After hearing a lovely morning lecture from Michael on the importance of tropical soils and their nutrients, we designed a classic TFB experiment: pee tubes. We wanted to see whether arthropods in the canopy or the forest floor are more attracted to the nitrogen in our urine and what that might say about the scarcity of nutrients in these areas. We all peed in tubes, compared hydration levels for fun, and then set out to lay these pitfall traps in the forest. During this I actually spotted a jumping viper on the trail right before we were about to step on it which was a little terrifying, but it never struck. Someone also spotted the adorable and rare eyelash viper curled up on a tree! 

After that adventure we had our very own leafcutter ant expert Dr. Solomon show us the inner workings of these colonies (including their fungal gardens!), which was so fascinating to see! During our search for a suitable candidate, we found so many arachnids! Dr. Correa found a bunch of tiny scorpions under a damp piece of wood, as well as a dead tarantula. We were also able to spot two golden silk orb weaver spiders in their web which was really cool! But the star of the show was definitely the Mexican burrowing toad we found while digging around! He was just such a fun looking guy he was so gelatinous, had no neck, and the most powerful little back legs. He was fantastic. 

Then to top off a fantastic day we had an eventful night hike that definitely broke some TFB records! We took a short journey to a pond nearby and along the way saw TWO Morelet’s Tree Frog (which are a rare endangered species) both of which jumped onto some students and hung out there while we tried to photograph it which was so cool! We had to be very careful not to let it touch us if we had sprayed bug spray because they can take in chemicals through their skin, but they were so friendly! And then we saw the insane, documentary worthy event of a snake winding up a tree and eating sticky tree frog eggs! There were snakes everywhere today. It was so insanely cool! I wonder how many more cool species we can find!