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.
Wednesday, May 28 2014
It's our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user Madisyn74!
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Tuesday, May 27 2014
Somewhere, somehow, and I don't remember where or why, the first species of rat snake that I can remember seeing was a colored drawing in a book.
I seem to remember that the picture was simply captioned "Four-lined Rat Snake." and although other information was probably provided, I don't remember what this may have been. But I do know that I came away from that introduction with a firmly entrenched mind-picture of what a four-lined rat snake was supposed to look like. And as it turned out, for an American herper, it was an erroneous mind-picture.
Years later, after meeting a fair number of our "four-lined rat snakes" (as the yellow rat snake, Pantherophis obsoletus quadrivittata, was once known), I realized that there was a fly in the ointment. Our four-line was decidedly different than the one in memory.
Why was this, I wondered? With a few library visits I found out.
There was our American four-lined rat snake (then being ever increasingly referred to as a yellow rat), and there was a European four-lined rat snake, Elaphe quatuorlineata, and it was this latter I had first seen depicted.
OK. Now I could at least put names with faces (so to speak), and this made me feel a bit better. Following the advent of the Internet, finding pictures of the European species became a snap. But it was not until 2010 that I actually had a European four-line in hand. And that one, a hatchling, certainly did not look like the picture in the old book.
But by the time it was 3 years old, ontogenetic changes had changed the strongly blotched baby to the striped (lined) snake that had initially confused me so. It was a long wait but the end result well worth the time.
More photos under the jump...
Continue reading "4-line vs 4-line, European vs American"
South Dakota's Reptile Gardens has made the big time: The Guiness Book of World Records has named it the world's largest collection of reptiles.
From The Rapid City Journal:
Years ago, Reptile Gardens Public Relations Director Johnny Brockelsby, son of the founder, sent documentation to Guinness of the more than 200 species housed at the attraction. But he never heard a word.
This month, someone mentioned that the 260-page 2014 edition of the venerable record book featured Reptile Gardens and Brockelsby immediately ran out and bought a copy.
“I was shocked but absolutely thrilled,” Brockelsby said Thursday. “We have always claimed we were the world’s largest, but everybody claims they are the biggest this or the biggest that. But when the new book came out naming us the largest reptile collection in the world, it immediately gave us credibility.”
Read more...
Photo of Reptile Gardens' Peni the perentie monitor, taken by Cindy Steinle
It's our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user PH FasDog!
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Monday, May 26 2014
In memory of all who served, from all of us at kingsnake.com.
It's our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user stingray!
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Friday, May 23 2014
It's our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user MissBallLover!
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Check out this video "Cute Frog," submitted by kingsnake.com user PH FasDog.
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Thursday, May 22 2014
![](/blog/uploads/ClarionNightsnake.jpg) The Clarion night snake, Hypsiglena unaocularis, hasn't been spotted in 80 years. Its only known sighting, in 1936, was a single preserved specimen brought to the U.S. by naturalist William Beebe. That just changed, as the species was spotted on Mexico's Revillagigedo Islands.
From the Christian Science Monitor:
The existing dead sample was assumed to be a labelling error and the snake was largely struck from taxonomic registries.
But Daniel Mulcahy, a researcher for the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, suspected it might still exist. He and Juan Martinez Gomez of Mexico's Ecology Institute set out to find it.
Martinez Gomez, an expert on the Revillagigedo Islands, noted the islands change a lot from season to season, so they timed the expedition last May to replicate Beebe's steps as they looked for the snake, which blends in with the island's rock formations and is largely active at night. And they used Beebe's original field notes as a guide.
"Basically, following those directions, we essentially put ourselves in his place," Martinez Gomez said.
One of his graduate students, Juan Alberto Cervantes, was the first to spot one of the snakes for the first time since 1936.
The researchers performed DNA analysis to establish the long, dark spotted snake as its own species and see where it had come from.
Read more...
Photo: Juan Martinez-INECOL/AP
Ninety days came and went. Three of the four eggs still looked good (one was infertile), but I was getting anxious now. Ninety days seemed to be the "magic duration" that it took most eggs of our various tortoise species to hatch, and these were showing no signs of pipping yet.
I guess I was more anxious than I normally am because the eggs were Indian star tortoises, Geochelone elegans, a species I had not bred before and about which I knew comparatively little.
The breeders had come from a friend who, after receiving them as hatchlings, had kept them for 13 years in Michigan. Deciding the beautiful tortoises needed different facilities, he passed them on to me.
Stars are more delicate than most species with which I work, but at least I could (and did) get them outside for most of the year, and the tortoises seemed to show their appreciation by breeding often and producing fertile eggs.
