markscherz
The Travelling Taxonomist
Dr Mark D. Scherz
Curator of Herpetology at the Natural History Museum of Denmark. I work mostly on the reptiles and amphibians of Madagascar. Also a photographer and occasional poet. Sometimes I bake.
My tumblr is concerned mainly with reptiles and amphibians, my research, evolution, biodiversity, systematics, and taxonomy, but I also try to keep things light-hearted. I am a huge fan of puns. My main website is at www.markscherz.com; go there for research updates, photo galleries, and other things.
8624 posts
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
Last Seen Blogs
wulandariharis
]PEMBELAJAR[
favfat
Sin título
wieguodmdmd
Wei Guo, DMD, MD
captcrane
Untitled
shashidhar-r-m
Graphic designer-Product design
Note
so I was on the gecko tag this evening and found your blog. and. ackfiyckfykf, my faith in humanity is Restored and I aspire to your immaculate Vibes and absolute happy snazziness. now then,,,, please describe the college tuition fees ( or lack thereof ) in Demark, pleeeeease please I am full of hope because of something I saw on Pinterest but I trust you to tell me the truth :3 ( stares at you )
If you are from within the EU/EEA or a Nordic country, you do not have to pay tuition fees at the University of Copenhagen (I cannot say anything about other unis in Denmark). People from outside Europe have to pay €10,000–17,000 per year. Note that Bachelor's degrees at UCPH at least are all mostly in Danish, so accessibility is a bit limited. Denmark is an expensive city, and Copenhagen especially so, so cost of living can also be a problem.
But all-told, no matter what you do, the costs of uni+life in Denmark are nothing compared with many colleges in the US, or even unis in the UK.
To be honest though, the German fee situation is far better: German universities are free, or close to it. Some states have tuition fees that are moderate, but most have an administrative fee of about €250 per semester. There is also a much lower cost of living basically everywhere. So, seriously consider Germany if you are from outside Europe and want to come here to escape come to Europe to study and potentially settle.
129 notes
·
View notes
Note
Hi!! I was wondering if you have any recommendations for beginner-friendly introduction to zoology resources? :)
Yes here you go:
youtube
122 notes
·
View notes
Note
Dear Dr Scherz,
i'm a British high School student and im coming into the point of my life where i need to narrow down to 3-4 subjects for A-Levels (thats post 16 education basically which leads to uni) and im really struggling because i like learning about lots of things and i was just wondering if you had this problem or had any advice for me on how to narrow down? I apologize because this is a bit random for your blog but i'd like to know what other people's career paths were?
thank you!!!
I had the opposite problem; I had a very specific interest (reptiles and amphibians and Madagascar), and found almost all of my school subjects painfully boring and tedious as a result. So, unfortunately I am not really in a position to advise, except in general:
try to find something that excites you, and makes you want to read and think and talk about it. The kind of thing that makes friends groan when you bring it up again. Because that is what you will be doing for three or four years as you go into your Bachelor's. And then maybe a year or two more for your Master's. And if you like that, then maybe another three or four years for a PhD. And if you are crazy enough to stick with it, possibly another thirty to forty years thereafter as you either move into academia, or go off to apply what you know elsewhere. But also maybe not! Because you are young and flexible and there are many interesting and exciting things in the world, and it is okay to start with one thing, realise it is not your thing, and try other things! Variety is the spice of life.
You don't have to have it all sorted now. Maybe it's easiest to figure out what you definitely do not want to do. And that can inform your choices.
Oh and you can also go and watch loads of CrashCourse videos and similar over on youtube to get a feeling for the kind of things they do across a variety of subjects, and a sense for what you like and dislike.
Good luck!
66 notes
·
View notes
Note
What species of frog do you think serves the most cunt?
Gotta be Pelobatrachus nasutus.
[src]
#serving#frog#animals#amphibian#eyelash frog#Pelobatrachus nasutus#Megophrys nasuta#answers by Mark#peachesanmemes
559 notes
·
View notes
Note
Hello Mr Scherz! I don't know how you feel about receiving images, but I would like to show you my young man. This is Pancake. He's a pacman frog. He likes locusts and trying to bite me. Thank you for your time.
Yup, sounds like your bog-standard Ceratophrys to me.
#bog-standard is a pun#although I am not sure that bog-standard is a thing outside the UK?#anyway it means normal#but also it's a frog that's as snog as a log in a bog#Ceratophrys#answers by Mark#birdsagainsthumanity
194 notes
·
View notes
Note
Thoughts on the delightful Baldur’s Gate 3 frog?
My excitement about it was quickly assuaged when it very nearly resulted in a TPK for my party because of the Madness.
Anatomically it is weird, but only because the arms are hella long. Not that such proportions don't occur—Leptobrachium definitely has similarly weird limbs. But the rest of the body doesn't fit.
As for the madness… well, amphibian toxins can do weird things. Just, not usually when you hit them with a sword.
298 notes
·
View notes
Note
Found these in my garden and was curious what they are?
I'd say they're "gardenious frogos"
The first is a Pseudacris chorus frog, and the second is an Acris cricket frog. I cannot get any further with an identification without a locality, and even with a locality, some species co-occur, so it can be difficult without having the frogs in my own hands.
#frog#frogs#animals#wildlife#nature#answers by Mark#megaroniandcheez#Pseudacris#Acris#frog identification#frog ID
273 notes
·
View notes
Text
Beware!
