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.
Friday, November 29 2013
This image of a You looking at me?, uploaded by kingsnake.com user LizardWizard, is our herp photo of the day!
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Thursday, November 28 2013
This image of a Happy Thanksgiving, uploaded by kingsnake.com user anialady, is our herp photo of the day!
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Wednesday, November 27 2013
![](/blog/uploads/DinoBaby.jpg) The skeleton of a drowned baby dinosaur was discovered in Canada.
From NBC News:
The toddler was just 3 years old and 5 feet (1.5 meters) long when it wandered into a river near Alberta, Canada, and drowned about 70 million years ago. The beast was so well-preserved that some of its skin left impressions in the nearby rock.
The fossil is the smallest intact skeleton ever found from a group of horned, plant-eating dinosaurs known as ceratopsids, a group that includes the iconic Triceratops.
Finding intact baby dinosaurs is incredibly rare.
"The big ones just preserve better: They don't get eaten, they don't get destroyed by animals," said study co-author Philip Currie, a paleobiologist at the University of Alberta. "You always hope you're going to find something small and that it will turn out to be a dinosaur."
Read more here.
Photo: Philip J. Currie, Robert Holmes, Michael Ryan Clive Coy, Eva B. Koppelhus/LiveScience
This image of a Scorpion Mud Turtle, uploaded by kingsnake.com user Serpentin, is our herp photo of the day!
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Tuesday, November 26 2013
Finally! Back about eight years ago I bought five hatchling marginated tortoises from Mark and Kim Bell.
They were pretty babies, and since first seeing this taxon about 40 years ago at Arsene Eglis' facility, I had always intended to work with them (a 40-year hiatus between the initial decision and the actuality isn't too bad, is it?).
The babies thrived, growing quickly, and it took only a three years before I was able tio determine the genders -- four males and one female (4.1 in herp parlance).
Fast forward to 2012. The tortoises were now each a bit over a foot in length. I had placed two males in new homes, retaining the biggest and most boisterous for what I hoped would become a mini-breeding program. The possibility that this would become fact was shown when in late 2012 the female laid her first eggs. The clutch was small and the eggs were infertile.
But then a year later, in September of 2013, again the female began searching for a nesting spot.
Once finding a suitable spot, the nesting was fast and 10 eggs were laid.
Now for the long wait!
Continue reading "Eggs at Last! Marginated Tortoises"
Don't let anyone tell you toxic parenting is all bad. The strawberry poison frog ( Oophaga pumilio) uses to make their babies unpalatable to predators by feeding them unfertilized eggs laced with bitter alkaloids. This means of chemical defense is currently unique to the species.
That's the word from a study headed up by researcher Ralph Saporito of Ohio's John Carroll University. From National Geographic:
For their study, the researchers measured alkaloid content in strawberry poison frogs during different stages of development.
In one group, tadpoles were reared and fed by their mothers, and a second group was reared by the researchers and fed with eggs from another species of frog not known to harbor alkaloids.
As the tadpoles from both groups developed, the team analyzed their alkaloid contents. The results were clear-cut: Tadpoles reared by mom contained alkaloids in most stages, whereas tadpoles from the second group showed no sign of these chemicals, according to the study, published November 12 in the journal Ecology.
Read the full story here.
Photo: Robert Pickett/National Geographic
This image of a Beautiful Baby, uploaded by kingsnake.com user mesozoic, is our herp photo of the day!
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Monday, November 25 2013
![](http://www.kingsnake.com/iguana/main2.jpg) A proposed port development on the Goat Islands in Jamaica threatens the re-introduction of the endangered Jamaican iguana to the two small cays located less than a mile off the coast of Jamaica.
The IUCN Iguana Specialist Group is reporting that the planned port, to be built by the China Harbour Engineering Company, will include extensive dredging and filling in the surrounding area to build a massive trans-shipment port. These small islands were a planned relocation sites for not only the Jamaican iguana, hutia, and Jamaican boa, they are also home to significant numbers of endemic plants, birds, and other species.
