by Sara Dykman
“I found a Polka-dot-oreo,” Kira calls through the darkened jungle. Her announcement overflows with excitement. Eli and I swivel our lights in her direction. We know exactly who she is talking about, even if no one else could.
“Sweeeet,” I reply. We’ve been surveying the Curaray River in the Ecuadorian Amazonian for ten nights, but we’ve only spotted this spotted-cookie frog twice.
The gait of Eli and I, en route to see the frog, matches Kira’s delight. Eli ducks around a fern as I tuck around a spider web. We both clamor over a downed log, careful to avoid the line of ants marching like a seam over the rotting bark.
For obvious reasons, we do our best to avoid the ants.
“AWWWWWWWWWW,” is my first reaction to finally meeting this frog.
An audience of three, we crowd around the slick, green leaf that is the frog’s stage. Our accolades are a haphazard mix of “ooohs” and expletives. But who could blame our inarticulate admirations? The tiny frog is as cute as they come. We beam like a standing ovation.
Then we get to work. Eli fumbles for our waterproof journal, Kira pulls the calipers from her pocket, and I turn on my camera.
Under our last entry, Eli draws a line, which sets our observations in motion like an official firing a starting pistol. Under the line he writes 23. Our 23rd frog of the night.
“21.9 mm,” Kira reads off the calipers. Eli records the snout vent length (SVL), along with a time of 9:47 pm. I snap photos from every angle. Then Kira and I dictate the frog’s features.
We measured and recorded this hunkish Cane Toad in the manner we measure and record Polka Dot Oreo. Kira measures, Eli records, and I snap photos.
“Metallic black arms and legs,” Kira reports and Eli scribbles. His handwriting betrays our frenzied pace as our first impressions come all at once.
“It has black irises and round pupils,” I note with my own green irises and round pupils. Then I reconsider. The frog is not an “it.” “It” is reserved for objects, and frogs are not objects. I’ve been trying for several years now to stop referring to nature as an “it.” I shake my head, like one might try to clear an etch-a-sketch. Then I stumble forward.
“I mean he,” I correct, “he has black irises.” No, I think. “He” feels flawed too. Do I really want frogs to be trapped by the same gender constraints that humans are? “They have black irises,” I try again. I ignore the awkwardness. “They,” for one individual, feels clunky but better.
Robin Wall Kimmerer was, for me, the first to call attention to the disrespect inherent in calling a creature “it.” I read her masterpiece, Braiding Sweetgrass, with streaming tears. Her ideas were new to my ears, but they had long lived in my heart. Every page felt like a relief; a relief of having a deep-buried feeling articulated. It was like finding silence after a lifetime of noise.
Tarzan Walker Frog (a nickname coined by Eli, Kira, and I) is not an object, just like Polka Dot Oreo isn’t. I want my words to bestow honor.
You would never refer to your grandma as “it,” Kimmerer explained. After that, I couldn’t unknow.
Then Kimmerer offered me the gift of “ki,” which I am trying to accept. In the jungle, where English is a trespasser, I clicked the gift of Ki off my tongue.
“Ki has black irises,” I say so the tiny frog might be elevated from object to family.
“Ki” stems from Kimmerer’s Potawatomi language. ‘Aakibmaadiziiwin’ in the Indigenous language means ‘a being of the earth.’ Kimmerer studied her language and heard a pronoun sitting at the beginning of Aakibmaadiziiwin. Ki. Her example still makes me smile. “Ki is howling at the moon,” she wrote.
To make Ki plural, Kimmerer suggests adding an ‘n.’ Kin. “Kin is flying south for the winter,” I once heard her say during a virtual event. There is a strength created by baking connection into our sentences. It is medicine. A way to reconnect to land and to kin.
I hear kin calling in the reeds beyond the shore of the marshy lake. I am far from home, but with a grammar of animacy the frogs are family. It is impossible to be a stranger in a land full of connection.
However beautiful I find “ki” and “kin”, it is not easy to relearn a way of talking, or thinking. I trip over my words. I flinch, an effect from years of grammar classes. Change will take time and practice and a profound love of frogs.
“Ki has round pupils,” I say with a hint of defiance. As Kimmerer states, grammar is a tool of the revolution. So is simply taking notice of the more-than-human world around us.
“The creamy dorsolateral line is broken by black spots.”
“There are black spots on ki’s dorsum too.”
Even with our stuttered pronouns we talk faster than Eli can write. We pause for him to nod, a signal he has caught up.
