abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

ejrmaine Loc: South Carolina

Amazing video, I like the dive when he locked on to his trainer and his treat.

salmander

Wow! To think that floating thousands of feet in the air is "ordinary life" to these birds! It is as ordinary to them as walking to the mailbox is to us. You could just about "feel" its mind when it recognized its owners location. I wonder if it experienced the emotion of "happiness" when it did so. It certainly looked so. And the dive! "Oh, there he is. Let me just plunge to the ground at over 100 miles per hour and land on his arm."

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

Or dine on a salamander.

salmander

[quote=abc1234]Or dine on a salamander.]

I don't think so. I know salamanders. I raised them for 18 years. Birds find them delicious. A substantial number of species do not have lungs or gills. They breath through their skin. They keep their skin moist (for absorption of oxygen) by living under logs and leaves, or in ponds and streams. As a result, when the smaller ones escape and die in your home they become "floor pretzels," where they dry out completely in a day or so, like an Egyptian mummy. If the larger ones die in your moisture-retaining container, in a day or so, their bodies melt, literally like a melting candle, exposing the upper parts of their skeletons. They have the most repellent odor you can imagine. Actually, if you have not had this experience, you cannot imagine this. Upon first exposure, your eyes become really wide, your diaphragm freezes - you cannot breath - and you back away as if you were exposed to something of an immediately fatal nature. One breathe of this odor feels as if it had permeated your entire brain. Your brain temporarily feels different. I never found out how this could be. So, I doubt that salamanders could ever be made palatable for human consumption.

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

Salmander, a very interesting response. However, I was referring to the eagle dining on it, not a human. I used to have pet frogs, salamanders, newts and toads.

salmander

Oh, how interesting - someone else who knows about amphibians. They are more difficult to keep alive, because of their need to remain moist. Red efts - those reddish-orange little salamanders that you occasionally see walking around in the woods, are like teenage newts, with lungs. They eventually return to the water. They can wander about with impunity, because their skin is so toxic to whatever wants to eat it that they are completely safe. A biologist did an experiment with a revolving tray of foods for a blue jay. It grabbed the red eft when it saw it and spit it out so fast that it was completely uninjured. Two weeks later he offered the red eft to the blue jay again, the blue jay went to grab it and stopped, and then retreated. They taste so bad that a single exposure imprints itself on the tiny brain of a bird.

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

I am glad someone else likes this overlooked class. Too bad so many of them are now threatened.