Amphibians and Reptiles

[dickyjones]

Wow, so they just made ID a TON easier? God, I must admit I am slightly angry about the whole direction of this event this year. Lungless salamanders were the only difficult ID other than common snakes. I guess there may have been some classification problems with some of those specimens though. Hopefully the real list will be different than the draft list (maybe more specimens in div C?). I miss the bugs list with 121 orders/families.

Lol, I accidentally had Trachemys in my binder at regionals (well, it's actually still in my binder) last year and IDed one specimen as it. That's an easy ID.

Yeah, saw it; it was pretty amazing. Though I do get slightly miffed at how everything is about Phelps with the announcers. He's obviously good, but, seriously, give the other 3 some credit.

[Pleiades]

We didnt really have to do much identification on our test. I believe there was only 4 identification questions. Each station had a specimen but we didnt have to identify them. For example at one station there was a painted turtle and the question was: 1. State two ways to tell if this turtle is male or female. 2. What's the largest turtle in the world? and at another station there was a toad and it asked - What is the name of the gland that makes toads poisonous?

eathousemd - why would you want to bring your turtles to school? i mean dont we have a no pets in school rule? plus it would be a huge pain. If they let you bring your turtles then they have to let everyone bring their pets. Soon we'll have dogs barking in class and running through the halls. We already have enough of that at the middle school

[eathousemd]

Yo, our PRINCIPAL brings her dog Buster to school. He's pretty weird actually, cause it's all tiles, so there isn't enough traction. The dog's like Hyperactive or something. He keeps slipping around the floor and barking. I was with my saxophone (of course) so I had to stay with it or else it would get lonely, that's why I couldn't pet him....it was an uncomfortable situation and my saxophone's a bit sensitive.

[gneissisnice]

I liked wall lizards and fringe-toed lizards, though I could definitely do without tree and side-blotched lizards, and earless lizards. I also wish they kept sea turtles, though at states they did ask about certain species, which was sorta unfair.

[adam124218]

I'm really excited they're taking out those lizards. They were the most difficult ones and I was not looking forward to learning how to identify them for real this year. Generally, lizards just don't do a whole lot for me.

[gneissisnice]

Really? I thought lizards were the easiest. Everyone's different i guess.

[dickyjones]

Lizards are easy to do systematically, like frogs. They're not easy for me to do instantly on site (except for the obvious ones), but I have short di-keys in my binder to make sure I always get those two right. Turtles are easy as well, in my opinion. Lungless salamanders took some work to get all down, but that won't be a problem this year I guess. So common snakes are again going to be (at least for me) the toughest ID. Hopefully, I'll be able to find a partner this year that can do them.

[Deeisenberg]

First off the list is if anything too short, I have no idea why they would take so much out, especially because everything they are adding is very easy.

Also, the published only rule is ridiculous, and it won't do anything. As with any such rule in sci oly people will find ways around it and it will not make the event harder so much as it will make it more tedious. I mean I have already come up with three or more different ways to make the published field guide mine. I will be (expletive deleted) if they are going to take my binders soul from me. I mean that is where most of the effort in the event went to. I mean a fair estimate on the amount of man hours that went into that binder is far over 1000. By regionals the majority of teams will have their old binders, they will simply be reincarnated into a different vessel.

[dickyjones]

Yeah, I completely agree with you, inuyashakusho. Every single one of the top teams will do that with that rule. I actually don't mind that much...the best teams will still win. I'm just hoping that the tests made with the rules this year are difficult enough to distinguish among teams.

I'm worried about the voice recognition part of the event this year as well. I actually did work for on this last year, and voice differs so much between species in a single family (or even genus) that it's insanely difficult to identify it correctly unless they give you one of the most common species, like a bullfrog or an American alligator.

[Deeisenberg]

I agree on the voice recognition, you have to go by species to identify by that really, luckily the hylids we have don't have that many species :/

I also agree that as far as the nationals test goes, it was too easy. I mean I actually got first for C division at nationals, but even though I did really well, I was annoyed that half of the questions were way too easy, and a few of them had four answers that were all kinda right (like one of the ones with habitat) so it was almost like luck if you actually picked the one they meant.