My imaginary trip

My imaginary trip started the day I went to talk to my bosses, who are really nice people, to tell them that I was quitting my job because of a strong desire to drastically and dramatically change my life from one day to the next. And everybody knows that no change is more dramatic and drastic (and satisfying, in some cases) than saying goodbye to a stable life to follow an unknown future.

Well, that's what I did.

In my ideal life, Daniel, my partner, did the same exact thing, on the same exact day.

We both ran home and packed a light backpack, with the few clothes left in the house after we put everything we owned in storage, then went to the airport and bought tickets to Australia, mainly for alphabetical reasons. In Australia, we saw animals and deserts, cities and tons of nature, because after all these years in Rome we were both really thirsty for nature. In Australia, we researched the fauna in a semi professional way.

After two months, we left for India, followed by Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Kambodia, Japan, then San Francisco where we rented a car and visited national parks in Utah, Colorado, California, Nevada, Arizona, and then back to San Diego to give tha car back and take a bus down to Baja California.

From there, we went to San Cristobal de Las Casas, then down to Guatemala, Belize, Costa Rica, Panama, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Glaciers, then north to Mendoza to see Eriq, then Buenos Aires and back to Rome to get our stuff and move to Tel Aviv.

What's so special about armadillos?

Other than their peculiar looks, it is their reproductive system that really surprises zoologists, geneticists, and me: in every pregnancy, the nine-banded armadillo (genus Dasypus) delivers four genetically identical quadruplets, thus providing us humans with exciting material for scientific, behavioral or medical tests on identical individuals.

This is the only manifestation of polyembryony in mammals, and within the animal world it is also observed in parasitoid wasps.