Reptile & Amphibian News Blog
Keep up with news and features of interest to the reptile and amphibian community on the kingsnake.com blog. We cover breaking stories from the mainstream and scientific media, user-submitted photos and videos, and feature articles and photos by Jeff Barringer, Richard Bartlett, and other herpetologists and herpetoculturists.
Monday, September 2 2013
![](/blog/uploads/Seychelle.jpg) If you want a Gardiner’s Seychelles frog to hear what you have to say, tell him to forget his ears and open his mouth.
From NatGeo:
Scientists had thought that the Gardiner’s Seychelles frog—at 11 millimeters among the tiniest in the world—was deaf because it doesn’t have a middle ear, a critical component of hearing that’s found most land animals.
[...]
So the scientists x-rayed one of the tiny frogs. The images revealed that the frogs’ pulmonary system is poorly developed, suggesting that the lungs aren’t contributing to hearing, according to the study, published September 2 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
So the scientists refocused their experiments on the frogs’ heads. By making various 3-D simulations of how sound travels through the frogs’ heads, the scientists found that the bones in their mouths act as an amplifier for sound waves.
Read the rest here.
Photo: R. Boistel/CNRS
This image of a Gharial, uploaded by kingsnake.com user Majorpat, is our herp photo of the day!
Upload your own reptile and amphibian photos photos at gallery.kingsnake.com, and you could see them featured here!
Check out this video "Perfect Striped Boa," submitted by kingsnake.com user Boazucht.
Submit your own reptile & amphibian videos at http://www.kingsnake.com/video/ and you could see them featured here or check out all the videos submitted by other users!
Friday, August 30 2013
![Eastern hellbender](/blog/uploads/EasternHellbender.jpg) The Bronx may not be the first place that comes to mind for saving threatened species, but for the eastern hellbender salamander, it's working out just fine.
That's the word from the Wildlife Conservation Society's Bronx Zoo, which just oversaw the release of 38 juvenile hellbenders into their native habitat in western New York State.
From Scientific American:
The release is the latest step in an effort to help boost the wild population of the eastern hellbender ( Cryptobranchus alleganiensis alleganiensis), a threatened subspecies of giant salamander that is not yet endangered but faces a shrinking population and what appears to be a dangerously low birth rate in the wild. "We don’t have a lot of recruitment of young animals," says Don Boyer, the Bronx Zoo's curator of herpetology, who has watched the hellbenders grow since he joined the organization two years ago and who took the recent journey to western New York for the animals' release. "It seems like the younger stages of the hellbender are more vulnerable," Boyer says. "The head-starting, while it's not a solution, may help get the hellbenders through that critical juvenile phase and put them back in the system."
Read the full story here.
Photo: Julie Larsen Maher/Wildlife Conservation Society
This image of an Albino Bullfrog Tadpole, uploaded by kingsnake.com user otis07, is our herp photo of the day!
Upload your own reptile and amphibian photos photos at gallery.kingsnake.com, and you could see them featured here!
Thursday, August 29 2013
![](/blog/uploads/bigstock-Houses-494439.jpg) In Contra Costa County in San Francisco's East Bay, a pair of scammers have pulled off a string of burglaries, claiming to be animal control officers checking the property for snakes.
From The Contra Costa Times:
The incident, reported in Hayward, is one of three incidents in as many days that scammers tricked their way into homes to check for reptiles. Earlier burglaries took place in Union City and Fremont, police said.
Officers were called about 6:30 p.m. on Aug. 22 to a home in the 2200 block of Bennington Lane after a woman reported her home had been burglarized, said Hayward police Sgt. Mark Ormsby.
The victim told police that a suspect posing as a Hayward Animal Control Officer came to her home wearing a green uniform and said he needed to check her backyard for snake eggs. While the victim was in the backyard with the suspect, a second suspect entered the home and stole property. Police did not say what was taken or how much it was worth.
Read the full story here.
What's a coqui, you ask?
Well, if ever you had met a vocalizing male the chances are pretty good you wouldn’t have to ask. From the repetitive, whistled, almost strident, loud and distinctive call notes both common and species names of this diminutive tropical frog have been coined.
Although there are several species of coquis now known (and perhaps more to be described) only one species of coqui, Eleutherodactylus coqui, is known to occasionally visit the United States. Until recently the coqui was thought to have been established in the Florida City, Florida and in the New Orleans, Louisiana areas. It is now realized that the small numbers in each of those populations originally and periodically arrive in potted plants brought from their Puerto Rican homeland.
