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.
Thursday, April 3 2014
"What kind of snake have you not seen that you would like most to see?"
The question was posed by Sandy, a first time participant in our herp-tours to the Peruvian Amazon. I thought for a moment and then replied, " Bothriopsis bilineata smaragdinus, the Western two-lined forest pit viper."
Where would you expect to see it?" Sandy then asked.
My prompt answer was "Somewhere along the trail we will be on tonight." Then no more was said on the subject.
That afternoon it rained a bit, promising a hot and humid night walk along a wet trail. In other words, a rather typical rainforest walk was the evening agenda.
Darkness comes quickly on the equator. By the time we finished supper, the velveteen darkness had enveloped us. Flashlights were activated, spare batteries were pocketed, and we were outward bound on a 2-mile long circular trail. The trail was slippery, muddy in spots, and we moved slowly, stopping to look at a treefrog, a planarian, a tailless whip scorpion, or a sleeping lizard every few feet.
Finally at the half way point we stopped for a "breather." Our guides forged on ahead to ascertain that the trail was not obscured by a treefall or other such natural impediment. A few of us stood talking, and then Sandy quietly asked, "Is this one of the snakes you wanted to see?"
Next to the path, at shoulder height, she had found a neonate Bothriopsis! And before we left the area the group had found three more. Sandy definitely got the "attagirl" award on that trip.
More photos under the jump...
Continue reading "Trail edge tree vipers"
![](/blog/uploads/Rana_aurora.JPG) Frogs aren't well-equipped to migrate safely through the rush of automobile traffic. Last year, hundreds of protected northern red-legged frogs met their doom trying to cross an Oregon roadway. This year, things were different.
From Oregon Live:
After witnessing the N.W. Harborton Drive frog slaughter with his friend, Shawn Looney, Rob Lee started making calls and e-mailing biologists and herpetologists.
"I started trying to find the appropriate people to tell about this – that something was going on that we should be paying attention to," he says.
He also approached Jane Hartline, a retired Oregon Zoo marketing director and conservation advocate with a knack for organizing.
No one knew whether the great frog massacre of 2013 was an anomaly or, more likely, an unwitting annual death march. They were determined to find out, to help the frogs if they could, to precisely document everything they observed and to contribute to the scant science on the Forest Park red-legged frog population.
Liz Ruther, a habitat conservation biologist with ODFW, granted Lee, Looney and Hartline a permit to handle the frogs. Without one, it's illegal to touch or harass them, given the species' sensitive-vulnerable status.
With help from The Forest Park Conservancy, Hartline rounded up about three dozen volunteers willing to rush to Linnton with little notice. Their task: spend hours intercepting frogs on wet, chilly nights when most Portlanders were tucked in at home, dry and cozy.
Read more...
Photo: Walter Siegmund/Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons License
This image of an Albino Monacled Cobra, uploaded by kingsnake.com user herpetology16, is our herp photo of the day!
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Wednesday, April 2 2014
When the tiny island night lizard ( Xantusia riversiana) was first designated as threatened, kids were still putting safety pins through their ears and "God Save the Queen" was just released. But today, for the first time since 1977, it's no longer considred to be in danger.
The lizard is found only on four ilands -- or three islands and an islet -- off the California coast.
From KCET:
It hasn't hurt that all of the islands the night lizard calls home are owned by the federal government. San Clemente and San Nicolas islands are owned and managed by the U.S. Navy, while Santa Barbara Island and its tiny neighbor Sutil Island belong the the National Park Service. That's simplified tasks such as removing introduced predators and yanking out weeds.
In 2004, the Navy petitioned USFWS to delist the lizards on San Clemente and San Nicolas islands, claiming that each island's population was properly considered a Distinct Population Segment (equivalent to a species under the Endangered Species Act) and saying that the population of night lizards on each of the two islands had recovered.
That prompted a 2006 status review for the lizard, and in February 2013 USFWS finally got around to its response: a proposal that the lizard be delisted throughout its range. With this new ruling, scheduled for printing in the Federal Register on April 1, that delisting becomes official.