One hundred days of incubation came and went. My anxiety was turning to despair. Were the eggs really good or was I misreading the signs? 104 days. Bingo. One egg began pipping. 36 hours later a beautiful hatchling emerged.
At 108 days the second hatchling pipped, and at 112 days the third pipped. A few days following their emergence each hatchling was eating well. I was a happy camper.
More photos under the jump...
Continue reading "Hatchling Indian star tortoises"
It's our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user alessio!
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Wednesday, May 21 2014
Gordy, Dennie and I were in southern Arizona. The three of us and all of the gear we thought would be needed for a 2-week trip were jammed into Gordy's little VW Bug. We had left Tucson behind an were now traveling westward on the narrow strip of pavement then known as the Ajo (pronounced Ah-ho) Road.
Now a major thoroughfare, in those long-ago days the road was seldom traveled and, on suitable nights, a herping Mecca, being crossed and recrossed by a wonderful array of reptiles.
We drove slowly, stopping to look at a glossy snake, a shovel-nosed snake, a banded gecko, a great plains toad, a Colorado River (now Sonoran Desert) toad. This was the good life for enthusiastic young herpers.
Then we came crossed a tiny creek and came into the Tohono O'odham (then Papago) Nation town of Sells. That it had recently rained was made apparent by the presence of a few puddles and a slight overflowing of the creek above its grassy banks. And from those now partially submerged emergent grasses along the freshened creek came a small but persistent chorus of "buzzing peeeents."
It took only a few minutes for us to locate several of the sources, beautiful inch and a half long green, black, and white toads. We had just met our first Sonoran Green Toads, Bufo (Anaxyrus) retiformis, arguably the most beautiful bufonid of the United States, and one that I still look up on every Arizona sojurn.
More photos under the jump...
Continue reading "A beautiful desert toad"
![](/blog/uploads/Pensacola.jpg) There's a happy ending, and a new beginning, in store for Tinkerbell and Wendy, two juvenile sea turtles who have been returned to the wild after being cared for by the Walton Beach, Fla., Gulfarium Sea Turtle C.A.R.E. Program.
From the Pensacola News Journal:
As beachgoers watched in awe at Langdon Beach on Gulf Islands National Seashore, two Gulfarium specialists carefully removed Tinkerbell, a 20-pound green sea turtle, and Wendy, a 14-inch Kemp's ridley, from large plastic containers and carried them to an inviting, calm and azure Gulf.
The turtles flapped their flippers furiously in anticipation of freedom as Rachel Cain and Samantha Fuentes carried them to the edge of the surf. Then with a splash punctuated by cheers from the crowd of onlookers, the two turtles swam with purpose toward open water, their shadowy shapes darting here and there under the clear sea.
Read more...
It's our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user vegasbilly!
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Tuesday, May 20 2014
It's our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user chondro89!
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A pilot refused to take off at San Francisco International Airport until a garter snake was moved from the runway to safety, prompting a flurry of Tweets from passengers:
From the New York Post:
A JFK-bound flight was delayed at the San Francisco airport Friday by a pilot who refused to squish a six-inch garter snake on the runway, officials said.
The Delta Air Lines pilot had announced a delay in takeoff to waiting passengers, explaining that a worker had been dispatched to snatch a wayward reptile off the runway, according to fliers tweeting from the plane.
A spokesman for San Francisco International Airport later said the snake was caught and set free in a “grassy area.”
Read more...
Monday, May 19 2014
A sea turtle named Hofesh was badly injured in 2009. Now, thanks to Jerusalem industrial design student Shlomi Gez, he's cruising around with a prosthetic based a Lockheed Martin Corp.'s F-22 Raptor warplane.
Read more...
It's our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user AJ01!
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Friday, May 16 2014
It's our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user evil-elvis!
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Check out this video "Baby Caiman Lizards," submitted by kingsnake.com user Minuet.
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Thursday, May 15 2014
Fourteen new species of dancing frog have been identified in India.
From Scientific American:
The 14 new species were described last week in the Ceylon Journal of Science, bringing the total number of known dancing frog species in India to 24. All of the tiny frogs, the largest of which measure just 35 millimeters, come from the genus Micrixalus, which can only be found in the Western Ghats.
Unfortunately, none of these tiny frogs may be around much longer. According to the research by University of Delhi biologist S. D. Biju and colleagues, Micrixalus frogs already suffer from a 100 to 1 male-to-female sex ratio. (That’s another reason for the “dancing”—the males also kick away potential mating competitors.) The frogs only breed after monsoon season when water in their habitats is moving swiftly. On top of that, the Western Ghats are expected to experience much lower rainfall levels in the coming years due to climate change. In fact, the rivers already appear to be drying up and the number of frogs observed in the wild has dropped by 80 percent since 2006, the researchers report.