Here's a little male Eleutherodactylus coqui singing his repetetive and musical "coqui" in the crotch of an orange tree in our South Florida yard.
Coincidentally, I had just brought a dozen heliconia plants from a South Florida nursery a day earlier. Equally coincidental was the fact that the little frog was heard almost nightly until silenced by the first cold snap of winter. Because of temperature fluctuations there seems little chance that this traveler will ever become established in the USA.
More photos under the jump...
Continue reading "Spotting and hearing the coqui"
This image of a Blue Phase Oregon Red Spotted Garter Snake, uploaded by kingsnake.com user Concinnitor, is our herp photo of the day!
Upload your own reptile and amphibian photos photos at gallery.kingsnake.com, and you could see them featured here!
Wednesday, August 28 2013
![](/blog/uploads/IndigoSign.jpg) It will take more than a village to successfully re-introduce the Eastern indigo snake in Alabama's Conecuh National Forest. It will take careful science, cooperation between academia, non-profits, and government, a lot of community outreach and education, and luck.
From a report on the project from the Living Alongside Wildlife blog:
We have had to trust that these lab-raised, perhaps ecologically naïve, snakes would possess the innate behaviors needed to integrate into the natural framework of finding shelter, avoiding predators, foraging and capturing prey, surviving the winter, reaching maturity, finding mates, reproducing, and so forth. Thus far the indications are that the snakes are hitting the ground with the needed intrinsic behaviors.
We can also view this reintroduction to be successful on a partnership level. Academic institution, state and federal agencies, and non-profit conservation and educational organizations have come together for the benefit of the eastern indigo snake. Auburn University has been at the center with research and implementation but the project would not have been possible without support and contributions from the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, The Orianne Society, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, U.S. Forest Service, Zoo Atlanta, and Ft. Stewart (U.S. Army).
Eastern Indigo Snakes freely roaming the forest have opened up an avenue of educational opportunities. Snakes, nor any other organism, recognize artificial human boundaries, and our indigo snakes have on many occasions made this very evident. Not too distant from the release area is the Blue Lake Camp, a rustic camp of the United Methodist Church. Within a few weeks at least one snake found their way to the camp. As readers of this blog know, the appearance of a snake on a property is often met with a hoe, shovel, or firearm, but not in this instance. Having a radio transmitter allowed Jimmy and Sierra, our Conecuh ambassadors of snake education, to locate the snake(s) on the property, speak with managers of the camp, and illuminate the importance of the snakes. The fact that they eat Copperheads was not downplayed.
Ultimately the Eastern Indigo Snakes must be accepted by the human visitors of Conecuh National Forest. Being a national forest dictates a multi-use approach, and the visitors to the forest span all of society. Signs have been posted within the forest to alert and educate visitors of the presence of the indigo snake. Some will see the presence of the indigo snake as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience first-hand an iconic ruler of the longleaf pine ecosystem, others, unfortunately, not so much. But when we set forth with this reintroduction effort we made the decision that snake persecution would be a real possibility and that information and education were the best tools to combat it.
Read the rest here, including a great explanation of using telemetry to monitor introduced populations.
For several years now, since our lengthy drought dried their habitats and wildfires swept over their swampland strongholds, I have been unable to find the interesting little carpenter frog, Rana virgatipes, in Florida.
Jake Scott joined me in the search a couple of years ago but despite the return of a heavier rainfall, higher water levels, and a resurgence of the sphagnum in the acidic locales preferred by this pretty little ranid, we continue to fail.
This little ranid was never widespread in Florida. It was restricted to the northeastern portions of the state in the southward drainage from Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamp. Our searches have taken us into some very remote areas, many new for us but all looking like ideal habitat for carpenter frogs. On these searches we have seen many amphibian species -- pig frogs, southern leopard frogs, southern toads, oak toads, eastern spadefoots, and at least a half dozen species of hylids -- as well as many taxa of reptiles. We’ve been in the field by day and by night. We’ve waded the tepid ankle to waist deep waters on moonless nights, on moonlit nights, and during the daylight hours. No carpenters!
Continue reading "Where have all the carpenter frogs gone?"
This image of an Iguana, uploaded by kingsnake.com user cochran, is our herp photo of the day!
Upload your own reptile and amphibian photos photos at gallery.kingsnake.com, and you could see them featured here!
Tuesday, August 27 2013
The state of Florida is asking for help from the public in determining whether the Florida Pine Snake, the Southern Hognose Snake, and the Short Tailed Snake should be placed on the federal endangered species list. The three snakes are considered at risk due to habitat destruction.
