Picture of the Day, January 31, 2010: A Visit to the Río

Here is the picture of the day for January 31st. Can you guess what it is?

Time's up. It's frog eggs. Weird, weird stuff. We'll get more into that in a bit. But the reason I have a picture of frog eggs is because Angela and I went to a river with our friend and boss Lucy, her husband Wilson, their family, and also Wilson's extended family. It was great Costa Rican fun, and we're already hoping to go back soon! Here are some more pictures from a lovely Sunday outing:

The 4-wheel drive road down to the river. This is Elias, Lucy and Wilson's son. I believe there were 10 or 11 people inside their enormous yellow Land Rover, two hanging on to the back, and three sitting on a raft on the top. Who needs a carnival ride when you've got this?!

Speaking of carnivals, when the car arrived to the river, we all got out like so many clowns jumping out of a little VW bug in a circus. There were also the supplies for bathing, barbequeing, and relaxing.

Angela getting into a little pool in the river. It was wonderfully cool water, mercifully free of mosquitoes, snakes, and frostbite (the three things I associate with open bodies of water in Colorado).

Angela with some frog eggs. You can see Angela's complete Gross-Out Progression on my flickr page.

These eggs are supremely bizarre. In the water, they look like little strings of white specks, but outside the water they're little black dots. They're all connected in a gooey chain that I'm sure my younger students would love to get their hands on. When the chain is extended, the dots move into a single-file line, but when you let out some of the tension in the chain, they double up into groups of two eggs. Crazy stuff.

Posing for the camera. I put the eggs back, of course, so that they could develop into tadpoles (another common and fascinating feature at this particular river).

Pulling the eggs out of the water. Frog Eggs on a Stick: Coming to a carnival near you!
I didn't even know that frogs laid eggs like this. I guess I just supposed that they spontaneously generated themselves, like little amoebas.

So, that's it for January 31st, as well as the month of January. Remember that you can check out the Pictures of the Day for the whole month of January by following this link, and if you're so inclined, you can also see the Leftovers, which are also pretty interesting.

Thanks for reading, and have a great day!

365: Picture a Day Project    365 Leftovers    All My Pictures    Sitzbook