Unearthing weird and wonderful creatures in the jungle is the wonder of on Amazon adventure, as conservation volunteer Justin Law from Deakin University in Australia discovers.
Rain poured from the heavens, as if it had never rained before. We were moving through a particularly thick section of bamboo forest encompassing about one-third of the Manu Learning Centre (MLC), checking traps for any reptile or amphibian specimens we might find. While dodging fallen bamboo and avoiding exposed roots, I noticed something moving amongst the leaf litter.
It was long, blue and slow. My thoughts immediately jumped to the giant blue earthworms that were present here in the Amazon and I went to pick it up (I assumed that Amazonian earthworms didn’t have deadly defense mechanisms, like many things here). But something wasn’t quite right. The worm had a much firmer structure than I was expecting, as if it had a spine. I called to one of my fellow volunteers for a second opinion, to no avail, so we shouted for our team leader, Juriko, to help explain this find.
It was a caecilian.
I had read about these strange amphibians from various Amazonian reptiles and amphibians books during my childhood. Very little was known about these ‘legless amphibians’ back then, and little still is known about them now. The difference between then and now being that I was holding one, and I knew at least one thing: it was extremely slimy. We tried to catch it, but it proved quite difficult. With time and weather pressures working against us, and not having a suitable container for it, we decided to leave the caecilian be, much to my dismay.
A few days later, in a bizarre stroke of luck, another volunteer had found something. “It looks like a legless lizard”, she said and got the attention of field staff member, Emma. She quickly identified it not as a legless lizard, but as a caecilian, and rushed to find another staff member, Hannah.
With tears in her eyes, Hannah described everything she knew about caecilians: some species lay eggs, some bear live young, some species are entirely aquatic, some are completely blind, they mostly eat anything they can, some may grow up to 1 meter or about 3 feet… She was completely enraptured with this creature and everyone around her was sharing in this experience.
I wondered whether or not Australia had caecilians of its own. Perhaps I could specialise in studying Australian caecilians and share my findings with Hannah here in Manu, discovering some remarkable scientific breakthrough. Or – I could just live my life one day at a time, much like my slimy new friend, living in perpetual mystery…