The planned port facilities will require development on the mainland as well, opening up the nearby Hellshire Hills, close to the core forest where the Jamaican iguana persists. With over 400 plant species in the Hellshire Hills and Goat Islands area, including 47 Jamaica endemics as well as 11 endemic birds, it is considered one of the largest and most pristine remaining examples of dry tropical forest in the Caribbean.
While the Jamaican government has launched a media campaign to promote the planned port, conservationists and herpetologists have not given up the fight to save the islands and have launched their own in response, starting with a petition at Change.org.
Conservationists are hoping to reach 5,000 signatures and deliver it to the Jamaican government as part of a larger media campaign in early January. To sign the petition, click here.
To read more about the fight against the Goat Islands port, please check out this article in the Jamaica Observer.
After 30 years of captivity, two sea turtles named Touche and Daisy were released off the Desert Islands in Portugal. How's that for a happy ending?
See the release in the video blow.
This image of a Gopher Snake, uploaded by kingsnake.com user pitparade, is our herp photo of the day!
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Friday, November 22 2013
Check out this video "Yummy, salad," submitted by kingsnake.com user manhattan.
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 a Gila, uploaded by kingsnake.com user DennisDeLapJr, is our herp photo of the day!
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Thursday, November 21 2013
![](/blog/uploads/snakeeyes.jpeg) A new study from the University of Waterloo shows that snakes can optimize their vision by controlling the blood flow in their eyes when they perceive a threat.
Kevin van Doorn, PhD, and Professor Jacob Sivak, from the Faculty of Science, discovered that the coachwhip snake’s visual blood flow patterns change depending on what’s in its environment. The findings appear in the most recent issue of the Journal of Experimental Biology.
"Each species' perception of the world is unique due to differences in sensory systems," said van Doorn, from the School of Optometry & Vision Science.
Instead of eyelids, snakes have a clear scale called a spectacle. It works like a window, covering and protecting their eyes. Spectacles are the result of eyelids that fuse together and become transparent during embryonic development.
When van Doorn was examining a different part of the eye, the illumination from his instrument detected something unusual.
Surprisingly, these spectacles contained a network of blood vessels, much like a blind on a window. To see if this feature obscured the snake’s vision, van Doorn examined if the pattern of blood flow changed under different conditions.
When the snake was resting, the blood vessels in the spectacle constricted and dilated in a regular cycle. This rhythmic pattern repeated several times over the span of several minutes.
But when researchers presented the snake with stimuli it perceived as threatening, the fight-or-flight response changed the spectacle’s blood flow pattern. The blood vessel constricted, reducing blood flow for longer periods than at rest, up to several minutes. The absence of blood cells within the vasculature guarantees the best possible visual capacity in times of greatest need.
"This work shows that the blood flow pattern in the snake spectacle is not static but rather dynamic," said van Doorn.
Next, the research team examined the blood flow pattern of the snake spectacle when the snake shed its skin. They found a third pattern. During this time, the vessels remained dilated and the blood flow stayed strong and continuous, unlike the cyclical pattern seen during resting.
Together, these experiments show the relationship between environmental stimuli and vision, as well as highlight the interesting and complex effect blood flow patterns have on visual clarity. Future research will investigate the mechanism underlying this relationship.
"This research is the perfect example of how a fortuitous discovery can redefine our understanding of the world around us," said van Doorn.
The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada supported this project.
Photo: Kevin van Doorn/ University of Waterloo
Although it is quietly hued, the little Hispaniolan cat-eyed snake, Hypsirhynchus ferox, is both attractive and interesting.
Inhabiting a wide range of habitats from xeric to mesic, this terrestrial snake seems to prefer areas where low escarpments and boulders are prominent. Preferentially a lizard eater, juvenile snakes eat geckos, anoles and the young of larger lizards. Adults feed upon larger whiptails and curlytailed lizards.
This snake occasionally attains a length of 30 inches (rarely an inch or two longer, often a few inches shorter). It is slender and can move quickly.
The Hispaniolan cat-eyed snake is only rarely available in the American pet trade. It is an easily maintained oviparous snake, but I have not been able to find mention of breeding success.
Continue reading "The seldom seen Hispaniolan cat-eyed snake"
This image of a Belize Slider, uploaded by kingsnake.com user nwflherp, is our herp photo of the day!