According to USFWS, estimates of the lizard's current population range from 15,300 on San Nicolas and 17,600 on Santa Barbara/Sutil, with an astonishing 21.3 million estimated for San Clemente Island. The estimates didn't count lizards, but merely assessed the acreage of lizard habitat on each island and used mathematical models to extrapolate estimated total populations.
Read more...
Photo: Ryan P. O'Donnell/Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons License
Yesterday we made fun of the 49ers for banning reptiles from their new stadium. Now we feel bad, because apparently this is a thing: An Eastern brown snake turned up on an Australian rugby field the very next day.
From ABC Australia:
A one-metre brown snake on the NRL field at Robina took the ABC Grandstand commentary team by surprise, but it did not stop them from encouraging on-field reporter Zane Bojack to take a closer look, despite his professed herpetophobia.
You can read more and listen to the crowd and reporters here.
This image of a Milk Snake, uploaded by kingsnake.com user Jeff Hardwick, is our herp photo of the day!
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Tuesday, April 1 2014
![](/blog/uploads/firefighter.jpg) A Michigan firefighter went into a burning building to save a pet 6-foot python trapped in his terrarium.
From WXYZ:
Muskegon firefighter Scott Hemmelsbach told The Muskegon Chronicle that he reluctantly agreed to enter the two-story, smoke-filled house Sunday night to retrieve the snake. He says he cradled the "weighty" snake before carrying it to safety.
"It was trying to crawl up the side of his terrarium and get out," Hemmelsbach said. "His face was pushed up on the screen and trying to get out. There was a lot of smoke and he was trapped."
The firefighter said he learned how to handle snakes while he was at Grand Haven High School, where he helped showcase them.
Read more...
And thank you, Firefighter Hemmelsbach!
The blunt-headed tree snake, Imantodes cenchoa, is occasionally found coiled quietly in an orchid or bromeliad during the hours of daylight. But after darkness has fallen, this pencil-thin, 3-foot-long rear-fanged snake uncoils, and slowly and quietly, but actively, joins the ranks of nocturnal predators.
Its slender build -- proportionately as slender as many of the vine snakes -- enables the blunt-head to access and forage through the slenderest of twigs, sites often preferred by sleeping anoles and geckos, both favored prey of this common opisthoglyphid (rear-fanged) snake species.
Most of our sightings of this interesting little snake have occurred in the Peruvian Amazon. Here, in this snake's stronghold, we have rarely not seen at least one on our nocturnal herping walks and have on some of the best nights seen up to ten of the bug-eyed, brown saddled arborealists. They never fail to evoke positive comments from the viewers.
More photos under the jump...
Continue reading "Interesting and Common: The blunt-headed tree snake"
This image of a Bearded Dragon, uploaded by kingsnake.com user svenson74, is our herp photo of the day!
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Monday, March 31 2014
It was a late March evening, and Jake and I were out looking for spotted skunks to photograph.
Our locale was south-central Florida, and we were driving slowly along a white sand road, stopping here and there to photo some bird or an ever-changing sunset. Darkness was gathering, and by the time we turned and retraced our path, owls were active.
As we got to a short stretch of road that was bordered on both sides by marshland, Florida banded water snakes, Nerodia fasciata pictiventris, began crossing. Most were yearlings, some were quite thin, but others were of robust build.
Many were somberly patterned with dark bands against a somewhat lighter ground color but a few bore pretty, dark edged bands of red against a paler gray ground.
And then there was the one that was of noticeably brighter color than the others and, as always, it was the one that got away while, fumbling in the darkness, I failed to get the camera activated.
As quickly as it had begun, the crossing event was over. Although we drove that short stretch of road several more times that night we saw only one other water snake. And although we smelled them, we saw no spotted skunks at all. Right time, right place for the snakes and exactly the opposite for little black and white mephitines.
More photos under the jump...
Continue reading "Spotted skunks: Zero. Water snakes: Dozens."
![](/blog/uploads/little_croc.jpg) A herp-themed round-up of the news from the last week:
You may love them, but your reptiles aren't welcome at 49ers football games. Read more...
Herpetologist Natalia Rossi talks about crocodiles in southeastern Cuba as part of a celebration of the contributions of women to the practice of conservation. Read more...
The New York Times takes a look at rattlesnake "round-ups" and gassing... probably more favorably than most herpers would. Read more...
