If you had a magical opportunity to see a living example of any extinct creature from the past, which creature would it be? A particular dinosaur? A Neanderthal? A pterodactyl? A woolly mammoth? 

I asked myself this question when I was writing Fused: Training Day because I wanted my protagonist, Bobby, to conjure up a really cool animal to scare away some dangerous home intruders.

I decided on a Megalania. Megalania was the largest terrestrial lizard that ever lived. The largest lizard alive today is the Komodo dragon, a type of monitor lizard that grows to 3 meters (10 feet) in length, weighing 135 kilograms (300 pounds). The Megalania, a monitor lizard that roamed Australia until about 50,000 years ago, grew to 7 meters (23 feet) and may have weighed 2,000 kilograms (4,280 pounds). Wow!

Below are a couple of digital renderings of Megalania.

Sure, I'd also love to see any dinosaur, or any one of a slew of other extinct critters I can think of. However, there is something about the Megalania that fascinates me... probably the fact that it is similar to our living Komodo dragons, but SO MUCH HUGER!

If "huger" isn't a word, it should be.

The world is full of humans today, but if there was an extinct species of humans that stood 20 feet tall and weighed 1,000 pounds, wouldn't you want to see one of those? I would. At a safe distance.

Anyway, as you can probably guess, Bobby's conjured Megalania turns out to be a big mistake. In other words, chaos ensues.

If you're curious about what might happen if a Megalania appears in your living room, you really should read Fused: Training Day.

What about you? What extinct animal (or plant) would you most like to see alive today?

Photo Credits:

Both Megalania images - Midjourney

There is an unfortunate shortage of ophiophilists in this world. What is an ophiophilist, you ask? Well, Ophio- is a Greek prefix meaning "serpent." And philist is derived from "philia," which means a love for something (as in hydrophilia—a love of water). A hydrophilist is someone who loves water, so an ophiophilist is someone who loves snakes (pronounced oh-fee-OFF-uh-list).

I, of course, am a proud ophiophilist. Unfortunately, we are in short supply. Perhaps the main reason for this shortage is ophidiophobia. You guessed it—the fear of snakes. Astoundingly, about one third of all adult humans have a fear of snakes (though only about 3% of adults have a clinically severe fear of snakes).

It's not difficult to figure out the evolutionary roots of this fear. Ancient humans lived in places where venomous snakes were common. So, there was a survival advantage in being quick to avoid any venomous snake. Unfortunately, many harmless snakes resemble venomous snakes, and so humans and other animals evolved a general avoidance behavior for any snake.

And it hasn't helped that snakes have been vilified in books (including the Bible) and stories for thousands of years, and this continues today with movies and TV shows.

In today's world, where people have easy access to educational resources that can teach them to identify the various snake species that live in their area, the fear of snakes should be a thing of the past. But the fear persists because many folks are uninterested or unwilling to learn about snakes. 

Anyway, I've been fascinated by snakes for as long as I can remember. I get excited whenever I find one. Trish is the same way. In fact, for our honeymoon trip, we went herping (snake hunting... basically, an activity where you hike for miles trying to find snakes, not to harm them but to admire and photograph them). We still search for them everywhere we go.

Here are a few snakes we have encountered recently.

FIRST PHOTO - As we were hiking a trail in Washington a few weeks ago, we came across this pair of valley gartersnakes (a subspecies of the common gartersnake) chilling out on a rotting log beside the trail.

Notice that these two gartersnakes (which are harmless, by the way) are quite different in color. This gartersnake species is notorious for being widely variable in appearance. Gartersnakes are opportunistic predators, which means they will catch and swallow just about any small live animal they can handle, such as frogs, salamanders, insects, fish, and even small rodents.

SECOND PHOTO - The other day, Trish was blowing leaves out of a rock garden beside the house, and she shouted at me to come see something. She had found this copperhead sunning itself comfortably next to a little stone hedgehog. 

Copperheads are venomous and should be respected, but that doesn't mean they should be hated. They are common around here, but I have found that they are not aggressive. Sure, they might strike if you step on one or try to pick it up, but this one didn't even strike when I wrangled it into a bucket—with a snake noose, not with my hands—and relocated it safely into the forest about a hundred meters from the house. Copperheads are truly beautiful snakes. At least 90% of their diet is rodents (mice and voles).

