He sees a taste for grotesque magical realism as one of the consequences: vampires and walking beefsteaks, or, to take an example from Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a giant frozen salamander discovered in the tundra, roasted and devoured by starving prisoners.
Everywhere, educated men left detailed descriptions of the cloud cover; of the unusual appearance of the sun ("ferruginous" said White; "the face of a hot salamander" said Cowper); and of the scorching of leaves and grass and the state of the harvest and livestock.By the end of October, the last of the big eruptions at Laki was over, and the haze began to dissipate, blown by the autumn winds.
According to legend, the salamander was a creature which thrived in fire, but died when exposed to air.
The salamander species that the scientists are working with, Ambystoma mexicanum, is more commonly called the Mexican axolotl and is well known for being able to regrow severed parts of its body, such as its limbs and jaws.To shed more light on the process, the research team used genetic engineering to make axolotls that produce GFP throughout their bodies.
And if you're a northern female slimy salamander with no such luck, you may want to head south, where your counterparts make egg-laying a two-yearly ordeal.One non-event is certain.
Most famously, Governor Gerry of Massachusetts in 1812 devised a district shaped like a salamander; but modern times have produced far worse ones, such as Illinois's 17th congressional district, known as the rabbit on a skateboard (pictured).Worse, politically controlled redistricting helps drive the hyper-partisanship of politics.
But they might consider that taxonomists have been amusing themselves quietly for years, as names such as Colon rectum (a beetle), Ba humbugi (a snail), Oedipus complex (a salamander) and Ytu brutus (a beetle) attest.
Born of Governor Elbridge Gerry's salamander-like redistricting in 1812 in Massachusetts, gerrymandering is now elaborated by computers, not pens, but the guidance still comes from shameless politicians.The count will begin in the Inupiat Eskimo village of Noorvik in Alaska in January, though census day for most Americans is April 1st.
He was crucial in discovering the world's earliest known frog, which unlike its salamander-like ancestors had hind legs for jumping.
The microsaurs, as the name implies, were small lizardlike (or salamander-like) amphibians, less than 15 cm (6 inches) in total length.
"The rainbow of fluorescent proteins now available to modern researchers is allowing questions that have vexed us for years to be finally answered," says Marc Zimmer, a computational chemist at Connecticut College.One such question, that of how damaged tissues regenerate, is being studied in salamanders by Elly Tanaka and a team of colleagues at the Max Planck Institute in Dresden.