The project involves GPS mapping of sitings, and the information can be reported on the FWC website. For more background, including how to identify and report each of the snakes, click here.
Photo: Southern Hognose Snake/Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission
This image of a Western Coachwhip, uploaded by kingsnake.com user AllenSheehan, is our herp photo of the day!
Upload your own reptile and amphibian photos photos at gallery.kingsnake.com, and you could see them featured here!
Monday, August 26 2013
Check out this video "Turtle Pond Design," submitted by kingsnake.com user ski1713911.
Submit your own reptile & amphibian videos at http://www.kingsnake.com/video/ and you could see them featured here or check out all the videos submitted by other users!
This image of an Eastern Box Turtle, uploaded by kingsnake.com user terrapene, is our herp photo of the day!
Upload your own reptile and amphibian photos photos at gallery.kingsnake.com, and you could see them featured here!
Sunday, August 25 2013
![](/blog/uploads/DesertTort.jpg) The U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced it will kill hundreds of threatened desert tortoises it's been caring for at a Nevada conservation facility. The slaughter is being blamed on a lack of funds by the agency.
Real estate developers in southern Nevada who wanted to disrupt the habitat of threatened desert tortoises to build their little enclaves of air conditioning and irrigation in the arid suburbs of Las Vegas have been able to do so -- for a fee. And while at the height of the real estate boom those fees went a long way toward providing refuge for displaced tortoises, the real estate bust has seen the program implode.
From the Washington Post:
Federal funds are running out at the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center and officials plan to close the site and euthanize hundreds of the tortoises they’ve been caring for since the animals were added to the endangered species list in 1990.
“It’s the lesser of two evils, but it’s still evil,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service desert tortoise recovery coordinator Roy Averill-Murray during a visit to the soon-to-be-shuttered reserve at the southern edge of the Las Vegas Valley last week.
Read more here. And weep.
Photo: kingsnake.com user TonyC130
Friday, August 23 2013
![](/blog/uploads/rack.jpg) Old school herpers like myself are prone to "do it yourself" projects simply because we grew up in an era when products specifically designed for reptile owners were either too basic, or simply not available at all, and thus we quite often were left with no choice but to "do it yourself." Although this mindset still occurs in herp breeders young and old, there are times when doing it yourself might be the least expensive option, but not the best.
Take, for instance, a mouse breeding rack.
In the past my racks have all been hand made, essentially nothing more than tubs resting on wooden shelves, screen tops made of wood and hardware cloth, and individual water bottles, one per cage. This system worked well for what it was but as you expanded the system became harder to clean and maintain, and harder and longer to work. Individual water bottles had to be filled on a regular basis, replaced on a regular basis, and the rodents had a habit of chewing the plastic tops. Wooden screen tops had to be made by hand, and all that hardware cloth was bound to rip, tear, and puncture skin no matter how thick the gloves you used. Worst of all, the wood could never be cleaned adequately, or in the case of a disease outbreak, sterilized, and thus if your colony was struck by illness you had to replace much of your caging materials as well as your breeding colony.
Today most of the troubles and problems I experienced with my "do it yourself" racks can be avoided by purchasing a commercial mouse breeding unit. Designed to eliminate many of the problems and issues home built racks have, modern breeding racks are industrial strength units designed to be worked easily, and cleaned thoroughly. Made of aluminum, steel and plastic these racks are manufactured by a number of different companies, and most all are sturdy well built units designed to offset their high cost by providing years of solid service.
After reviewing a number of breeder rack units, we settled on the rodent breeder racks made by Freedom Breeder, one of the oldest and most established cage companies in the reptile community. Founded by Lindy Johnson, and run by his son Jeff, Freedom Breeder was one of the first companies offering commercial caging and equipment to the reptile industry and their cages are used by some of the top names in the reptile industry and the company has maintained a solid reputation. The name Freedom Breeder on a rack is as good as having the name Sterling on silver.
When our Freedom Breeder Rodent 50 unit arrived on the 18 wheeler, it had to be moved via a pallet jack it was so large and heavy. Arriving mostly assembled it took approximately an hour to get it unstrapped from the pallet, wheels installed, and watering system hooked up. Only a wrench was needed to fix the wheels to the bottom, and a knife to cut the plastic tubing for the watering system. When fully assembled the unit stood taller than our truck, yet on it's wheels could be moved with one hand. With the levels being easily detachable it was easy to size the unit to fit our required space in the steel container, it being exactly 2 levels too tall.