THIRD PHOTO - While on a family "herping" trip that included eight of us (our son Ryan's family, and daughter Katie's family), we found this beautiful eastern milksnake. These are among my favorites, and I'm always thrilled to see one. Milksnakes are harmless and usually docile when you handle them. They eat lizards, small rodents, and other snakes. If the prey animal is small, they will just snarf it down alive, but they kill larger prey by constriction before swallowing. I feel lucky that these snakes live near our home.

If you are afraid of snakes, I recommend learning more about them. Learn to identify the species that live in your area. The more you understand them, the less you will fear them. The world needs more ophiophilists!

Photo Credits:

All photos - Stan C. Smith

A week or two ago, I stood at the bank of a stream watching a group of water striders doing their seemingly physics-defying dance upon the water's surface. So, I decided to try to take some photos, which turns out to be more difficult than you might think (FIRST PHOTO).

Let's dig into two questions:

- What the heck is a water strider, anyway?

- How can water striders run around on the water's surface?

Sometimes called water skeeters, water scooters, or pond skaters, among other names, these insects make up the Gerridae family, in the order Hemiptera (the "true bugs"). Water striders are predators—they feed on mosquito larvae and any other tiny insects that get trapped on the water surface. To help them locate the exact location of their prey, their legs can sense the tiniest ripples in the water. Once they find their prey, they jab the creature with their straw-like mouthparts, inject digestive enzymes to liquify the creature's insides, then suck out the goodies. Cool, huh? (SECOND PHOTO)

So, how do these awesome insects run around on top of the water? First, we have to understand the concept of surface tension. Basically, the molecules in a liquid (including water) have a strange property—they pull on each other in every direction. But at the liquid's surface, the molecules can only be pulled inward by those beneath the surface. This forces the top layer of molecules to tighten up like a stretched sheet of elastic. This is why a glob of water floating in zero gravity forms a sphere, with the least amount of surface area possible. Kind of like a balloon.

And this also makes it so the surface layer can hold a small amount of weight (like a water strider). To make this work even better, a water strider's legs have countless little wax-covered hairs, trapping a layer of air to repel water.

These creatures are magnificently adapted to living and hunting on top of the water. Their short front legs are for catching and holding prey, their long middle legs work like oars to propel them, and they use their long hind legs to steer.

Amazing little boat critters.

What about you? Have you seen any other aquatic creatures that surprise you?

Photo Credits:

- Three water striders - Stan C. Smith

- Water strider close-up - Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I'm always amazed at the nearly perfect camouflage of some animals. I took this photo in our yard. Can you find the creature?

Haven't we all wondered about this? Let's dig into it.

House cats are domesticated animals, right? In fact, they’ve been domesticated for 10,000 to 12,000 years. They actually domesticated themselves—in the Fertile Crescent (an area of the Middle East where agriculture started). As humans began developing agriculture, they figured out ways to store their grain. Well, stored grain naturally attracted rodents. These rodents, in turn, attracted an animal called the African wildcat (Felis lybica). This is the ancestor of the modern house cat (Felis catus… yes, that’s really the scientific name).

African wildcats got accustomed to living and hunting in human settlements where there was stored grain and plenty of rodents to eat. In this way, the cats formed a mutually beneficial relationship (natural pest control) with humans, even to the point where they could not exist without humans, evolving into a different species. Like I said, they domesticated themselves.

So, throughout the natural history of the African wildcat, and then the 10,000 or so years of the domestic cat, these animals have fed primarily on rodents. Their taste for rodents is deeply ingrained in their DNA. They did not evolve eating chicken, beef, or fish, which cat-food companies often put into their cat food.

That brings us back to the question:

Why isn’t there any mouse-flavored cat food?

The answer has to do with people, not with the biology or preferences of cats. There are several reasons. First, many humans are grossed out by rodents, mice and rats in particular. And humans are the ones who shop for cat food. Many humans have no desire to see, smell, or touch anything that has to do with mice and rats. So, they probably wouldn’t buy the stuff anyway.

Second, mouse farms are rare. There would have to be a lot more of them to produce enough mouse meat to fill all those millions of cat-food cans that are sold every year. And compared to chickens, fish, and cows, raising that many mice would be comparatively expensive. Raising mice requires countless small cages, suitable water bottles, and food made specifically for mice, among other things.

