Rock Fire Pond, Wachusett Meadow Wildlife Sanctuary, Massachusetts
It is this time of year, the only time in the year,
when Salamanders leave the darkness of their homes and journey to the ponds to breed.
The young are skillful swimmers, their supple bodies moving with grace as if born to live in water.
Much as they will live most of their lives under cover in the forest
their bodies have not forgotten the past.
When about 350 million years ago, their ancestors diverged from strictly aquatic animals
and
made the first steps onto the land... without looking back...
Today they are equipped to survive on the land with a little help from water.
And their gigantic genome attests to that,
being in the range of 14-120 billion base pairs,
while our human genome has only 3.2 billion base pairs.
So delicate yet so sturdy to live for 20 years, a very long life, in a harsh world...