Biscuits, a very important loggerhead, is back where she belongs. Watch the video below:
Photo: Natalia Rossi/WCS
This image of a Chameleon, uploaded by kingsnake.com user 1Sun, is our herp photo of the day!
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Friday, March 28 2014
Everybody knows Kermit. You know, Kermit, the bug-eyed green frog who is Miss Piggy's paramour?
Well, take a look at the pix of the common polkadot treefrog, Hyla ( Hypsiboas) punctatus, an Amazonian species, and see if you don't note a strong resemblance?
The Polkadot Treefrog is one of the most common of the many Amazonian anurans. It is also one of the most variable, undergoing routine day to night color changes. This little hylid is normally green by day with either yellow or red polkadots and red by night with at least vestiges of darker red dots. A thin red dorsolateral line is present on each side no matter the ground color.
Males are the smaller sex and are adult at about 1 and three-quarter inches. Occasional females may attain 2 and a half inches in length.
This treefrog may call by both day and night from the security of floating or emergent vegetation. Floating rafts of water hyacinths or water lettuce provide ideal habitat.
More photos under the jump...
Continue reading "Rainforest reminiscences 8: Kermit? Kermit, is that you?"
Check out our Herp Video of the Week, submitted by kingsnake.com user boa2cobras.
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This image of a Pac Man Frog, uploaded by kingsnake.com user sallie_keeper, is our herp photo of the day!
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Thursday, March 27 2014
Did you ever find anything cool when you were a kid? How about discovering an entirely new species in a swimming pool?
From National Geographic:
The 1.5-inch-long (4-centimeter-long) frog "is rather strange-looking—it’s quite fat with short legs and bright orange spots on its sides," said Luis German Naranjo, WWF Colombia‘s conservation director.
Naranjo and a team of scientists were surveying wildlife in eastern Colombia’s Orinoco savanna, including animals found on a small farm.
Expecting to find little more than livestock, the team was surprised when the farmer’s seven-year-old son, whose name was given only as Camilito, called the group over to a pool. There, in the water, was the small spotted frog.
The team’s herpetologist, Daniel Cuentas, had never seen anything like it, and immediately set out looking for other examples.
Read more...
Photo: Adam Dixon, WWF
This image of a Bullfrog, uploaded by kingsnake.com user coluberking25, is our herp photo of the day!
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Wednesday, March 26 2014
Of the many wonderful lizards in the rainforest of the Peruvian Amazon region, the persistently arboreal Amazon monkey anole, Polychrus marmoratus, is one that we are always very happy to find.
It is not an uncommon lizard, but it is so well camouflaged that it can be difficult to see. Although diurnal, as most of the related anoles are, rather than moving about in bursts of speed as the anoles are wont to do, when the monkey anole moves it is in a stealthy, hand-over-hand method reminiscent of the movement of true chameleons.
But with that said, the monkey anole is just as apt to sit quietly and depend upon its camouflage to avoid detection. The color is of some shade of green (occasionally bluish green) and there are broad paler bands that are edged in black. This medium sized lizard attains an adult size of about 14 inches, but the semi-prehensile tail accounts for two-thirds of that length.
Continue reading "Rainforest reminiscences 7: The Amazon monkey anole"
![](http://gallery.connectedbypets.com/data/69327sidewinder-med.jpg) This physicist doesn't just spend his days working with sidewinder rattlesnakes, but he makes robots of them, too.
From Popular Science:
Daniel Goldman spends his days working with venomous rattlesnakes, baby sea turtles, and a dozen other types of animals. But he isn’t a zookeeper, or even a biologist. He’s a physicist, studying locomotion at Georgia Tech. In order to test his hypotheses, he builds robots that mimic the ways animals move. Jealous yet?
Popular Science: Why do you have so many sandboxes?
Daniel Goldman: No one has ever studied the complexities of a sidewinder rattlesnake’s movement on sand, its natural substrate. In principle, you can understand how a hummingbird stays aloft or how a shark swims by solving fluid-dynamics equations. We don’t yet have fundamental equations for complex terrain—sand, leaf litter, tree bark. To figure that out, we built giant sandboxes that are equipped with high-speed cameras and can tilt to mimic dunes.