With a 5 gallon bucket provided to service the watering system, and large feed bins for mouse chow, time required to service the mouse colony is at a minimum, and instead of constantly filling tiny food bins or water bottles, daily monitoring is usually all that is required rather than daily servicing, greatly reducing maintenance time and mess. Freedom Breeder even supplies the unit with a removable feed tray that allows the racks food bins to be filled quickly from behind.
With the rack all set up now all we needed was some mice. Lots and lots of mice.
This image of a Day Gecko, uploaded by kingsnake.com user RMGARABEDIAN, is our herp photo of the day!
Upload your own reptile and amphibian photos photos at gallery.kingsnake.com, and you could see them featured here!
Thursday, August 22 2013
No Peeping Tom this, merely a peeping anole. This little brown anole, Anolis s. sagrei, has been utilizing the same shrubs, windowsills and screens outside of my office for about three years now. He lost the distal half of his tail to a larger male a couple of years ago when he was much smaller. It is obviously regenerated and makes him identifiable.
The vertebral crest on this guy is magnificent and the dewlap is often distended and simply held out for seconds on end. He often bobs and displays at me while he is on the horizontal sill and I'm sitting at the computer. He stands his ground against other browns but often darts away from the bigger male green anoles.
He often positions himself on the horizontal frame of the window and from this position he bobs and displays (I feel sure it is at me because he’s looking directly at me the whole time) for minutes on end, and he does this several times a day.
Continue reading "Life with a peeping anole"
![](/blog/uploads/WoodFrog.jpg) You're frozen solid, your heart's stopped beating, and you haven't breathed in days. You're dead, right? Not if you're an Alaskan wood frog.
The amphibian -- an Arctic population of the wood frog, Rana sylvatica -- can tolerate being frozen, heart and respiration both stopped, for days or even weeks at a time. Scientists found that they could survive temperatures down to 3.2 degrees Fahrenheit, while they're Midwestern cousins could only come back from a balmy 24.8 degrees Fahrenheit.
All of which is super cool, of course, but it has a practical, and potentially human-lifesaving application, as well.
From National Geographic:
Beyond being fascinating science, the ability to freeze and unfreeze living organs and tissues without damaging them has potentially profound implications for areas such as organ transplantation.
“There’s an obvious parallel between what these frogs are doing to preserve all of their tissues simultaneously and our need to be able to cryopreserve human organs for tissue-matching purposes,” said [researcher Jon] Costanzo, noting that attempts to successfully freeze human organs for transplants have so far proved unsuccessful, perhaps due to their relative size and cellular complexity.
“If you could freeze human organs even for a short period of time, that would be a major breakthrough because then these organs could be shipped around the world, which would greatly [improve] the donor-matching process,” noted Costanzo.
Read the rest here.
Photo: A wood frog in New Jersey, by kingsnake.com user BryanD.
This image of a Frilled Dragon, uploaded by kingsnake.com user jock, is our herp photo of the day!
Upload your own reptile and amphibian photos photos at gallery.kingsnake.com, and you could see them featured here!
Wednesday, August 21 2013
![](/blog/uploads/bigstock-Fence-Lizard-Head-31601012.jpg) The CDC reports that cases of Lyme disease have been skyrocketing around the United States -- but not in California, thanks to the western fence lizard.
From the LA Times:
The CDC report might lead health authorities to accelerate the research and approval of a Lyme vaccine. Promising results were found earlier this year on one vaccine under development. That would be a popular item in prime Lyme disease territory, largely the Northeast and northern Midwest states where up to 30% of deer ticks carry the infection. Almost all cases of the disease — 96% -- occur in 13 states.
California isn’t among them, and one reason for that is that we have, in a sense, our own little natural vaccine program going. In this state, nymphal ticks’ favorite host is the common western fence lizard, which has a protein in it blood that kills the bacterium responsible for Lyme. As a result, few adult ticks are carriers.
Read the full story here.
This image of a Tree Frog, uploaded by kingsnake.com user rdperry5, is our herp photo of the day!
Upload your own reptile and amphibian photos photos at gallery.kingsnake.com, and you could see them featured here!
Tuesday, August 20 2013
Size differences in populations of the African leopard tortoise are rather well known to hobbyists. Those at the northernmost (top) and southernmost (bottom) extremes of the range attain much larger adult sizes than those in the center.
Perhaps because they are not as well known to hobbyists, the fact that a similar variance in size occurs in the Indian star tortoise, Geochelone elegans, is not as often realized.
My stars, newly received, are of the middle (small-sized) population. They were hatched about 14 years ago by Bern Tryon, Mike Ogle and crew at the Knoxville Zoo, They were kept and coddled for the next 14 years by turtle and tortoise researcher Jim Harding.
