Brazil has levied more than 100 million reais ($59 million) in fines since July on companies charged with not paying fair compensation for the use of genetic material native to Brazil, said Bruno Barbosa, who heads inspection for the environmental oversight agency Ibama.

Next year, officials will begin pursuing companies that did not notify the government of their use of local species to create products such as pharmaceuticals, as required by law, meaning fines will likely go up.

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Barbosa says examples of biopiracy abound, such as the development in the 1970s of the hypertension medication captopril from a snake venom that indigenous groups used on arrowhead tips.

Pharmaceuticals companies also used the yellow-and-green Kambo frog, found in Brazil's Amazon state of Acre, to create anti-inflammatory drugs without distributing benefits to local residents, he said. Many of these incidents came before a 2001 decree that created the current rules governing species use.

If a snake catcher gets bitten by a venomous snake, it is his own fault. He was careless, most probably trying to show off, and wasn't paying attention. That was the motto of Rom and his snake-hunting buddies in the U.S. during the 1960s, and it still holds to this day. In keeping with that philosophy, anyone who got bit was teased mercilessly. (Non-snake hunting civilians bitten accidentally were exempt, of course.) There is no doubt that this tradition of peer-admonition has kept these men, most of them, alive to this day.
In India, however, numerous snake-catchers, invariably young men, brag about their various snakebite “exploits”.
One bright spark bagged a cobra in a flimsy translucent bag. When he moved in closer to knot it, the snake nailed him on the hand through the cloth.
He was in hospital for a few days, and in the Indian tradition, the entire neighbourhood visited him to express their concern. Basking in all this attention, our man never once paused to think why the incident had occurred. When he bragged about it numerous times, Rom asked him: “Whose fault was it?” The young man didn't seem sure, but it was certainly not his fault, he declared. Rom countered: “If you had used a proper bag to begin with you wouldn't have been bit, right? So tell me now whose fault was it?” The reply was silence.

Most of the land is owned by the federal government; 96 acres are owned by the state and 470 acres are privately owned.

Mississippi gopher frogs once lived in longleaf pine forests from western Alabama to southeast Louisiana. Timbering all but eradicated those forests.

They now live in only a few spots in south Mississippi.

Scientists believe fewer than 100 mature adults live in the wild. Five zoos — in Detroit, New Orleans, Memphis, Miami and Omaha, Nebraska — have been breeding or raising them.

While the animals may very well be delighted that love seems to be in the air more than usual lately, crocodile handler David Golan believes the jet inspired drive to matie is cause for concern. The crocs, which normally perform mating rituals in a particular part of the year, are having their biological clocks thrown off by all the unnatural noise.

To make matters worse, the crocodiles are none the more satisfied by the mating call confusion. The crocs have been observed bellowing back their own song, but for some reason they never seem to partner up with any mate -- as if it's just the jet overhead that has won them over, though it never ceases to play hard-to-get.

There, the rain has made lakes so acidic, native fish can no longer tolerate the water.

The scientists, however, have suggested animals and plants living in the natural springs have adapted to the toxic conditions.

Exactly how, though, remains unexplained, according to UQ team leader Prof Craig Franklin.

"Would I swim in it? I wouldn’t drink it, let’s put it that way," Prof Franklin told The Cairns Post.

The springs flow into the Wenlock River.

Researchers had observed many of the saltwater crocodiles in the Wenlock with stained and weak-looking teeth.

Prof Franklin said this may be related to the acidic spring water.

The classified ad is titled "Alligators." It starts out saying "two weeks ago we found one alligator. We're still looking for two more alligators to fill the two positions that are open." The ad goes on several more lines but closes asking interested applicants to call Mr. Alligator.

“It's something to catch people's eyes,” said Peebles. “The actual ad I didn't write. I don't want to take credit for that, but it's kind of funny.”