“Small, indistinct tympanum,” I add. The tympanum, aka amphibious eardrum, is a helpful characteristic to sort species apart and a fun word to say. Tympanums, tarsals, lateral lines, and cranial crests ornament our descriptions. They add an unexpected poetry. They give us a direction to look.
The circle behind Big Bumpy Rana (another nickname) is a textbook tympanum.
“Minor webbing on their hind feet,” Kira continues. We are both inches from tiny toes dotted with shiny, black toe pads. I snap the two-hundredth-some photo of the night.
“Definitely Polka Dot Oreo,” I say. Kira nods in agreement, and Eli writes Polka Dot Oreo at the top of the entry. Kira coined the name, and Eli and I have adopted it without hesitation.
Weeks later we will comb through guide books and scientific literature to deliberate on the scientific name of our Polka Dot Oreo Frog. We will land on Boana nigra, but then waver. Maybe ki is Boana appendiculata?
We are confident that Boana is the genus (genera are groups of closely-related species), but Boana, like so many groups of frogs, is diverse and unstable. The DNA of similar-looking frogs is being sequenced, and scientists are finding enough distinctions to divide one species into many. In 2020, there were 93 species in the genus Boana to choose from, and when we look there will surely be more. We will also have to contend with the fact that our polka-dotted friend could be one of the frogs hiding behind a mask of another species. The forest we are surveying has seen so few Western scientists that a new (new to Western science that is) species is not out of the question.
Thanks to DNA sequencing, scientists are finding one named species actually includes multiple species (they look similar but are genetically distinct). Convict Referee (our nickname) is likely in the group of species that were once all referred to as Boana calcarata (scientific nickname).
“Oreo dude has to be Boana appendiculata,” I will eventually resolve, but deciding ki’s scientific name, in truth, seems like a guessing game.
Adding to my indecision will be a reluctance to fully embrace scientific names. These names - tongue-tied combinations of tongue-tied sounds – create a divide. Two groups emerge: those that can rattle off Latin names and those that can’t. A barrier is created, with this language of science, in a time when bridges are needed.
Even if scientific names were easy to memorize, the origin of these names means their very DNA is problematic. We elevate through names, and those doing the naming elevate their priorities. In the case of science, those able to travel, study, coin, and then publish their prefered names were privileged, white men. When we use their names, we honor that which they found worthy. Their names, their friends’ names, their religion, and their priorities are memorialized in Latin grammatical form.
People that know and love the land should give frogs living on that land their names. Omari, an Indigenous woman we stayed with, knew just where to find this frog.
Carl Linnaeus, the Swiss scientist credited with creating our current classification and naming system, named some 12,000 species in the 18th century. He is also credited for the birth of scientific racism and the motto “Deus creavit, Linnaeus disposuit” (God created, Linnaeus organized). Is it okay that those 12,000 names are likely coined through the lens of this one man’s thinking?
In 1725 “Boana” - the genus of our Polka Dot Oreo Frog - was coined by Linnaeus. Boana was derived from the bible. The story goes that Jesus gave two brothers the nickname Boanerges, or “sons of thunder.” Frogs in the genus Boanas have loud calls, so part of me likes this nod, but why is this Ecuadorian amphibian, living on the sacred land of the Waoroni people, connected to Christianity? We can better honor the voice of the frogs by not referencing a text that preaches Manifest Destiny and created a culture of human supremacy that frogs have suffered under.
Plexiglass Frog (our nickname) is also known as Boana cinerascens (scientific nickname).
Despite the origins of the names, I am torn. I love that science is trying to give every species their own unique name. When I say “Boana” it doesn’t feel like a sermon. It feels like a gift. A gift that says, “I see you.” Every name becomes a tribute to diversity. Every name acts as an introduction. It is much easier to speak on behalf of those who are named.
So I say Boana appendiculata, but consider it a nickname. Ki’s scientific nickname. As a nickname, science's superiority complex is stripped. As a nickname, I have permission to pronounce it however I choose. As a nickname, there is room to remember that it is an imperfect name; a name that often tells us more about the namers than the named.
I mostly stick to the name Polka Dot Oreo Frog, fully aware of this name’s limitations as well. I don’t encourage anyone to adopt this name. It is not a true name, as it doesn’t speak to ki’s essence. It is a nickname, a name of intimacy between Eli, Kira, Polka Dot Oreo and I.
“Thank you Polka Dot,” I say as our lights are directed towards our next steps, and the frog is left to resume ki’s nocturnal pursuits.
We resume our nocturnal pursuits too.
The night is young, and kin are everywhere.
We thank Polka Dot Oreo, and then leave ki in ki’s jungle home.