A fire in a Savannah Reptiles Planet warehouse in France killed between 20,000 and 30,000 reptiles and another animals.



From Prensa Latina:

The flames destroyed around 4,000 square meters of the facility and killed a large number of snakes, iguanas, chameleons, lizards, amphibians, rabbits, rats, and insects.

Only eight turtles, between 60 and 100 kilograms, were saved, when rescuers poured water on their shells.

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Image: France TV

There's a pretty flipping cool photo spread of crocs in nature in the UK's Metro. See it here.



You're welcome.

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We've heard of snow days... but snake days?

A high school in Kyrgyzstan was closed down after they found at least 30 snakes in the building every day this spring. No ID was made of the types of snake, but media speculation has ranged all over the place, including the Caspian cobra, Naja oxiana.



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Photo: Omid Mozaffari, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

What if there was a disease that killed or crippled hundreds of thousands of people every year, but no one seemed to care?

It's not a disease, but as Dr. Matthew Lewin wrote in the New York Times Sunday Review last weekend, snakebites kill 94,000 people and cripple 400,000, mostly in impoverished parts of the world.



So where are the telethons, the philanthropic dollars? Where are new developments other than costly, mostly unavailable anitvenin? How about drugs, or a snakebite EpiPen?

Find out...

Photo: Naja annulifera by kingsnake.com user Neverscared

Did you hear the one about the man who got out of his car to get a closer look at an alligator... and got bitten by a water moccasin?



No, it's not a joke. It's a true story from WTSP in Tampa. Read it here.

Some people in a Mississippi town might have had turtle soup on their minds when they rescued a huge snapping turtle from a storm drain, but they quickly changed their minds and decided to save him, instead.



Read the story at KPTV.com.

This image of a Western Hognose, uploaded by kingsnake.com user DianaFarnsworth, is our herp photo of the day!



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Will the 'family fun' that is the Sweetwater Rattlesnake Round-Up in Sweetwater, Texas, ever be stopped?

From CNN:

The Jaycees, short for the U.S. Junior Chamber, bills itself as a group that gives young people "the tools they need to build the bridges of success." The Sweetwater branch has been holding what it calls "The World's Largest Rattlesnake Round-Up" for 56 years on the first weekend in March, and the tool for success that it teaches young people is that it's fun to kill and torture animals.

For weeks or even months, rattlesnakes are stored in crowded barrels until it's roundup time. The snakes that have not suffocated under their kin arrive hungry, dehydrated, and sick from gasoline that was sprayed into their burrows to flush them out.

After a tour of the roundup, Michael Smith wrote an article for "Cross Timbers Herpetologist" in which he recalls noticing "...an unusual smell ... like bad cologne and also like something gone bad." Throughout the tour the smell keeps coming back to him, he writes, until he realizes what it is: "...the musk, feces, and blood of a thousand terrified snakes, half-covered with sprays of deodorant from Jaycees working the pits."

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Can the conservationist and the cowman be friends? Not if you're Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who posted a challenge to the BLM on his ranch's website protesting efforts to save the desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii), saying, "They have my cattle and now they have one of my boys. Range War begins tomorrow."

From ABC News:

Bundy's beef with federal land management officials dates back to 1993, according to federal officials, when Bundy's allotment for grazing his cattle on public land was modified to include protections for the desert tortoise. Bundy, who told the Associated Press his family has been ranching this part of Nevada since the 1870s, did not accept the modified terms, and continued to let his cattle graze anyway.

After legal maneuverings on both sides, a Nevada district court judge in 2013 permanently enjoined Bundy's cattle (some 900, by the government's count) from grazing on public property. The judge reiterated that decision in 2013 and authorized the U.S. government to impound the cattle.

The first phase of that impoundment started Saturday, with 58 head of cattle being removed from BLM land, federal officials said in an online statement. As of Monday afternoon, that number had risen to 134, BLM spokeswoman Kirsten Cannon told ABC News. Removing the rest of the trespassing cattle should take another 21 to 30 days, she said.

Bundy disputes the federal government's authority to take such action. The Nevada Sheriff's Office, he contends, is the only entity empowered to impound his cattle. The Bundy Ranch website calls the federal agents "cattle thieves."

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A South Carolina community is feeling the fear after shed snake skins found near an apartment complex were identified as coming from the Gaboon viper, a venomous snake from Africa.



From ABC News:

When a pest control company came last week to do a regular checkup on the bait boxes at the complex, the exterminator found snake skins nearby, took a picture, and reported it to the management office.

“The skin was still moist, indicating it was freshly shed,” Jennifer Bailey, an employee at the Harbor Pointe Apartments, told ABC News today.

To identify the snake, the office contacted a snake expert hours later who came in and said that the skin came from a Gaboon viper, an exotic snake not indigenous to the U.S. Another local herpetologist confirmed the identity through a photograph the pest control took, Bailey said.

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A San Antonio TV station is questioning whether the rattlesnake in a field of bluebonnets featured in a viral Facebook photo is alive, or a taxidermied and posed dead snake.



Given that the topic "snake in bluebonnets" has its own section on hoax debunker website Snopes.com, and it wouldn't be the first time a taxidermist has claimed to play this particular prank. it's a valid question.

From KSAT:

The picture, submitted to a news station’s Facebook page in Austin, shows a rattlesnake coiled among bluebonnets.

The picture has many reconsidering their annual trip to take pictures in the bluebonnets, believing it may be too dangerous.

Some experts, however, are questioning the validity of the picture.

"It’s a real picture,” said Blaine Easton, a snake expert with the South Texas Herpetology Society. “I'm not sure that snake is alive. I think the snake is dead and mounted by a taxidermist."

According to Easton, it is the snake’s neck position that causes him to question the picture. Easton said it did raise a valid concern.

"I have found in the middle of bluebonnets, on some ranches, rattlesnakes sitting there,” said Easton.

After all, Texas is home to 113 species of snakes. The moral, according to experts, is to just be cautious.

Watch their report...

This image of a Salmander, uploaded by kingsnake.com user cochran, is our herp photo of the day!



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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