PS: Which animals are the hardest ones to work with?
DG: The rattlesnakes were a lucky break. You put them in a sandbox, and they just start sidewinding—the sideways slithering they do to cross sand. But most animals don’t do what you want. Ghost crabs, for example, are ridiculously fast. In the laboratory, you can get about 10 good trials out of them: They’ll run away from you down a track, where high-speed cameras record them. After that, they seem to decide they are no longer afraid and start trying to pinch you.
Read more...
Photo: kingsnake.com user Ryan-reptilian
This image of a Red-Eyed Tree Frog, uploaded by kingsnake.com user doc1975, is our herp photo of the day!
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Tuesday, March 25 2014
![](/blog/uploads/fossil.jpg) Researchers at Ohio University have found evidence that a venomous snake existed in Africa 25 million years ago.
From Science World:
"In the Oligocene epoch, from about 34 to 23 million years ago, we would have expected to see a fauna dominated by booid snakes, such as boas and pythons. These are generally 'sit and wait' constricting predators that hide and ambush passing prey," lead author Jacob McCartney, a postdoctoral researcher in the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, said in a news release.
The newly discovered species is named 'Rukwabyoka holmani' and was unearthed in the Rukwa Rift Basin of Tanzania. The species genus name comes from the Rukawa region with the Swahili word for snake. And the species name honors J.Alan Holman, a palaeontologist. The team found eight different types of fossil snakes varying in length from 2.6 mm to 5 mm.
Read more...
Photo: Ohio University/Science World
This image of a Reed Frog, uploaded by kingsnake.com user arkherps, is our herp photo of the day!
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Monday, March 24 2014
![](/blog/uploads/Pelamis_Platurus.JPG) Scientists always assumed yellow-bellied sea snake, like other sea-living creatures, could process the salt out of sea water to meet their needs for hydration without the negative effects of salinity.
Turns out they were wrong, according to researcher Harvey Lillywhite from the University of Florida.
From National Geographic:
Lillywhite started studying this species in 2009, at a site off the coast of Costa Rica. “We’ve looked at hundreds,” he says. “No sea snake we’ve observed has drunk any seawater.”
They only stick to the fresh stuff, but the amount they drink varies throughout the year. These snakes live in a place that goes through drought from November to May. If they were captured during these dry spells, they betrayed their thirst by sipping heavily from fresh water; if they were caught in wetter months, they barely drank. “If the snake drinks fresh water, it’s thirsty,” says Lillywhite. “If it’s thirsty, it’s dehydrated, and if it’s dehydrated, it’s not doing what the textbooks said.”
The team also found that the snakes had significantly less water in their bodies than in the dry months than in the wet ones. Despite having a salt gland and being surrounded in water, the snakes are thirsty and dehydrated for months on end. Lillywhite thinks that they cope by having an unusually high amount of water in their bodies to begin with. They might also have adaptations that help them to lose water slowly, and to withstand the effects of dehydration.
In the wild, it is possible that the snakes use deep springs or estuaries, but they are incredibly widespread and Lillywhite has never found any evidence of them congregating in specific sites.
Instead, rain brings them salvation.
Read more...
Photo: Wikipedia
This image of a Northern Leopard Frog, uploaded by kingsnake.com user Terry Cox, is our herp photo of the day!
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Friday, March 21 2014
This image of a Box Turtle, uploaded by kingsnake.com user relic37, is our herp photo of the day!
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Check out our Herp Video of the Week, submitted by kingsnake.com user Minuet.
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Thursday, March 20 2014
![](/blog/uploads/varanus-giant-melbourne.jpg) Way back in the 50s -- the 1850s, that is -- a scientist named discovered fossils of an Australian lizard he dubbed Megalania prisca. Measuring around 20 feet long, and suspected of living at the same time as early humans arrived on Australia, he was one big scary lizard.
Or not.
From the NatGeo blog of self-described "fossil killjoy" Brian Switek:
...Megalania ain’t what it used to be. For one thing, the lizard’s bones are so similar to those of other monitor species – belonging to the genus Varanus – that paleontologists have taken to calling it Varanus priscus. And while it seems likely that the big lizard was venomous, recent size estimates have shrunk this “dragon in the dust.”
