Welcome to Devilled Toads, I’m Eleanor, creator of this blog, and author of many of its articles (read the latest one here).

I've just completed my MSci Biological Sciences degree at the University of Birmingham. For my research project, I looked at the effects of captivity on African wild dogs (Lycaon pictus) at West Midlands Safari Park.

I've been accepted as a PhD candidate at the University of Plymouth, starting in October, where I'll be looking at using hermit crab personality to understand the effects of human induced rapid environmental change (HIREC).

You can probably tell that I love animals, and though choosing a favourite is almost impossible, when asked I tend to go for sloths and manatees. I'll often joke about being a 'mammal person', and while it is true that I have a soft spot for fluffy animals like Pallas's cats, I also love animals which are a little weirder, like giant salamanders, octopus, and rainfrogs. That also extends to extinct animals, with my love of Beezelbufo inspiring the name of this blog.

Growing up in the Midlands, I've had several fantastic zoos within driving distance, like Chester and Twycross, and I look forward to reviewing them on this blog. I've been visiting zoos my entire life; the first place my parents took me after I was born was Woburn Safari Park! I've also been lucky enough to visit zoos further afield. In Summer 2023 I worked at Disney's Animal Kingdom in Florida on the Cultural Exchange Program.

In November, I joined the Chester Zoo Youth Board, and I'm having a fantastic time providing a voice for young people in conservation. (This blog is in no way affiliated with Chester Zoo, and all opinions are my own, but if you're interested in finding out more about the Youth Board, please do get in touch). I'm also on the Student Subcommittee of the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour (ASAB) and have been a volunteer at the Lapworth Museum of Geology.

Good morrow everyone! I'm Harry, lead contributor to Devilled Toads (read my latest article here).

I am a third year undergraduate of palaeontology and geology at the University of Birmingham. I'm currently working on my dissertation project on the fossils of the Purbeck Limestone of Dorset, and I dabble in dinosaur palaeontology in my spare time.

Like Eleanor, I've always loved animals of all kinds, both extinct and extant, but there are a few that stand out; I'm mainly interested in the great reptiles of the Mesozoic (dinosaurs, pterosaurs and marine reptiles), and among living species I love tapirs and pangolins, and, more broadly, birds and reptiles. 

I did most of my growing up in the southeast of England, and while there are a couple of good zoos and museums down there, it would often take a while to get to any of them. Now based in the Midlands, there's a few more about the place, and I'm much more able to travel further afield, so there should be many more such place appearing on this blog soon.

I'm a bit of an amateur palaeoartist (I designed the Devilled Toads logo), and some of my stuff is up on my Instagram page. I'm also the president of the Lapworth Society, a student-run society partnered with the Lapworth Museum of Geology that runs events for the University of Birmingham's geoscience fanatics. I happen to work at the museum itself as an assistant on top of this.

My name is Dylan, and I'm the unofficial herpetology contributor for Devilled Toads (read about it here).

While snakes are my real passion, I've been able to work with a fantastic array of species across the last few years, from wrangling wild raccoons to coercing stubborn wallabies into taking their medicine. I'm now inching my way into conservation research, and while I eventually hope to specialise in herpetology, I've been happily waylaid in the meantime by projects on forest elephant spatial ecology and genetic surveillance of British beavers.

I think my favourite animal has to be the boomslang – it's certainly my favourite snake! Quiet and unassuming, with beautiful dark eyes, the boomslang is in the Colubridae family; some better-known relatives include corn snakes and, for the Europeans, our beautiful native grass snake. Spending most of its life in trees, the boomslang is slow to anger...but if you do manage to get bitten, the symptoms of envenomation are some of the most horrific in the animal kingdom!

I grew up surrounded by nature in a tiny village in Cornwall, and while I move around a lot, I'm now mostly based in Bristol. If you enjoy my blogs here, you might enjoy my educational Instagram and YouTube accounts. In my free time I also write for the Mammal Society, and my autobiographical nature-themed piece Orbit was nominated as a runner-up for the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival Writing Award 2023.