What's That Smell??

Recently, while leading a hike down the Discovery Center's Interpretive Trail, we came upon a fungus I had never seen.  At first glance, I thought it was a discarded cigarette. When I went to pick it up, I realized that was quite the wrong first impression.  It was, indeed, a fungus! 

I held it up for the group, and that is when we noticed it….the smell of rotting meat (and dare I say, poop!).  I quickly looked it up in my guide and we identified it as Stinkhorn fungus.  It had a skinny, spongy body & a slimy brown tip.  Come to find, the tip is the foul smelling part (at least to us); however it proves quite attractive to insects.  These insects visit the smelly tip, and then carry off the fungi's reproductive spores. 

Stinkhorn fungi are found on the ground or on rotten wood (we found this one on a rotting Aspen tree), and grow August-October. Look closely at this photograph and you will notice an American carrion beetle near the tip -- we ID'ed at least four others around the fungus.  What a cool find and fun to learn together about an organism new to us all!

Photo by Licia Johnson - Discovery Center Staff. 

You Otter Check This Out!

“What’s that in the water over by that log?” said a woman squinting out the side of the pontoon boat at a small brownish shape protruding from the choppy waters of Rest Lake. 

“I think it’s just a stump sticking out of the water,” said her husband, quickly dismissing the brown object. 

The woman produced a pair of binoculars to study the supposed stump more carefully. “Look, it’s moving! It’s a muskrat.  No look.  You really ought to check this out.” she said, beckoning with a free hand while keeping eyes glued to the binoculars and the scene in the water below. “It keeps diving down under the water and then coming back up again, and its body is really long.  I think it’s an otter!”

At idle speed we carefully navigated the pontoon boat a little closer to the sleek, mocha brown colored animal.  It was indeed an otter, and not just one.  There were three otters playfully arching out of the water and diving below to find food. 

One of the otters came up from the water below with a fish in its mouth and swam toward a log sticking out into the water from the shore.  There on the log, it began to tear the fish into bite sized pieces. 

River otters consume 2.5lbs of fish, crayfish, amphibians, mussels, snails, and aquatic insects each day.  These members of the order Carnivora belong in the Mustelidae family along with weasels and badgers.  Unregulated trapping and habitat degradation in the late 19^th/early 20^th century nearly eradicated river otters from large portions of their historic range in North America.  In 1915 the seasonal harvest was discontinued in Wisconsin for a few years and the river otter population began to make a comeback.  Now these playful animals, nicknamed waterdogs, are found in many rivers and lakes in our backyard.  They are a welcomed sight on our Rest Lake pontoon tours and Manitowish River paddles. 

- Heather Lumpkin, Research and Monitoring Coordinator