After spending hours underwater, it was time to chase metazoans on land. The Australian Vertebrate class allowed me, as well as my friends and classmates, to become kids once again. During the semester we had one weekend-long field trip where we were allowed to catch everything we could (except venomous and poisonous creatures) to later observe and identify!
This free-for-all occured on the Wambiana Cattle Ranch, a 23,000 hectare piece of land that has been owned by the Lyons Family for the past 103 years! The farm is home to 3,000-4,000 cattle that are primarily sold as beef. Yet this farm has adopted specific techniques that maintains the land's natural biodiversity to keep it healthy and productive. In an additional attempt to maintain the land’s health, the Lyons have also replaced chemical pesticides with camels! These camels feed on an invasive shrub (Parkinsonia sp.) which cattle don’t share an appetite for. As soon as we arrived, we chose our beds and went through an induction. We were then separated into our groups and left to set several traps, which included pitfall, funnel, camera, Elliot and cage traps.
In the evenings, we left to spotlight. This is prime time for frogs/amphibians. All you need is a headlamp (and if you’re into photography, a camera with a macro lens). I usually do this back home in the Gamboa rainforest in Panama, so I was extremely excited to get my hand on Australian reptiles! After spotlighting, we arrived back at the camp, where the beautiful night sky greeted us with every possible twinkling star. This became a great night for long exposure photography! The next morning we woke up before sunrise to see what we caught and to let loose any nocturnal animals before the Sun peaked. We did this because since most of the animals we caught were nocturnal we wanted to give them enough time to find shelter before morning. I believe using animals for education is a great method, but one always needs to put the animals health as priority. Each group was sent to a specific site and checked all the traps. We were lucky enough to catch a small marsupial known as the striped-faced dunnart. Marsupials are one of the three types of mammals. Yes, there are three types of mammals: placentals (what the Americas are used to seeing and have mammary glands, a.k.a boobs), marsupials (mammals with pouches for wee babies), and monotremes (mammals that lay eggs). Here in Australia, you are fortunate enough to possibly see a representative from each mammalian group in one place at a single time. There are a lot more differences that go into these separate groups, but I won’t go into those. Anyways, back to checking the traps. We caught this beautiful marsupial known as a dunnart, and probably became the most adorable creature we captured. In the end, our whole class collected and spotted a total amount of 57 species of vertebrates. Ranging from small geckos to large kangaroos and even feral cats. Most of our creatures included lizards, geckos, and other amphibians . You can see a list with all these species below. This trip allowed me to experience the terrestrial side of australian biodiversity up close. A lot closer than any tour would ever expose me to. I am happy to share with you the pictures that captured the beautiful metazoans that I saw.
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