That's great. He's like a William Wegman for reptiles.
*promote

"The primary food for great blue heron is small fish, though it is also known to opportunistically feed on a wide range of shrimp, crabs, aquatic insects, rodents and other small mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and small birds."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_blue_heron#Diet

I've only had small anoles and stuff in terrariums, but this fella looks awesome. I'm definitely no expert, but it certainly looks like he is well fed -- don't usually see a reptile that fat in the wild. Not that I think he looks TOO fat -- just very healthy.

Like the little, feathered turkey bird-reptiles from the post-Jurassic era or the fake raptors from Jurassic Park?

I know man, snakes and spiders...Most everyone has that unfounded fear of these..... Must have been some trauma as a kid is all I can guess.

My only beef with any reptile or insect is with the American/Oriental cockroach. When I see one in my home it is imperative that I kill it or exhaust myself looking for it before going to bed. When I was 10, I was woken abruptly after having just fallen asleep by one crawling across my mouth, the source of my obsession. (oh fuck, now the NSA knows what to put in Room 101 to get me to confess!)

Plus, the little bastards are smart, wily, and calculated. Can't have that sonofabitch wandering around while I sleep!

@bareboards2

"The talk" that White, Latino, and Asian parents have with their children goes like this:

1. 90% of violent interracial crime involves a Black perpetrator and a White victim... but nobody cares.

2. Black teenagers die 1000% more from fellow Blacks than from Whites... but nobody cares.

Sources.

Liberals think the above stats are reversed. That misunderstanding of the statistics is why their arguments on race tend to emphasize base emotion (the "reptile brain") instead of data and thoughtfulness (the neocortex).

(If any of that data is wrong, please let me know.)

Return to this breathtaking video again in 6 years with its brilliant colors and inspiring musical accompaniment once the skies above every major city in the world are buzzing with these puppies (outfitted with all-manner of state-of-the-art-up-in-your-shit technology), and re-elect the reptile you sleepwalked into office four years prior.

Enjoy the relative freedom we have enjoyed for some time now, and visit Beautiful Niagara Falls!

(Message paid for the cabal to re-elect Michael Bloomberg or he will buy another campaign.)

Hmm... now you've made me curious too. I have found a few interesting pages, but nothing specifically about frog vision apart from mentions that it's sensitive.

• How Stuff Works has a How frogs work article.
  
• The Whole Frog Project provides a virtual frog for high school biology students, based on MRI data, mechanical sectioning, and some software to allow visualising of the anatomical structures of the intact animal.
  
• The UW Sea grant site has a frogs page with resources for kids + teachers that has an origami frog (among other things).
  

I'm not quite as sure about the single photon claim. I found a Physicsworld.com article from September 2012 talking about using a single rod cell from a frog eye being used as an extremely sensitive detector which is able to detect a single photon, but according to the original Usenet Physics FAQ (I cite an updated version hosted at math.ucr.edu) human retinas can also respond to a single photon, but have a neural filter to block the signal unless 5 to 9 photons arrive within less than 100 ms.

References

Julie Schnapf, "How Photoreceptors Respond to Light", Scientific American, April 1987

S. Hecht, S. Schlaer and M.H. Pirenne, "Energy, Quanta and vision." Journal of the Optical Society of America, 38, 196-208 (1942)

D.A. Baylor, T.D. Lamb, K.W. Yau, "Response of retinal rods to single photons." Journal of Physiology, Lond. 288, 613-634 (1979)

Evolution at work. No more bottom feeding. In a few thousand years with the help of some radioactive muck they've been feeding on they'll be like slimy gray reptile cats. They've already got whiskers growing!

Well now, looks like there's more than ONE way to skin a ... pineapple =oD


I feel sorry for the cranky reptile ... it doesn't seem to like the taste too much =o(

got my tortoise Miles at a reptile show in PA. he's the coolest.

Fail for not Cutting the line.
Fail for catching a reptile and not a fish

Make it your bitch !

For the last 20 or so years, my family has owned a yellow-naped Green Amazon parrot. He's finicky, and very territorial around his cage. He's quite a bit larger than these Caiques, but smaller than a Macaw. When we let him out of his cage, he's not nearly this... playful. He usually just wants to hide in a corner until he feels safe enough to explore. If you handle while they're still very young, then they can be this playful. It really depends on how their raised.

In general, social animals, that is to say, animals that flock or group with animals from the same or even similar species (the birds on Telegraph Hill in SF come to mind, they're not a homogeneous flock) tend to make better pets than animals that lead solitary lives in the wild (cats, reptiles, etc). They tend to have a more defined personality, and have more capability to read social cues and take training.

The things is, birds know they're fragile - most of their bones are only paper-thin. So they posture up, get defensive and territorial around their cages. To train them, you usually have to take them out of their place of power, that is, their cage, to another space that they don't have as much familiarity or control.

The Amazon my family has kept for 20 years, as I said, is very finicky. But 20 years of trust built up has made him a little more friendly to me, at least. He tolerates my mom, and used to be outright hostile to my dad (the bird would kick grit from the bottom of his cage at him, lunge to bite at him if he got close to his cage. But I'm the only one he'll let pet him on a consistent basis, and even then, if he's in a mood he might lunge at me. He also hasn't had much training at all, and to handle him by hand is to risk getting bit HARD. No one else in the family has attempted it, and I usually get bit in the process His jaws put out a LOT of force. Usually he tries to play with my earrings or hair, but winds up chomping my ear or scalp. I don't hold it against him, he's probably trying to figure out how to climb to the top of my head. If you want to handle animals, you have to accept that getting bit or scratched will be an inevitability.

My wife's family took care of a Grey Amazon that found his way to their home about 20 years ago. You could say the bird adopted them. One of his legs was busted - he likely broke it himself to break free of what chained him down, and he still managed to fly away with clipped wings. Most birds keep their beak ground and well-kept, but he let his beak over-grow, curving to one side of his upper beak and hooking upwards in a manner that looked threatening. His cage was left open frequently so he could bop around, but usually he'd just want to climb up someone's leg all the way up to their shoulders. He was very rough around the edges, likely because of the constant pain of a disfigured leg, but eventually warmed up to me and let me scratch his head. He passed away a couple years ago, around Christmas time. He is missed.

>> ^Gunter:

wtf are they wearing sub zero costumes with capri pants.... i want back that 1:44 of my life.


It would have been much better if the outfits were green and they danced to reptile's theme

Was hoping this would be the alien reptile convention, as in V or David Ickes.