Bluegrass Wildlife: We are one with nature’s creatures and we take care of what we love

By Howard Whiteman
Murray State University

The other night I had a dream, most likely caused by another late dinner after another long day. In the dream, I looked at the ring finger on my right hand and realized that I had three salamander eggs floating around inside of it, along with some zooplankton, small invertebrates that salamander larvae eat. Suddenly there was a stinkbug moving uncomfortably in the finger, and I worked to get him out, waking up as he did. That’s what I get for eating pizza too late at night. Weird.

But the dream made me realize something. In many ways, I am one with my salamanders. I’ve been studying them, raising them, caring for them, and helping to conserve their populations for so long their chi or “life force” has melded with mine. I’m sure this happens with other people that work with animals or even plants, from farmers to veterinarians to horse trainers to researchers like me, but no one tells you it will happen. I never expected it. It just happened; we have become one.

It didn’t happen overnight. As a young boy, I caught my first salamanders, eastern newts, with my grandfather while visiting his cabin in the north woods of Pennsylvania.

That early experience made me crave more. One day while playing near a creek near my house I saw something move, and grabbed for it. Turned out it was a salamander as well. I let it go and caught another, and another. There weren’t many in a creek getting runoff from suburbia, but there were enough to keep me happy.

Time went on and I grew up and ignored salamanders until I got to college. I became interested in how animals avoided getting eaten, and salamanders became an easy prey species to collect. I spent a lot of time chasing, catching, and putting salamanders in “Roman gladiator” arenas with garter snakes, observing what happened. Somehow, I got my first science paper out of that experiment.

In graduate school I thought about working on birds, but not for long. I was still enamored by salamanders, and when I got a call from my undergraduate professor about studying them in Colorado, I took a leap of faith and headed to what would become my salamander mecca, Mexican Cut.

Mexican Cut is a Nature Conservancy property that has been my main study site since 1990. I’ve been going back every year since, catching, measuring, marking, and recapturing the tiger salamanders that live there, as well as conducting a variety of experiments on them. That might sound really nerdy and boring to you, but to me it has been heaven.

We mark salamanders with the same microchips you might have in your pets. Marking individuals opens up multiple doors of knowledge: one door that we have opened that is particularly spectacular is how old these salamanders live. Although most die before they get into their teens, many commonly live into their 20s, and a few make it into their 30s, perhaps even longer; we will see. We continue to follow salamanders that are much older than my students.

Another door is how big they get, and why. The biggest salamanders are always female. Females grow bigger because their reproductive success is closely related to their body size, because bigger females lay more eggs. In males the relationship is similar, because larger males tend to mate with more females, but it not as strong as in females. Thus, the largest salamanders are always female.

When they get big and live a long time they often get named. The biggest so far was Rita, who before her passing was ¼ of a meter long, which is pretty gigantic for a tiger salamander. Rita’s contemporaries include Kronos and Marilyn Monroe (for her birthmark). Other named salamanders over the years include Golden Eye, Neo, Johnny Baghdad, Long, Dark, and Handsome, Beyonce, and numerous others with equally unique names.

There are pitfalls when we name animals, because by doing so we can make the mistake of giving them human characteristics as well. But for us, the salamanders are named not only out of affection, but also out of respect. When you literally know animals their entire life, and that life is as old or older than your kids, you cannot help but both love and respect them. So, yes, I love these salamanders, and yes, in many ways I have become one with them.

We care for what we love. We love and care for our families because they are part of us; we share genes, and kin selection tells us that our love comes from the evolutionary benefits of assisting individuals that share genes with us, but it is more than that. We also do it because of the social bonds we create, both with our blood relatives as well as in-laws, friends, our pets, and yes, even our study organisms.

Moreover, science tells us that all of life is one on this planet. Salamanders are part of all of us, as we share our DNA and humble beginnings as vertebrates, animals with backbones made of vertebrae. In fact, every other life form on the planet, from algae and bacteria to ostriches and blue whales are also a part of us, as we are all related, having evolved from the same common ancestor. We are all one.

We might want to start appreciating that thought a bit more. The fact that we don’t is one reason we keep trashing Mother Earth, because you care for what you love. We grow to love our extended families, our friends, our pets and even our study organisms. We can also grow to love all of life. To embrace biophilia, the love of life, and start caring for what we love.

Because unless we do, unless we start caring for all of nature, all of the ones we love —our family, friends, pets and study organisms — are going to be hurt because of the way we treat her. Even if we never learn to love nature per se, we need to take care of her if only because of the loves we do have in our life.

We are one. You start by carrying salamanders around in a jar, and the next thing you know you are dreaming about them being part of you. Because they are.

Dr. Howard Whiteman is the Commonwealth Endowed Chair of Environmental Studies and professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Murray State University.

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