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Wednesday, November 20 2013
![](/blog/uploads/Crotalid.jpg) Snake venom and other harmful substances can save lives as well as take them.
From LiveScience.com:
"Poisons can be bad for some things and good for others, including humans," said Michael Novacek, senior vice president of the American Museum of Natural History, at an opening of a new poison-themed exhibition Tuesday (Nov. 12).
[...]
The strongest of poisons occur in evolutionary arms races, Siddall explained. For example, opossums can feed upon some venomous snakes thanks to a resistance to the snakes' venom. In response, the snakes over generations have amped up the toxicity of their venom to keep these marsupial predators at bay. Meanwhile, the opossums continue to evolve resistance to the ever-stronger venom, he said.
Read the full story here.
Photo: kingsnake.com user cochran
This image of a Russian Rat Snake, uploaded by kingsnake.com user cochran, is our herp photo of the day!
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Tuesday, November 19 2013
![](/blog/uploads/Loggerhead.jpg) Florida commercial fisher Eddie Toomer was awarded the Gladding Memorial Award by the Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute for his lifetime commitment to protecting endangered sea turtles.
From KBTX.com:
Toomer is most renowned for his important contributions to the design of turtle excluder devices (TEDs) for shrimp trawlers. "TEDs maximize shrimp harvest while allowing endangered sea turtles to escape. Shrimpers' use of TEDs has spared hundreds of thousands of endangered sea turtles around the world," said Pamela Plotkin, director of Texas Sea Grant and author of the book, Biology and Conservation of Ridley Sea Turtles.
With his mom and dad and a dozen or so others, Toomer also is responsible for the 3 million-acre no trawling pink shrimp nursery area in the Gulf.
"I feel fortunate to be a part of the history of the TED," said Toomer. "Finding a successful design was achieved by joining the practical experience and creativity of fishers, with the design ideas and studies of scientists."
Read the full story here.
Although they were long considered a subspecies of the European four-lined rat snake, the Bulgariian rat snake is now considered a full species.
My Bulgarian rat snakes are just about three years old now, and three-and-a-half feet in length. I expect they will eventually attain a length of five feet.
I haven’t tried to push the growth of these rather heavy bodied snakes and they are, apparently, a normally slow growing taxon. Of the twospecies of the genus Elaphe, in Europe, the Bulgarian (also called the Eastern European or blotched rat snake E. sauromates) is the less colorful and undergoes the fewest ontogenetic color and pattern changes. In fact, when discussed, it is often said that this species retains its juvenile color and pattern, this being numerous dark olive gray to charcoal blotches against a ground color of straw yellow to olive. The head bears a dark "V," point forward. It is an attractive snake but is in no way flamboyant.
They are nervous snakes (and were especially so as hatchlings), but in the time I have had them neither male nor female have made any effort to bite. Neither are they confident enough of my occasional overtures to accept thawed mice from my hands. But both eat readily when each is gently moved to its own five gallon bucket containing the proffered meal, this now consisting of two extra large mice given at seven to 10 day intervals.
Bulgarian rat snakes have a reputation for being difficult to breed in captivity even when offered a three to four month period of hibernation. Although I am not altogether sure the snakes are quite big enough, I hope next spring, that if they are sexually mature, to to prove this wrong. The hibernaculum is ready and waiting and the snakes seem suitably heavy and very healthy. Wish us luck with this.
More photos under the jump...
Continue reading "Notes on the Bulgarian rat snake"
This image of a Tree Python, uploaded by kingsnake.com user Mickeyblueyes, is our herp photo of the day!
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Monday, November 18 2013
This image of a Leopard Gecko, uploaded by kingsnake.com user janniewolf, is our herp photo of the day!
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Friday, November 15 2013
![](/blog/uploads/Bionic.jpg) Veterinarians in Germany didn't just treat the injuries on an injured tortoise brought in to a local animal shelter after being inured. They raided the toy box and built him a prosthetic wheeled leg.
From The Local:
"First we fitted a double wheel but it was difficult for him to turn corners so we replaced it with a single wheel and that is much better for him," Dr Panagiotis Azmanis told The Local.
