A New Kind of Night Class

By Micaela Wells

At my home university in the States, I avoid night classes like the plague. Though I love learning, few things sound worse to me than being trapped in a musty classroom while the moon rises and falls. It’s not that I’m a stargazing enthusiast, it’s merely the principle of the thing; the morning is for classes, and the night is for play (or homework, if you’re a square like me). I planned to live my life as far away from night classes as possible, and largely succeeded.

Yet studying abroad is all about trying new things. One of yesterday’s lectures was a walking tour around Wilson Botanical Garden at Las Cruces Biological Station… at night. We waited for the last rays of sunlight to fade behind the garden's looming palms, waited still longer for full dark to settle in, and then we were off marching through the dark trees with our notebooks, flashlights, and nets in tow.

            Needless to say, it was hardly the night class experience at a typical university. Instead of slouching in stale classroom air, we trooped up and down steep garden paths, breathing humid air heavy with the scents of flowers and damp leaves. We learned about each creature we passed, and sometimes got to hold the friendlier ones. It's one thing to read about the hydrogen cyanide that millipedes excrete as predator defense, and another thing entirely to cup the little fellows in your palm and smell cyanide’s almond-like odor yourself.

            In prior biology classes, I had learned that members of amphibian family Centrolenidae are called “glass frogs” for their translucent skin. Last night I got to hold one. I watched its tiny heart pump blood throughout its delicate body, and saw first-hand the humeral spine with which males duel during breeding season. Then I placed him back on his leaf, and the class moved on.

Some creatures were new to me. The tailless whip scorpions—with their spindly legs and bizarre proportions—looked like they had emerged from a Tim Burton film. But the order name of these creepy crawlies is Amblypygi, literally "blunt rump," and lets on to their true, harmless nature; they have no venom whatsoever, and can only pinch with their little arthropod claws, called pedipalps. After coming face-to-face with several, they almost started to look cute.

It was a very different type of class from the sort I am used to. There were no abstract concepts to memorize, only direct experience. I treasure my biology textbooks and genuinely enjoy reading them, but going out to touch, see, and smell the subjects of the night’s lecture, instead of simply flipping past their pictures, was an experience I won’t soon forget.