It's not every morning that you wake up to see this kind of news on the pages of our newspapers.The Telegraph had this picture on its front page this morning. These leg-less amphibians are known as Caecilians.
Caecilians (pronounced seh-SILL-yens) are tropical amphibians that look like large worms or slick snakes. They have no arms or legs, and sometimes it’s hard to tell which end is the head and which is the tail! Their shiny skin is ringed with skin folds called annuli, and they usually come in shades of gray, brown, black, orange, or yellow. Some species have tiny, fish-like scales within the rings. Source.
Some excerpts from the newspaper.
The scientists from the University of Delhi and their counterparts from Belgium and the UK have announced their discovery in a paper that appears today in the journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The new family of Caecilians, given the name Chikilidae, is genetically closer to African caecilians than to other legless amphibians found so far across peninsular India.
S.D. Biju, India's leading amphibian researcher, and his PhD student Rachunliu Kamei, discovered the new family during a search for amphibians in the northeast between 2006 to 2010. The search yielded more than five hundred caecilians at 58 sites among the 238 localities surveyed.
The scientists classified the Chiklidae as a new family after studies revealed that these creatures have a distinctive morphology and a unique position on the genetic tree of amphibians.
Looking up the internet I came across more pictures and details. You might like to take a look here and here.
And in other news I'm happy to see bees and butterflies around my flowers.
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| Looks like this one's in a drunken stupor!:) |
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| Butterfly on a calendula |
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| Dahlias and an Orchid tree blooming in a garden attached to a local Cultural Centre. |
The flowering trees of Spring are just beginning to put on a show. Soon our landscape will be ablaze with fiery reds and oranges. Here's a closer look at the bloom of the Orchid tree (below).
This is my contribution to Michelle's Nature Notes. Check out the signs of the season by clicking on the link. I wish all nature lovers a wonderful week!!