He works at the Birdconsulting International veterinary practice of Marcellus Bürkle in Achern in Baden, and ended up raiding the toy box of the practice manager's daughter for wheels and spacer blocks.
Initially though the focus was on saving the tortoise's life. "He was in pretty bad shape when they brought him to us. The lower part of his front leg was missing, and the upper part was very bad, with bone showing, and maggots in necrotic flesh."
One the animal had been stabilized, the vets amputated the injured leg at the shoulder and treated him with antibiotics and fluids, as well as giving him pain killers.
Then came the question of lifting his fourth corner so he could move around.
"Tortoises need to run free in gardens, so he needed a prosthetic," said Azmanis.
Read the full story here.
Photo: DPA
This image of a Corn Snake, uploaded by kingsnake.com user snakepunk, is our herp photo of the day!
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Thursday, November 14 2013
Marfa, Tex., is about 1,400 miles from my home. So there and back is 2,800 miles, plus 500 or so miles for road-hunting side excusions. That adds up to around 3,400 miles total.
I had two questions before I left. One, would my little 4-cylinder 1996 Toyota RAV survive the trip, and two, would I survive the trip?
Guess what? The car and I both made it -- both a bit worse for the wear, but the entire trip was accomplished in three-and-a-half long days (and nights).
Why did I want to go to Marfa? Merely to see and photo desert box turtles, Terrapene ornata luteola. A decade earlier, Kenny Wray and I had traveled a roadway near Marfa during a rainstorm and had encountered numbers of desert box turtles. I had wondered over the subsequent years whether they were still present, and hoped to find out.
I crossed the Pecos River, the dividing line between the ornate box turtle (to the east) and the more westerly desert subspecies I sought. Only a couple of hundred miles were now between me and my destination. Three hours later I rolled in to Marfa, to be greeted at motel check-in by darkening and lowering clouds. Moments later, back on the road, I was enveloped in the first of several hellacious thunder storms containing road-obliterating rain.
The road I chose to drive was already awash, and the temperature was about 65 F. There were also acres of shallow standing water on the bordering prairie (now pastures) through which the roadway ran. A half mile up the road, there in the downpour, sat an adult female box turtle. Two miles further was another. Then on my return, I saw a beautiful male. Three more female box turtles followed, two on the second run and one on my final run of the day.
The next day, during more severe thunderstorms and temperatures in the low to mid-60s, 1.12 additional box turtles were found. Some were drinking from roadedge puddles, others were foraging for insects in the tall roadedge grasses. At about 5 PM, the sun broke through the heavy storm clouds. By dark the roads were again nearly dry and what water had been standing on the prairie had soaked completely in.
It was dark, I was cold, wet, hungry, and happy to have learned that this box turtle population still seemed secure. A night’s sleep, an attempt to see the eerie “Marfa Lights” (they were very active) and I’d be heading back to Florida before dawn.
More photos under the jump...
Continue reading "In search of the desert box turtle in West Texas"
![](/blog/uploads/Supersize.jpg) A Florida paleontologist says climate change may turn back the species clock to a day when mammals were tiny and reptiles huge.
From NBC News:
"You see the size of these animals dancing with the climate," said Jonathan Bloch, a paleontologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History.
Bloch delved into the connection between body size and global temperatures, particularly during a hot time known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, on Monday during the ScienceWriters2013 conference here in Gainesville. Like so many facets of global change, the lessons from the distant past don't make the far future look all that sunny. Super-snakes, anyone?
Read the full story here.
Photo: Artist’s conception of the largest snake the world has ever known from Jason Bourque / University of Florida.
This image of a Hognose, uploaded by kingsnake.com user Hoggie1973, is our herp photo of the day!
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Wednesday, November 13 2013
![](/blog/uploads/Dino.jpg) Considering they're still making news 66 million years after going extinct, dinosaurs are clearly one of humanity's favorite animals. Here is a round-up of dino-centric stories from the last week:
From National Geographic:
An enigma for decades, a giant dinosaur known only for its brawny arms actually towered over the local tyrannosaurs, paleontologists report. It also ate plants and perhaps sported a surprising sail or hump on its back.
