Category Archives: Froggy Foibles

You may be desperately clinging on to the last rays of summer but, with fewer than 100 days to go until Christmas, the food world is in full festive fig. Indeed, thoughts have already turned to the aftermath, with chef John Williams encouraging readers of the newly released Ritz London: The Cookbook to butcher the ceremonial tree for its “fragrant and spicy” needles. He says they lend a zesty kick to dishes such as his douglas fir and lemon verbena cream, and salt-baked celeriac with douglas fir sprigs. “Wouldn’t it be beautiful,” he said in 2010, “if families gathered after Christmas, festively removed the decorations and then cut off the tasty needles of the tree to flavour their food?”

BEER giant Carlsberg will next year launch a “greener” alternative to glass bottles made from wood fibres.  The Danish brewer has developed a prototype “green fibre” bottle as a biodegradeable alternative. Glass bottles have to be recycled in the UK or washed for re-use up to 25 times in other markets. But as the process uses energy and water, a viable alternative is set to become hugely significant. Carlsberg is also ditching plastic ring multi-can holders which trap animals and clog up the oceans. …Spokeswoman Myriam Shingleton said: “We are thinking of a completely new packaging for bottles, which is a green fibre bottle that will be made from a controlled wood source, so a bio-base.”

NAIROBI, Kenya — School children in Kenya are helping to fight deforestation by planting seeds using slingshots. It’s part of an initiative by the company SeedBalls Kenya, which makes and sells seedballs globally. It encourages children to have slingshot competitions using the charcoal-covered seeds instead of stones. About 2 million seedballs have been planted in Kenya in the past year and a half in what has been called “guerrilla gardening.” Kenya’s government has recognized the threat from deforestation and earlier this year imposed a temporary logging ban that was extended in May by another six months. SeedBalls Kenya recycles coal dust it collects around the capital, Nairobi. It buys the seeds from the Kenya Forest Research Institute.

Classic Minerals and Australia’s federal scientific research outfit CSIRO have teamed up to study the potential correlation of tree size to gold mineralisation at Classic’s Forrestania Gold Project in Western Australia. The company said that in 2017, it had noticed a correlation between tree size and gold mineralisation at the project in the Goldfields region. Major deposits and prospects such as Lady Magdalene and Lady Ada were covered by large gum trees while barren areas were covered by typical Yilgarn shrubs and bush. …If proven to work, it will allow Classic to rapidly generate new targets without ground disturbing exploration. The project could help guide the company with geochemical sampling and geochemical data interpretation on the surface. …Whilst somewhat unusual, this is not the first time that trees have been thought to be a potential indicator of gold mineralisation.

More than a third of the 7,000-odd living species of frogs and toads are found in rain forests around the world. But the fossil record for amphibians from these kinds of wet, tropical environments has been almost nonexistent, leaving paleontologists with few clues to their early evolution. Now, lumps of amber dating back to the Cretaceous period have revealed a set of four tiny tropical frogs that lived alongside the dinosaurs, making them the oldest frog fossils of their kind. The specimens include the remains of an ancient frog complete enough to be described as a new species, called Electrorana limoae. “It was exhilarating to hold these small fossils up to the light to reveal the frogs within,” says David Blackburn, a paleontologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville.

Amazing photos show how caterpillars totally took over a tree and covered it in a web of silk. The cherry tree, on the banks of the River Wharfe, near Kilnsey, in North Yorkshire, is now the spawning place for an army of caterpillars while they undergo their transformation into moths. They weave the webs in a bid to protect themselves from predators. Paul Kingston, who captured these pictures, said: ‘It truly was a weird and wonderful sight. ‘It was like something out of a fantasy novel or horror film. ‘It is absolutely incredible to think that such tiny creatures are capable of creating something so huge and beautiful.’

Japan has one surefire sign of spring every year: the bright, gorgeous petals of the cherry blossom trees floating in the air. It may be part of their beauty that the cherry blossom blooms are short-lived, but you can’t help wishing they would stay around a little bit longer. So why not build an everlasting tree out of thousands of LEGO bricks? That’s just what they did at LEGOLAND Japan in Nagoya to celebrate their first year of operation, and the result is stunning.

It’s not uncommon for cartoon characters to find themselves unwittingly dragged through all the chaos of a saw mill. From the audience’s perspective, it’s usually hilarious. But when you send a small camera on a log through a saw mill, scary doesn’t even begin to describe the experience of being pulled through all that machinery. 

https://youtu.be/635mkALoXFw

An eagle-eyed Tesco worker was shocked to find a live frog hidden in a bunch of bananas. The tree frog, native to the Dominican Republic, is better known for hopping from tree to tree in the rainforest – rather than turning up in a bag of fruit in Blackburn, Lancashire. The worker immediately contacted the RSPCA, whose staff advised her to make tiny air holes in the plastic and add some water for moisture. Staff then took the frog to an exotics rescue centre Reptilia, which identified the critter as a Dominican tree frog and fittingly named him Nana.

A video of a wild elephant in India blowing out ash from a fire has baffled wildlife experts around the world. [Scientist] Vinay Kumar…filmed the 48-second video during a work trip to Nagarhole forest in Karnataka state in April 2016. …”What we saw that day almost appeared as though the elephant was smoking – she would draw up a trunk full of ash close to her mouth and blow it out in a puff of smoke!” Mr Kumar said.  Elephant biologist Varun R Goswami, …believes that “the elephant was trying to ingest wood charcoal… blowing away the ash that came along with it in her trunk, and consuming the rest”. “Charcoal has well recognised toxin-binding properties… wild animals may be attracted to it for this medicinal value,” he said. “It can also serve as a laxative, thereby doubling its utility for animals that consume it after forest fires…

Blue Orange Games launches Photosynthesis. Players take control of species of trees, all vying to dominate a woodland canopy. You’ll compete to plant seeds in prime spots on the forest floor, growing your tiny saplings into towering giants. It might all sound very sedate and gentle, but this is a game as fiercely competitive as natural selection itself. You’ll need to aggressively seize space on the board, thinking several moves ahead and cutting off opportunities for your rivals. You’ll aim to tower over your opponents’ trees, soaking up life-giving sunlight while casting them into shadow. It’s simple and elegant, but it squeezes some real thought out of its straightforward design. It’s also visually striking. As you play, you’ll place three-dimensional cardboard trees on the board, creating a dense, colourful forest. It’s a pleasing combination of looks and brains, and it will bring you back to the table time and time again.

Karl Lagerfeld has been accused of “environmental heresy” after he created a forest with chopped-down trees for a Chanel fashion show in Paris. …His apparent ode to nature for Chanel’s autumn and winter ready-to-wear parade used tonnes of dry leaves strewn on the floor, forest scents and woodlands with a centre-piece of nine oaks. …France Nature Environnement accused it of destoying century-old trees for a three-hour show that amounted to “a heresy which shows the luxury trade’s failure to take the environment into account”. …Chanel said that none of the oak and poplar trees which it acquired from a forest in the Perche region in Normandy had been a century old. “In buying the trees Chanel also promised to replant 100 new oak trees in the heart of the same forest,” it said.