Science and nature never cease to amaze me. The things we learn daily often have to do with animals or similar creatures and are spurred by a single question that leads me down a rabbit hole that turns more into a black hole, sucking me down farther and farther until I realize that I long ago lost the interest of my fellow adventurers and am pursuing this trivia further on my own.
I'm sorry, but I just can't help it. I just find the world interesting and fascinating and my brain yearns for information like a sponge left out in the summer sun. And the world answers back with Wikipedia, a website that I'm sure sometimes was created just for me. I could spend years on Wikipedia reading through the information there. And I find it astounding that the site is updated daily, hourly even. Within an hour of something happening in the public's eye, it's probably on Wikipedia. Try it sometime. It's amazing!

So, what did I learn this week on Wikipedia? Well, a couple of days ago I learned that the largest amphibian on earth can get to be 6 feet long, the Chinese Giant Salamander, but what I thought was even cooler was the smallest amphibian on earth, which also happens to be the smallest vertebrate, a tiny species of frog from Papua New Guinea that doesn't even have a common name yet. It's known only as Paedophryne amauensis.   They show the little guy perched on a dime and he could barely cover the word "United". These frogs reach an average size of only 7.7mm (0.3"), but are a perfectly formed frog in every way. We marveled at how someone actually discovered such a tiny species (no wonder they were just discovered for the first time 4 years ago) and how tiny their little tadpoles must be - microscopic even. Then today, as I type that, I read the article and discover that they don't go through a tadpole stage. The babies hatch as 'hoppers', perfectly formed tiny versions of the adults. How amazingly tiny they must be!

Yesterday I learned something else on Wikipedia. We were looking up the common Western Fence lizard (blue-bellies) which my kids catch nearly everywhere we go, and I read that in areas where this lizard lives there was a reduced amount of Lyme disease. Apparently there is a protein in this lizard's blood that when the ticks bite them, it neutralizes the bacteria that causes Lyme disease in the ticks stomach. So cool! (and kinda gross, but that's nature ;) )