Let’s have a look at the traditional baseline first. In 2004, working with the relationship between vertebrae size and body length, paleontologist Ralph Molnar proposed that mature Varanus priscus could have been between 23 and 26 feet long, depending on the anatomy of the tail. But other researchers think such sizes are major overestimates. In a 2002 study that critiqued “the myth of reptilian domination” in prehistoric Australia, anatomist Stephen Wroe reanalyzed old body size data and calculated that the lizard probably averaged about 11 feet in total length and, citing earlier estimates from Molnar, wouldn’t have grown much longer than 15 feet.
Size estimates in a 2012 paper by paleontologist Jack Conrad and colleagues came out in between the extremes. While describing a new, large Varanus species that once lived in Greece, the researchers also took a look back at Australia’s ever-contentious lizard. Without the tail, the Varanus priscus specimen in their study had an estimated body length of almost seven feet, meaning that this individuals total length was almost certainly longer than the 11 foot average Wroe suggested. Especially large specimens, Conrad and coauthors noted, could have had bodies almost 10 feet long with the tails trailing behind, although these animals still would have been smaller than the monstrous lizards paleontologists used to reconstruct.
Read more...
Photo: Cas Liber/NatGeo
![](/blog/uploads/AFD1.JPG) I still recall the first adult Amazon forest dragon, Enyalioides laticeps, that I ever encountered. Well after darkness had fallen, we were slowly walking on a forest trail. Lightning had been spearing the heavens for some time and the rumble of thunder was drawing closer.
Not yet familiar with the vagaries of rainforest storms, I wondered at the sudden rustling sounds in the canopy high overhead. "Rain," I was told, "the storm is here."
I learned that night that the trickle-down effect of even a hard rainfall can take a few minutes to penetrate the canopy, but penetrate it did, and within seconds we were all soaked. We decided to continue outward for another few minutes, then reverse and return to camp.
For some reason I wandered from the path and was "bush-whacking" when on a head-high limb I spied a lizard. It was about a foot long, bright green, and --and it looked like an immature green water dragon! What, I asked myself, could this be?
It took only a bit of research to learn the identity of the lizard. Despite the similarity in appearance, rather than being in the family Agamidae like the water dragon, the forest dragon is a member of the family Hoplocercidae.
On subsequent trips I found the Amazon forest dragon to be a common lizard that was frequently encountered sleeping soundly at night on trees and vines a few feet above the ground. It varied in color from green to a reticulated brown and green. It is now an eagerly sought target species on every tour.
More photos under the jump...
Continue reading "Rainforest reminiscences 6: The Amazon forest dragon"
This image of a Spotted Turtle, uploaded by kingsnake.com user clemmysman, is our herp photo of the day!
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Wednesday, March 19 2014
![](/blog/uploads/TurtleTumors.jpg) Seven sea turtles, named Hook, Jack, Emerald, Chris, Augustus, Jared and Pe’e, suffering from blindness caused by fibropapilloma tumors around their eyes, can see again, thanks to Florida veterinarian Dr. Lorraine Karpinski.
From the Miami Herald:
The turtles didn’t know it, but their lives were in the hands of the sandal-wearing vet who has worked for 42 years on animals’ eyes — including those of Lolita the killer whale and thoroughbred Seattle Slew before he won the Triple Crown.
Bette Zirkelbach, manager of the nonprofit Turtle Hospital in the Middle Keys' island town of Marathon, had contacted Karpinski a few months earlier “in desperation” to find a new treatment to help Hook and Jack avoid euthanization. As in the case of many turtles with the same condition, their eye tumors grew back about six weeks after being removed, a process that kept repeating itself.
"We can’t release turtles back into the wild if they don’t have vision in at least one eye," Zirkelbach said.
Karpinski came up with the idea of trying Fluorouracil, an anti-cancer medication used in humans. Karpinski already had found success using it on horses with skin cancer and on a Malayan tapir at Zoo Miami with eye tumors. Maybe, she thought, it would work on the endangered sea creatures.
"Dr. Karpinski got creative," Zirkelbach said. "And honestly, the turtles had nothing to lose."
Read more...
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