Week 8- Radical Reptiles & Awesome Amphibians- Summer Camp

Herps, herps, herps! What are herps? Reptiles & amphibians of course! This week of camp, we went wild for herpetology and our reptile & amphibian friends of Colorado. 

We kicked off the week on Monday with a brainstorm about the herps that live in Colorado and the adaptations they need to survive. Afterwards, we played a name game to learn about other campers. Our second activity of the day was critter crawl. We do critter crawl every day of camp and it is an activity where we get into the South Platte River and catch the macroinvertebrates that live in the water. Since our theme was reptiles & amphibians, we kept our eyes out for tadpoles in our water too!

On Tuesday, we had an awesome special guest come to camp with living herps! Nature Educators came to camp to present their “Radical Reptiles” program. We learned about the adaptations that are special to Colorado herps, as well as the food they eat, and how they survive in our extreme environments of Colorado. We got to meet some really cool animals like a ball python, a bull snake named Peaches, a wood toad, a colorful collared lizard, and even the state amphibian, a tiger salamander.
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During critter crawl, we learned about the types of food that reptiles & amphibians eat. After discussing herp diets, we realized that our Colorado herps eat a lot of the macroinvertebrates that live in our River! Sometimes they eat them in the river, but sometimes they wait until the macros grow up and live out of the water as adults. So we went on a macro food hunt when we did critter crawl! 

Wednesday’s theme was focusing on the life cycle of reptiles & amphibians. We began with experiments to explore herp skin. We compared reptiles & amphibians' skin because they are much different. We “molted” our reptile skin with glue, and created amphibian slime from cornstarch. A few messy experiments, but so fun!

​Before critter crawl, we learned about how herps reproduce. Both reptiles and amphibians lay eggs but those eggs are very different! We created some pretend amphibian eggs with chia seeds to feel the texture of what amphibian eggs, like frogs, feel like. We also observed a chicken egg that we transformed into a mock reptile egg with vinegar. We then went out to critter crawl, and again looked for any tadpoles!

Thursday’s field day theme was ectotherms. Herps are ectothermic, which means they get their body heat from an outside source, so we spent the day in the sun playing games! We played water games like lily pad splash and drip-drip-drop (like duck duck goose), pretended to be frogs in a frog relay and jumping contest, and more!

​Friday is the best day of camp! Our herps live in extreme conditions in Colorado: high heat, droughts, snow conditions, and even pollution. We started the day with an experiment activity. Campers created a frog out of a plastic cup, and had to survive pollution in their frogs’ water. Most of our campers were luckily able to survive, but real amphibians in real pollution may not be so lucky. 

Our final critter crawl of the week was also focused on pollution. The macroinvertebrates that live in our waters all have different tolerance levels for pollution. But in general, if we have a wide variety of critter species, it can tell us that we have healthy waters. When we were at critter crawl, we found a variety of species that tolerate different levels of pollution. This showed us that we have a relatively healthy and unpolluted river, especially for an urban water space.