• Question: what is the most unusual animal you have found whilst on one of your trips?

    Asked by nadiaretrac to Debbie, Glyn, Jon, Kat, Nicola on 8 Mar 2013. This question was also asked by heisenberg, jackie1896.
    • Photo: Glyn Barrett

      Glyn Barrett answered on 8 Mar 2013:

      Hi there!
      Well it depends on what trip you are referring to –
      I’ve been on a university trip to Iceland where we were studying extremophiles which are bacteria which have adapted to and survive quite well in extreme environments. They all have funny names as well, an example is Aquifex aeolicus. These species can live in boiling hot and very acidic water sometimes under intense pressure which makes them very unusual indeed.

      I was lucky enough to go to the island of Komodo in Indonesia a few years ago while I was travelling in that part of the world. I had arrived on a little boat from a neighboring island. The island is one of the only places in the world to see Komodo dragons! They were really beautiful but I had to be careful around them as their saliva is dangerous and they are powerful creatures.

    • Photo: Jonathan Stone

      Jonathan Stone answered on 8 Mar 2013:

      I was once camping on a volcano in Guatemala. I found the massive footprints of a Jaguar 10m away from my tent. Jaguars have been known to kill children/small people – which scared my short Guatemalan friend when I told him…!

    • Photo: Kathryn McMahon

      Kathryn McMahon answered on 9 Mar 2013:

      Hmm, working on cells, most of my trips are to places like Bristol and Manchester. I meet some fairly eccentric scientists, but I’m not sure I’d call them animals! However, I did see some fireflies once when I went to a big meeting of scientists in America. We were in the city, and they lived in the flowerbeds – at dusk, it looked like lots of little flashing lights in amongst the flowers. I love insects, so I was really exited.

    • Photo: Debbie Crockard

      Debbie Crockard answered on 9 Mar 2013:

      hmmm that’s a hard one – the deep sea is full of unusual, even alien, animals like giant amphipods, deep sea worms and fish that live at the deepest points on earth. But I think my favourite ones are the deep sea fish that have some crazy adaptations, like the viper fish whose teeth so big it can’t close it mouth.

      But I also saw jumping tarantulas in Fiji, they were really strange and unusual for me since I usual work with sea animals.

    • Photo: Nicola Fletcher

      Nicola Fletcher answered on 11 Mar 2013:

      Well when I worked at the vet school I met a really cool camel. He was in because he had a sore foot, but he was so friendly and we were so sad when he left. Also we had an orang-utan called Rhonda for a while, she was really sweet too!

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