Third, pet-food companies have to follow the same sanitation and safety guidelines as companies that produce human food. Meeting these guidelines legally on a massive mouse farm would be a challenge.

Fourth, there are doubts about whether cats really do prefer the taste of mice over chicken, beef, or fish. Yes, they are hard-wired to hunt rodents, but does this really mean rodents taste better to them than anything else? Humans did not evolve eating chocolate, yet for most people, including me, chocolate is the cat’s meow when it comes to flavor. House cats seem perfectly content eating chicken-based, beef-based, or fish-based cat food. However, they really are hard-wired to HUNT and KILL rodents, and they probably will continue to be because their domestication process continues to involve them killing mice and rats, even today. This is why many farmers keep cats around.

Photo Credits:

Mouse-flavored cat food - Midjourney

Trish and I just spent some time in the Pacific Northwest. If you've ever been in a forest in that area, you probably noticed that many of the trees are covered in green stuff. PHOTO ONE is from Ike Kinswa State Park, near Mossyrock, Washington. All this green stuff makes me think of a magical forest, where you might see gnomes or fairies.

The plants covering those branches are mostly mosses. The Pacific Northwest is home to about 1,000 species of mosses, many of which grow on the branches of trees. Mosses are what we call nonvascular plants—they do not have veins to carry water and nutrients up the plant. Therefore, they cannot grow very tall because they have to soak up water from rain and from the surface they are growing on.

Many trees in the Pacific Northwest are also covered by lichens. Check out the PHOTO TWO. The bright green and brown plant in the center of this photo is an example of moss. Surrounding the moss are two types of lichens—one type that grows in flat lobes, and another type that grows as long, thin, branching filaments.

Lichens are nothing like mosses. Lichens are actually a bizarre partnership, in which a fungus lives together with a type of algae (or sometimes a cyanobacteria). The fungus provides a moist, safe place for the algae to live. The algae provides food for both the organisms by doing photosynthesis. Nature is so cool!

Well, as I was looking into the forest from the balcony of a cabin we stayed in for a few days, I saw this tree with something long and stringy growing on it. PHOTO THREE.

This stringy stuff is NOT Spanish moss (which grows on trees in the southeast USA and is actually a type of air plant called a bromeliad). This stuff is also not a type of moss (there are some long stringy mosses that hang from trees in the Pacific Northwest).

How do I know it's not a moss? Because when I zoomed in on it, what I saw is shown in PHOTO FOUR.

These long strands with little filaments sticking out in all directions indicate that this is a lichen called bearded lichen, or Methuselah's beard lichen. It is the longest lichen in the world, growing to twenty feet in length!

This is why I love being outdoors. Every living thing you see—if you pay attention and learn more about it—is unique and spectacular in its own way.

Photo Credits:

All photos by Stan C. Smith

A few more scenery-type photos from our recent Belize adventure.

PHOTO ONE. As we approached the Lamanai Mayan ruins area in a boat on the New River, the largest of the structures stands higher than the surrounding jungle. I can only imagine what this area must have looked like 2,000 years ago when it was built, and this city was bustling with the activity of thousands of Mayans.

PHOTO TWO. This is a smaller structure, called the Jaguar Temple, but it is still breathtaking.

PHOTO THREE. An example of why we love to snorkel Belize's Great Barrier Reef. It is an underwater wonderland.

PHOTO FOUR. The Belize River. Awesome place to spot birds, iguanas, crocodiles, and much more. We drifted this river for hours, both during daylight and at night, looking at wildlife.

PHOTO FIVE. I took this photo while snorkeling at the famous "Blue Hole." This is part of the shallow rim around the Blue Hole, which is about 1,000 feet across. The diversity of corals and sponges here is astounding.

PHOTO SIX. Trish doing what she loves to do. I think she loves snorkeling even more than I do.

PHOTO SEVEN. Sunset on our last night on Turneffe Atoll, a massive array of mangrove islands surrounded by coral reefs. We spent a week there, snorkeling every day.

Photo Credits:

All photos by Stan C. Smith

Normally I share wildlife photos, but here are a few scenery-type photos from our recent trip to Belize.

FIRST PHOTO – A view from the air as we approached Belize City.

SECOND PHOTO – We floated a river on inner tubes, which gave us a unique perspective of the area.

