{"id":669,"date":"2007-12-18T00:57:01","date_gmt":"2007-12-18T08:57:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sparselysageandtimely.com\/blog\/?p=669"},"modified":"2023-12-05T21:55:18","modified_gmt":"2023-12-06T05:55:18","slug":"natures-two-acres-xxii-theyre-hundreds-of-times-more-deadly-than-cyanide-theyre-on-the-move","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/?p=669","title":{"rendered":"Nature&#8217;s Two Acres XXII: They&#8217;re hundreds of times more deadly than cyanide&#8230; and headed this way"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>A salamander to die for<\/strong>.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image668\" src=\"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/100_6204_1.jpg\" alt=\"100_6204_1.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>The weekend&#8217;s rains have led to the start of an annual migration<\/strong> across my fields. California newts have begun the long trek from the Giacomini family&#8217;s stockpond just east of my pasture to Tomasini Creek a third of a mile to the west.<\/p>\n<p>Newts travel so slowly they&#8217;re easy to catch, but if you do, wash you&#8217;re hands afterward. This salamander&#8217;s skin secretes a neurotoxin, tetrodotoxin, that is &#8220;hundreds of times more toxic than cyanide,&#8221; Wikipedia reports. It&#8217;s the same toxin found in the internal organs of Puffer fish, the one that each year kills a few daring diners in Japan who eat incorrectly prepared <em>chiri<\/em> (puffer-fish soup) or <em>sashimi fugo<\/em> (raw puffer fish).<\/p>\n<p>California newts, which are found mainly along the coast and in the Sierra, have a mating season that runs from December to May. For their aquatic courtship, adult newts return to the pool where they hatched. It&#8217;s an eye-nose-and-throat foreplay. After they swim in a mating dance, the San Diego Natural History Museum notes, &#8220;the male will mount the female and rub his chin over the female&#8217;s nose.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Occasionally, several males try to mate with a female at once and end up in a ball, rolling around in the water. Although newts are amphibians, females have been known to suffocate in these orgies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A salamander to die for. The weekend&#8217;s rains have led to the start of an annual migration across my fields. California newts have begun the long trek from the Giacomini family&#8217;s stockpond just east of my pasture to Tomasini Creek a third of a mile to the west. Newts travel so slowly they&#8217;re easy to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,13,2,10,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-news","category-photography","category-point-reyes-station","category-west-marin-nature","category-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=669"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39909,"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669\/revisions\/39909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}