Luck alone facilitated their recent transfer to me. Jim decided that he would like the stars to have a bit more “playtime in the sunshine,” so he sent them my way.
Of course, then Mother Nature stepped in; knowing that star tortoises are not awfully fond of excessive moisture, she has provided us with almost continual hard rains. So, with the exception of two or three days, the tortoises' tenure here has been inside with artificial heat and light. But on the few days they were able to go out side each found a sunny patch of grass and weeds, ate until sated, and then sprawled in the sunlight for a lengthy bask.
They seem to be fitting in nicely, and I feel certain that there will be more sunlight someday.
Continue reading "Size differences in the Indian star tortoise"
![](/blog/uploads/PinzonIslandTortoise.jpg) Once extinct in the wild due to predation by rats, the Pinzón Island subspecies of the Galápagos giant tortoise ( Chelonoidis nigra duncanensis) has returned to its native island thanks to a successful captive breeding program.
From Scientific American:
[...] Galápagos National Park and its partners launched a program to eradicate the rats and other invasive species throughout the archipelago, starting on smaller islands such as Pinzón, which as of last year was home to an astonishing 180 million rats. Last December more than 20,000 kilograms of poison were dropped on the 18-square-kilometer island. The poisons, which dissolve after a few days, were specially designed to attract rats but repel birds and other wildlife that might accidentally consume them. The rodents quickly took the bait and Pinzón has now been tentatively declared rat-free.
Late last month Galápagos National Park took the third step and returned 118 juvenile tortoises to Pinzón from a breeding center on Santa Cruz Island.
We wish the Pinzón Island tortoise well! Read the rest of the story here.
Photo: Scientific American/Island Conservation
This image of a Boomslang, uploaded by kingsnake.com user fujiyaman, is our herp photo of the day!
Upload your own reptile and amphibian photos photos at gallery.kingsnake.com, and you could see them featured here!
Monday, August 19 2013
This image of an Irian Jaya Jaguar, uploaded by kingsnake.com user StonedReptiles, is our herp photo of the day!
Upload your own reptile and amphibian photos photos at gallery.kingsnake.com, and you could see them featured here!
Check out this video "Cool Chameleons," submitted by kingsnake.com user variuss11.
Submit your own reptile & amphibian videos at http://www.kingsnake.com/video/ and you could see them featured here or check out all the videos submitted by other users!
Friday, August 16 2013
![](/blog/uploads/JungleCarpetPython.jpg) In the United States, most large scale "rescue" of reptiles means they're seized from a bad or illegal situation and then killed. That's been the case in Queensland, Australia, too -- but no more.
Andrew Powell, Minister for the Environment and Heritage Protection of Queensland, overturned that policy, directing agencies that take in seized reptiles find them homes, whether in zoos or wildlife centers, or private homes by adoption.
From the Courier-Mail:
Mr Powell said the arrangement would save many animals from an uncertain fate.
"Every year our wildlife rangers are called on to help native birds and reptiles which, for a number of reasons, cannot be released into the wild,'' he said.
"It may be because we can't identify the area from which they came or that they were born in captivity.
"Some animals are the innocent victims of illegal activity, others are surrendered by wildlife carers whose circumstances have changed and they simply can no longer look after them.
"Historically they were offered to zoos and wildlife parks but, if they had no space, there was no alternative but to euthanise them."
Although the growing No-Kill Movement has not frequently championed the cause of pets other than cats and dogs, the principles of animal rescue and sheltering it espouses apply to reptiles and other "non-cuddly" pets, too.
Far too many organizations that claim to be advocating for the "humane" or "ethical" treatment of animals resort to large-scale slaughter when it comes to reptiles, whether to make a court case stronger or simply because they lack awareness of, or connections to, existing reptile rescue networks run by seasoned herpers.
"What's starting to happen here is a great step forward," said Cindy Steinle of Small Scale Reptile Rescue in Wisconsin. "Reptile rescue has evolved greatly over the past decade to follow the lead of our counterparts working with other species of pet, and thankfully fewer animals are killed today, due to the partnership between rescues and the sheltering community.
"Just because an animal is not 'cuddly' does not make it undesirable as a pet, nor mean its life has no value."
Photo: Jungle Carpet Python by Venom925
This image of a Water Snake, uploaded by kingsnake.com user dinahmoe, is our herp photo of the day!
Upload your own reptile and amphibian photos photos at gallery.kingsnake.com, and you could see them featured here!
|