Herpetologists Much Cooler Than Goody-Goody Ornithologists

American Museum of Natural History herpetologist Christopher J. Raxworthy has been writing a great blog at the Times for the past couple weeks documenting a field study of rare chameleon species in Madagascar. (It sounds like a really fun job, except for having to sleep in a tent and get bitten by malarial mosquitoes.) His most recent post contains an interesting aside about the differences between different types of zoologists.

“Herpetologists hate the dawn-it is the coldest part of the day, and very few species are active at this time. For this reason, most herpetologists are natural night owls, and are often considered slackers or party animals; the exact opposite of ornithologists who rise early, and are considered hard-working model citizens. On multidisciplined biological surveys, I would often be going to bed around the time the ornithologists were waking up, and by the time I woke up, would be scolded for missing breakfast and the dawn mixed feeding flocks. Of course, the remedy for this is to then pull out (from one of your collecting bags) an amazing herp (amphibian or reptile) from the previous night. ‘Yeah, well look what I got.’ But they still think you are a slacker.”