“Someone asked me, 'is Mr. Alligator there?' and I was pretty shocked,” said Jeremy Peebles, Dan’s son and an agent at the insurance company. “I thought it was a prank at first because they never told me about it.”

Key findings include:

Workers with dogs were more likely to report holding senior management positions (CEO, CFO, Senior Vice President, etc)

Workers with snakes/reptiles were the most likely to report earning six figures.

Workers with birds were the most likely to report being satisfied with their jobs.

In terms of career paths, owners of certain pets were more likely to report being drawn to certain professions:

Dog owners were more likely to be professors, nurses, information technology professionals, military professionals and entertainers

Cat owners were more likely to be physicians, real estate agents, science/medical lab technicians, machine operators and personal caretakers

Fish owners were more likely to be human resources professionals, financial professionals, hotel and leisure professionals, farming/fishing/forestry professionals and transportation professionals

Bird owners were more likely to be advertising professionals, sales representatives, construction workers and administrative professionals

Snake/Reptile owners were more likely to be engineers, social workers, marketing/public relations professionals, editors/writers and police officers

FROM THE DEEPEST REACHES of the Australian desert to the cloud forests of Mexico, the University of Melbourne's Dr Bryan Fry has been on the trail of a group of lizards - and, more specifically, their venom.

One of the key results of his team's study of so-called 'anguimorphs' - which include monitor lizards and the komodo dragon - is the discovery of three toxins that lower blood pressure. The team hopes this could one day lead to new drugs to treat people.

It was only four years ago that the same international team reported finding that venom is widespread in lizards, not restricted to a few species, as had been thought. In a bid to find out more, the researchers extracted and analysed venom from 23 different lizards.

In women, such bites are mostly on the foot, the result of accidentally stepping on or near the snake. "Ninety percent of the time men get bitten on the hand because they're doing something dumb," said Dr. Rangan. He told the story of a man who kissed a rattler on the mouth – and got bitten – in two separate incidents.

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Besides calling a pharmacy to make sure it has the appropriate antivenom in stock, Dr. Rangan said, appropriate first aid includes immobilizing the patient and elevating the bitten extremity above the heart.

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Surgical intervention is rarely needed. Some necrotic tissue debridement might be called for, but fasciotomy is rarely indicated and is the largest contributor to comorbidity, he added.

t turns out that researchers just weren't looking closely enough. While studying a batch of salamander embryos, scientist Ryan Kerney of Dalhousie University saw something different than the prevailing dogma would suggest — a bright green color coming from inside their cells.

That color usually indicates the presence of chlorophyll, which is the light-absorbing green pigment that makes photosynthesis possible.

"On a lark, I decided to take a long-exposure fluorescent image of a pre-hatchling salamander embryo," said Kerney. After backing that experiment up using transmission electron microscopy, he confirmed his suspicion. There were algal symbionts located inside the salamander cells.

In fact, the symbiotic partners were often found bordering mitochondria, organelles responsible for generating a cell's energy. Thus, it's likely that the mitochondria were taking direct advantage of the oxygen and carbohydrate, byproducts of photosynthesis that were generated by the algae.

They have been spotted in numbers that are larger than had been expected when the reptiles were spotted after a gap of 60 years in downstream Hooghly two years ago. Now, a team of researchers has identified a breeding group at Purbasthali in Burdwan which signals that the gharials are finally multiplying.

A young gharial, about three feet in length, was trapped in a fishing net at Purbasthali on Saturday. About a half-a-dozen more followed it into the net. They were all pulled up, examined and released back into the river. "By last count, the number of gharials had shot up to around 180. Now, it seems the number is actually more than 250 since they are breeding. We have spotted even smaller ones, new-born gharials merely six inches long. This is great news for conservation since the reptile was taken to be extinct in eastern India for six decades," said Tanmoy Ghosh, president of iRebel an NGO that has been researching on gharials with support from the West Bengal Bio-Diversity Board and the Hooghly Zilla Parishad.