THIRD PHOTO – The river float also took us through an extensive cave. Once we got several hundred yards away from the cave opening, we were in total darkness (only the light from our headlamps) for almost an hour.

FOURTH PHOTO – Convenient wooden walkways at Howler Monkey Resort. This was a charming resort run by a wonderful couple and their two sons.

FIFTH PHOTO – Half Moon Caye. This became Belize’s first nature reserve in 1981, and the first marine protected area in Central America.

SIXTH PHOTO – Belize’s Great Barrier Reef has some astounding underwater scenery, with a nice diversity of corals and other marine life.

SEVENTH PHOTO – Trish in her happy place at sunset, bare feet in the sand. This is at Blackbird Caye, which is part of Turneffe Atoll, about thirty miles off the coast of Belize. This was the fourth time we have spent a week there, snorkeling every day and eating wonderful food.

Photo Credits:

All photos by Stan C. Smith

I'm going to tie this topic in with one of my sci-fi series. Profusion is the grand finale of my Diffusion series. This epic novel puts Bobby in a seemingly impossible situation where he has to save the entire world from a horrifying plague (a profusion) of grotesque transformations. With ground zero on the island of Puerto Rico, millions of out-of-control nanobots are transforming every living thing they touch into bizarre and deadly amalgamations of various creatures. It seems nothing can stop this terrifying profusion.

But Bobby is no ordinary teenager. In fact, he is not what he seems to be at all. He comes up with a plan, which involves millions of birds that can disperse over the landscape quickly. When each bird reaches its destination, it will transform into hundreds of fast-flying dragonflies. And when each dragonfly reaches its destination, it will divide into thousands of the tiniest flies Bobby can think of, called no-see-ums. Each of these minuscule flies has a mission to carry out. It's definitely not a perfect plan, but it may be humanity's only hope.

If you like that kind of stuff (and who doesn't?), I recommend checking out the Diffusion series—FIRST IMAGE.

https://www.amazon.com/Diffusion/dp/B07F7LMW5Z

Now let's get to the topic. What the heck is a no-see-um?

No-see-ums are called different names in different parts of the world. They are actually a type of fly (the order Diptera), but they are much smaller than many other flies such as mosquitoes or deer flies. In fact, some of them are so small you simply cannot see them without a magnifier. You don't even know they are on your skin until you feel them biting you. That's how they got their name, no-see-um.

During the warmer months, we have a lot of no-see-ums here in Missouri, and they seem to like biting me more than they like biting Trish. This is why I call them the devil's spawn. The little jerks.

THE SECOND IMAGE is a no-see-um biting someone's leg:

Most of the insects people call no-see-ums are in a family of flies referred to as biting midges. Depending on where you're from, you may have heard them called midgies, knotts, moose flies, sand flies, punkies, or biting gnats. some of these names, though, like gnats and sand flies, are ambiguous because they are used for a number of other insect groups. Amazingly, there are 4,000 to 5,000 species of no-see-ums (biting midges) that we know of, and they live in almost every part of the world. They've even been found on Mount Everest!

No-see-ums are so small they can fly right through typical screens on windows and doors. Whenever I purchase a tent, I make sure the windows are made of "no-see-um netting," a special type of netting with very small holes. In order to block no-see-ums, the netting must have mesh size of at least 4,900 holes per square inch.

Like with mosquitoes, it is the female no-see-ums that bite. The females have a needle-like sucker along with a separate injector tube. The sucker is obviously for sucking up blood. The injector tube is used to inject a small amount of anticoagulant, to keep the blood from clotting so it will flow freely up the sucker tube. It is actually our body's allergic reaction to this anticoagulant that causes the itch. Some people are more allergic to it than others. Fortunately for me, the itch only lasts about 20 minutes, but for some people it can go on for several days or even weeks.

Female no-see-ums seek out blood for the same reason female mosquitoes do—to get nourishment for developing their eggs. Once a female gets a blood meal, she will lay her eggs on water or wet sand (water is necessary for the larvae). A female can lay 400 or more eggs at a time, and she can breed 5-7 times in her adult life. I guess that's why they're so abundant.

Although I despise no-see-ums, I also love them. Why? Because no-see-ums (along with gull midges) are the only pollinators of the cacao tree. So without them, we would have no chocolate!

Photo Credits:

- Biting midge (no-see-um) - Dunpharlain, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons