More than ever, the relationship between our two worlds has been disrupted, says the historian. If we don’t mend our ways, will we face even deadlier threats than Covid, Sars and Mpox?
In March 2021, the 13th month of the Covid confinement, the peepers, in their vast multitudes, sang out again. Down in the swampy wetlands below our house in Hudson Valley, New York, millions of Pseudacris crucifer (“cross-bearing false locusts” but actually minute frogs) puffed up their air sacs and warbled for a mate. That’s spring for you. The peepers are so tiny – an inch or so long – that you’ll never see one, no matter how carefully you creep up on them. Their blown-out song bags are nearly as big as the rest of them; it’s all they are: innocently inflated peeps of expectation.
They are not alone. In recent years, the soprano peepers have been accompanied by a bass rhythm section – wood frogs, Lithobates sylvaticus, a tattoo of deep quacking, punctuated by raspy burps. They and the peepers survive bitter winters by means of antifreeze cryoprotectants stored within their bodies. When ice crystals begin to form on their skins, their livers flood the bloodstream with glucose, sending vital organs like the heart, its beating paused, into a dormant but protected state. Seventy per cent of the frogs’ body water can then freeze without compromising the organs that will magically reawaken in the spring.
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