Read more and watch video here...
It was back in the late 50s when, motoring down Route 27 in Hialeah, I heard a coarse, rattling call that I didn't recognize.
The rattle seemed to come from various areas along the shores of a roadside canal. Bird? Unlikely. It sounded more like an amphibian call. And after I pulled over and accessed the canal, an amphibian is exactly what it proved to be -- a cane (giant or marine) toad, Bufo (Chaunus ) marinus.
Today, after 60 years of introduction, the cane toad is rather generally distributed over most of Florida's southern peninsula. It is native to the southern Rio Grande Valley of Texas, and from there ranges naturally southward through much of Latin America.
In a failed attempt to control the sugarcane beetle, the cane toad has been introduced to and established in Australia. Although of admirable intent, the introduced toads failed at the intended objective and are now considered a totally unwanted, invasive species.
The very visible parotoid glands of this toad are comparatively immense and produce a virulent mixture of toxins. Despite this, it is often offered in the pet trade and makes a rather complacent, hardy captive. Just be sure to wash your hands well after handling the creature.
More photos under the jump...
Continue reading "One big toad"
It's our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user ungleemporium!
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Wednesday, May 14 2014
The Turtle Survival Alliance (TSA) is caring for 521 tortoises seized at Ivato Airport in Madagascar.
From the TSA website:
On Sunday, May 11, 521 tortoises – all juveniles - were seized prior to being loaded on a Kenya Aiways flight to Nairobi; the smuggler ran away when his name was called by the information desk and was not apprehended. The shipment included 512 Radiated Tortoises (Astrochelys radiata) and nine Ploughshare Tortoises (Astrochelys yniphora) that were placed with the Turtle Survival Alliance (TSA) for initial care and safe keeping.
Read the full story...
Photo: TSA
It's our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user StPierre68!
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Tuesday, May 13 2014
Unlike the abundant eastern newts of the genus Notophthalmus, the black-spotted newt, Notophthalmus meridionalis, of southeastern Texas is among the rarest of American salamanders.
Because of the harsh habitat in which this very pretty 4-inch long salamander has evolved, it is largely restricted to the few permanent ponds within its range, and seldom strays more than a few feet from the water. This newt is aptly named, having many relatively large black spots both on the olive-green dorsum and rich orange venter.
The only black-spotted newts I have seen in the wild were found in the 1960s. Gordy and I stopped to listen to some frogs calling from a small, lilypad covered, roadside pond and there at pond-edge we saw a half dozen newts as well. Since then a few additional examples have been seen by field researchers, but I have not been among the lucky ones.
Despite its rarity in the wild, the black-spotted newt is bred successfully by several zoological parks. Many hundreds are in captivity and several wild populations have been augmented by the release of captive raised examples.
More photos under the jump...
Continue reading "A very uncommon newt"
Of course you like snakes. But do you want a snake robot slithering its way into your heart?
That's just what the Modsnake does -- as well as crawl around inside pipes and similar systems looking for damage, and just about anywhere else you'd like to send a snake cam.
Watch below:
It's our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user coluberking25!
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Monday, May 12 2014
![](http://gallery.connectedbypets.com/data/35295Nin2detail.jpg) The media usually doesn't do a very good job with its coverage of snake stories, so when it does, we take notice.
Compare these two articles: One uses science to tell its story, and one uses media panic.
London's Camden New Journal gives an overview of the discovery of a colony of around 30 Aesculapian snakes living nearby:
But the "non-native species" has been ranked "of high concern" by the London Invasive Species Initiative (LISI), a government advisory quango which has called for the "foreign" family of snakes to be eradicated. It claims, if not stopped, the snakes could spread, causing "serious negative impact" on the eco-system.
This tough-line stance was this week disputed by Dr Wolfgang Wuster, a snake venom expert and senior lecturer of the School of Biological
Science in Bangor University, who told the New Journal: "Any attempt to eradicate the Aesculapian snake would require justification of resources to be devoted to an almost certainly non-problematic introduced species with little prospects of spread, as opposed to the many far more damaging species already out there."
Sane. Balanced. Investigative, even.
Then there's the Daily Mail, whose coverage can be well-summed up by the headline: "Colony of killer snakes 'capable of crushing small children to death' on loose in London."
Of course we all know the Aesculapian snake (now Zamenis longissimus, previously Elaphe longissima, is built much like our native bull snakes. and obviously not large enough to kill a child. But why should that get in the way of some sleezy tabloid clickbait?
Photo: kingsnake.com user nechushtan
It's our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user JonathanH!
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