#reblog to give a middle finger to exploitative academic publishers#scientific knowledge is a public good#and big publishing houses are parasites
300K notes
·
View notes
Text
2006; as you’ll read at that link, there is quite a bit of dissent about this, and many people continue to use Bufo in spite of this. But in my opinion the division of Bufo was long overdue, and the modern genera are more useful than the overlumped mess that it was before.
Toads I think? I found them while doing lawn work. Anyone able to ID them?
Area is Southern Michigan
Enjoy the little amphibians though
816 notes
·
View notes
Text
These are Anaxyrus americanus.
Toads I think? I found them while doing lawn work. Anyone able to ID them?
Area is Southern Michigan
Enjoy the little amphibians though
816 notes
·
View notes
Text
This is the hot tumblr discourse that I’m here for.
I think I stumbled upon some kind of ichthyological forbidden knowledge. Opened up a book of names that were never meant to be read.
You've probably heard of "can-opener smoothdream", right? It's practically a meme by now.
But the thing is, it's a deep-sea fish. And deep-sea fish have historically not had English names because nobody drops them into the conversation over a hot cuppa. Sure, there's generic stuff like hatchetfish and barreleye, but when you want to refer to the actual fish you're probably saying such euphonious phrases as Diretmus argenteus, Sternoptyx diaphana, or maybe even Opisthoproctus soleatus.
So whence "can-opener smoothdream"? Certainly no non-ichthyologist has ever used that name. It's not even a direct translation of the scientific name Chaenophryne longiceps - that would be "long-headed gape-toad". Which to me is even cooler than "can-opener smoothdream".
But I digress. The "dream" bit comes from the anglerfish family Oneirodidae, from oneiros, "dream", because those marvelous fishes look like they came out of a dream (Pietsch, 2009).
Note that Pietsch (2009), more or less the anglerfish bible, uses English names at the genus level only. So Chaenophryne is the smoothhead dreamers genus but no mention is made of "can-opener smoothdreams". So no luck there.
Wikipedia, root cause of a lot of misinformation, has this to say.
"Longhead dreamer" is a far more accurate name. And in fact, despite Wikipedia prioritizing "can-opener smoothdream" (because it's funny?), the links listed use "longhead dreamer" and "smoothhead dreamer" as the name and "can-opener smoothdream" as an alternative.
So. Again. Where did "can-opener smoothdream" come from?
The answer, as it turns out, lies with McAllister (1990).
In the book A List of the Fishes of Canada, ichthyologist D. E. McAllister sought out to list every single fish known to Canadian waters, providing both an English and a French name.
And when there wasn't an English name, like for most deep-sea fishes, he arbitrarily gave them a name. And his names "differ in many instances from the widely accepted names" (Holm, 1998)
This had varying results. This is his name for one of the netdevil anglerfishes.
The humpback anglerfish or blackdevil anglerfish becomes a werewolf (????).
This one is just confusing.
The white-spotted lanternfish or Rafinesque's lanternfish instead becomes...
And most embarrassingly, the Mediterranean spiderfish gets saddled with something that "violates the tenet of good taste" (Holm, 1998).
This then is the original source of "can-opener smoothdream". It was invented by an ichthyologist in 1990, and has seen little to no use outside of how bizarre the name is.
Maybe McAllister's goofier names will catch on. Who knows? They certainly aren't very popular in the scientific community though.
References
Holm, E. (1998) Encyclopedia of Canadian Fishes (review). The Canadian Field-Naturalist, 112, p. 174-175.
McAllister, D. E. (1990) A List of the Fishes of Canada. National Museum of Natural Sciences, Ottawa.
Pietsch, T. W. (2009) Oceanic Anglerfishes: Extraordinary Diversity in the Deep Sea. University of California Press, Berkeley.
5K notes
·
View notes
Note
Far less scientific, but since we're sharing frog mugs...
Oh this is beautiful! Nice find!
323 notes
·
View notes
Note
Hi!
I just wanted to show you my only favourite frog toad mug.
Thank you 🐸
It is a thing of beauty, thanks for sharing! I love herp kitchenware.
176 notes
·
View notes
Text
I once lived in a flat in Edinburgh that had such a contraption. Trouble was that the air was so damp to begin with that nothing would ever dry. I think I slept in damp sheets for a year.
Day 2 in new flat. I am going to attempt to use... The contraption
#other problems with that flat included#single-glaze windows that were not sealed on the side so the outside air was just blowing on your face all night all winter#a sink that was too small to fit a plate#a variety of different interesting moulds#and all manner of other delights#until I had a kid in daycare I thought I could never exceed the number of colds and flus I caught that year#I had seven or eight colds that year#but now I get to sample Whatever is Going Around Daycare Right Now every week#so last year I had about fourteen#possibly more#growing older is all about realising how naïve you once were
9K notes
·
View notes
Note
i know youre more of a herpetologist but i saw your post with the skeleton frog and here are my favorite halloween skeletons
I really do not understand the appeal of these. Clearly the inaccuracy is intentional, and to the point where it is somehow tongue-in-cheek; nobody who thinks for more than two seconds could think that rabbit ears are included in their skeletons. But buying them? Bizarre.
#spoopy season came early this year#skeleton#inaccurate skeletons#halloween#answers by Mark#willywonker3000#to all the people commenting that these are the early attempts of a novice necromancer:#I see you#that's hilarious#bravo#but goodness that's a bad necromancer
322 notes
·
View notes
Text
Olympic National Park, 4/7/2024
454 notes
·
View notes
Text
Pitcheresque 💛
Almost just went home after work today. I would have missed this.
There's a little patch of pitcher plants in a marshy area of my home away from home, and they're blooming now.
556 notes
·
View notes