The dinosaur Deinocheirus mirificus (which means, essentially, "terrible hands that look peculiar") had been a stubborn fossil enigma for nearly 50 years.
Nothing except the dinosaur's eight-foot-long arms, tipped in three huge claws, and a handful of other bone fragments had ever been found.
But at the annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontology conference held in Los Angeles last week, Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources paleontologist Yuong-Nam Lee presented a wealth of new fossils that make Deinocheirus stranger than anyone had previously imagined.
From Discovery.com:
A nursery of bizarre-looking dinosaurs known as therizinosaurs has been found in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia.
The nesting colony contained at least 17 clutches of eggs.
"Not only is this the largest colony of nonavian theropods, but this is the best documented site," said study co-author Yoshitsugu Kobayashi, a vertebrate paleontologist at Hokkaido University in Japan, who presented the findings here at the 73rd annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontology conference.
The finding suggests the odd little creatures were social animals. Read more...
From NBC News:
Paleontologists on Wednesday unveiled a new dinosaur discovered four years ago in southern Utah that proves giant tyrant dinosaurs like the Tyrannosaurus rex were around 10 million years earlier than previously believed.
A full skeletal replica of the carnivore — the equivalent of the great uncle of the T. rex — was on display at the Natural History Museum of Utah alongside a 3-D model of the head and a large painted mural of the dinosaur roaming a shoreline.
It was the public's first glimpse at the new species, which researchers named Lythronax argestes (LY'-throw-nax ar-GES'-tees). The first part of the name means "king of gore," and the second part is derived from poet Homer's southwest wind. Read more...
Photo: National Geogrphic
This image of a Collared Lizard, uploaded by kingsnake.com user wwwwwells, is our herp photo of the day!
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Tuesday, November 12 2013
![](/blog/uploads/OHARE.jpg) The Chicago Herpetological Society is caring for a two-foot alligator found under an escalator at Chicago's O'Hare Airport.
From the Chicago Tribune:
The group has about 500 members, including about 30 in the Chicago area who open their homes, bathtubs and backyards to reptiles and amphibians who need a place to stay or recover. While by many accounts this was the first alligator found at the airport, it's not the first Floridian reptile found in Illinois that the volunteers have taken in.
The Illinois Department of Natural Resources confiscates a dozen to two dozen alligators every year, said Scott Ballard, the department's expert in herpetology, the branch of zoology that pertains to the study of reptiles and amphibians.
No one in the state, other than zoos and licensed facilities, should have one. Because the reptile is protected by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Endangered Species Act, a permit is required to own one in Illinois. The state stopped issuing permits for people to keep them as pets about a decade ago, Ballard said. While violators can be convicted of a Class A misdemeanor under the state's Endangered Species Protection Act, a spokesman for the Chicago Police Department said there is no criminal investigation into the abandoned animal at O'Hare.
Read the full story here.
Photo: Chicago Tribune
I can’t remember in what book I first saw a picture (a colored drawing, not a photo) of a European four-lined rat snake, but I do remember that I was still in elementary school when I learned of this snake.
The picture was of a large adult --pale body, the namesake striping dark and precisely defined. I thought the snake, although quietly colored, was a thing of beauty. And somehow, through a subsequent lifetime that has involved herps, invertebrates, fish, birds, and mammals, whenever rat snakes were discussed, at some point in the conversation a vision of this species, Elaphe quatuorlineata, has always popped up.
Despite the memories, it was actually about 65 years after seeing the drawing that I first saw this taxon in life -- in 2011, to be exact. After having tried and failed to acquire a pair of this European beauty over the years, I finally succeeded in getting three hatchling males from a German breeder.
As with many of our American rat snakes, the hatchling four-lines were very strongly blotched and gave no indication of the future lineate pattern. Today, the snakes are about three-and-a-half feet long, and the juvenile blotches are much less evident, the stripes are easily visible.
I have been promised a captive-hatched female from the German breeder in the spring of 2014 and am anxiously awaiting its arrival.
More photos under the jump...
Continue reading "Finally: A four-lined rat snake!"
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