makes the sloth’s fur appear green, which serves as camouflage, protecting the sloth from predators (such as the massive harpy eagle, which loves to eat sloths).

Okay, so besides the fictional grinch, and besides sloths that look green but are not really green, why are there no green mammals?

The color of skin and hair in mammals is determined by two forms of melanin (pigment). Eumelanin varies from dark brown to black. Pheomelanin varies from yellow to red. Various combinations of these allow mammals to have colors ranging from white (no pigmentation at all) to black (dense quantities of eumelanin), with all ranges of brown and blond in between.

However, it’s also important to understand that not all animal coloration is produced by melanin. Many animals have what is called structural coloration. Basically, this is a repeating structure at the microscopic level causing light to reflect a certain color. This is how most butterfly wings get their colors. And how some bird’s feathers get their colors. For example, a scarlet macaw doesn’t really have red feathers… but the feathers have a structure that interacts with light in such a way that only red light is reflected. And most birds that are green do not actually have green pigment, but instead they have structural features that reflect green light. This begs the question… if mammals don’t have any green pigment, couldn’t they evolve green structural coloration? Possibly. But, this fact also suggests that most mammals are better off with shades of brown. Even those mammals that climb trees a lot, like squirrels, are often seen against the tree bark rather than out at the tips of limbs surrounded only by green leaves.

So, maybe part of our answer to this question is that few mammals actually need to be green.

Below is a three-toed sloth in Costa Rica that has green algae living in its fur.

Photo Credits:
- Green sloth - Marimar Ortiz, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Trish recently spotted this spectacular pillbug (FIRST IMAGE) and held it for me to take a photo. Not only was this individual extra large, it also had an unusual pattern of yellow markings I hadn't seen before. Most of the ones I've seen are just slate gray in color.

First, let's sort out what the heck a pillbug is. You might know them as roly-polies (because they roll into a protective ball when disturbed or dehydrated). They are often called isopods, because they are in the order Isopoda. Other names include pill woodlouse, potato bug, slater, and doodle bug.

This color pattern got me curious, so I went down a Google rabbit hole and discovered that genetic color variations are fairly common in this species, Armadillidium vulgare, the common pillbug. In fact, some people keep them as pets, selectively breeding them for these yellow color patterns.

By the way... back in the years when I taught 7th-grade science, I developed a research study with my students, in which we formed partnerships with other middle school classes around the United States. Each partner class collected pillbugs, and we conducted various behavior experiments to measure their preferences for temperature, moisture, light, and other environmental factors. Then I had all the partner schools exchange results to see how these pillbug behaviors vary in different parts of the country. It was a really cool project.

For the culminating activity, I had students from all schools collaboratively write a multi-chapter sci-fi story featuring a sentient, time-traveling pillbug named Armadillia. I kid you not.

The students from the various schools even drew illustrations for the story, and we created a book. The SECOND IMAGE is an example illustration. That's Armadillia with his portable time machine. Unfortunately, I can't give credit to the 7th grader who drew this picture because I don't remember who it was.

My fascination with isopods shows up again in the Bridgers series. In "Bridgers 4: The Mind of Many," I populate a bizarre world with 2,000-pound isopods. These gentle giants, each the size of a hippopotamus, roam the wilderness in herds, feeding on moss (THIRD IMAGE).

If you haven't read the Bridgers series, you're in for a treat. Check it out (https://www.amazon.com/Bridgers-Serie...).

Photo Credits:
Giant pillbugs in forest - Midjourney
Other photos - Stan C. Smith

I had an interesting encounter a few days ago. While I was exploring the forest near our home, I spotted a three-toed box turtle steadily (and noisily) making its way through the dead leaves of the forest floor toward me. I've always liked box turtles, so I just waited silently to see how close it would get before realizing it was walking toward a giant alien-like being.

Well, the turtle didn't stop. Keeping its head turned slightly to its left, I saw that this turtle's right eye was missing. Unaware of my presence, it walked up to within inches of my feet. Then it turned its head, revealing an intact, functional left eye. It froze and stared.

And it stared, and stared. This staring match continued until I could no longer take the judgmental scrutiny. So I spoke to the turtle... something like, "What happened to your eye, little dude?" Yes, I talk to forest creatures on a regular basis—don't judge.

Instead of replying, the turtle finally turned and headed away. That's when I saw that its tail was just a little nub. I concluded that this turtle had been in a close encounter with a predator, probably years ago based on the appearance of the scars. It's a survivor. Respect.

Several unmistakable signs that spring is definitely here. These are things I saw in a recent hike in the forest.

First, a prairie ring-necked snake (PHOTO ONE). These harmless snakes are common, and I usually find them hiding under flat rocks. Although you can barely see it in this photo, they have a distinct orange ring around their neck. These tiny snakes specialize in eating earthworms and slugs—yum! Notice the gray or milky eye? This tells me the snake is getting ready to shed its skin.

Next, I found this five-lined skink sunning itself on a fallen log (PHOTO TWO). These lizards prey on just about any small animal they can catch, including insects, spiders, snails, and smaller lizards. They are incredibly fast, so sometimes you only catch a glimpse of one as it runs under the dead leaves to hide. The youngsters have bright blue tails.

Next, numerous wildflowers are blooming in the forest, and the insects are out and about in abundance. PHOTO THREE is a carpenter bee feeding on flowers of a plant I'm pretty sure is dwarf larkspur. Carpenter bees are large, like bumblebees, but they are not aggressive at all. They do, however, like to chew perfectly round holes in the wood of our porch to make their nests.

And finally (PHOTO FOUR), I only found this one single morel mushroom (morels were the reason I went on this hike in the first place). In Missouri (and other places), these mushrooms are legendary for their wonderful taste and their elusiveness. In April, morel hunters take to the woods in droves, trying to find these treasures. Some people are luckier (or more skilled) than others. As I said, I found only one. However, a few days prior, our son Ryan went out searching and found more than 300. These mushrooms only grow for a few weeks, so timing is everything.