For the first time, parthenogenesis (or virgin birth) has occurred with a reticulated python.

From National Georgraphic:

"Pythons are an old, ancient species. We've seen this in more advanced species like garter snakes," said Booth, adding that the discovery helps scientists learn more about the snakes' evolutionary family tree.

It's still a mystery as to why parthenogenesis happens, though Booth hypothesizes that geographic isolation from males and captivity may have a lot to do with it.

In Thelma's case, her virgin birth may have been triggered by ideal living conditions, zoo curator McMahan speculates.

Read more...

Using a technique more common in forensic science than taxonomy, a grad student identified a new frog of Madagascar.

From Discover Magazine:

Taking an integrative approach to taxonomy (versus the traditional and still-common practice of relying solely on morphology), Scherz examined genetics, morphology, and a technique that’s still cutting-edge for distinguishing species: CT scans. Wrapping the frog in alcohol-drenched paper (don’t worry, it was long dead) and shooting X-ray beams at it while rotating its position, Scherz was able create 3-D computer images of its skeleton while not destroying any of the tissue.

The non-invasive method allowed Scherz to see subtle but crucial skeletal features (such as the length of a segment of the thumb bone) that were critical for recognizing the rhombus frog as a new, unique species.

The CT technology also enabled him to see the frog’s last meal (or perhaps last several), revealing a millipede, six ants, a spider, a fly, and at least three different species of beetle in its stomach and large intestine. It’s no wonder Scherz named it vaventy, the Malagasy word for “huge,” in the paper describing the find, published in Zootaxa.

Read more...

Check out this video "Crested X Chahoua Hybrid," submitted by kingsnake.com user lance_portal.
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!

A UK man was prosecuted for swallowing a live lizard and frog.

From Express UK:

During the 90-second-long clip, Jeans downed a glass of water filled with crickets, before putting a frog in the same glass and swallowing it whole.

Jeans, of Cowplain, Hampshire, then gulped down a three-inch long lizard.

He was prosecuted despite claiming that he regurgitated the animals afterwards.

Jeans was ordered to do 80 hours of unpaid work after admitting causing unnecessary suffering to the animals under the Animal Welfare Act 2006.

Read more...

Cane toads introduced into Australia are evolving to move farther, faster.

From ABC News:

"All you get at the front are the offspring of the fastest toads who were themselves the offspring of the fastest toads who themselves were the offspring of the fastest toads.

"Genes for fast dispersal end up concentrated at the invasion front.

"This is evolution through space rather than time.

"It's quite different to the sorts of things (Charles) Darwin talked about."

Read more...

Australian crocodiles that nabbed local dogs are being kept alive instead of destroyed.

From NT News:

“These two were removed (from waterways near Ski Beach) because they were a community pest – they start taking dogs and next it could be a kid.”

The old crocs are held in leafy enclosures, along with a handful of smaller salties in other fenced pools, at the site where the corporation once ran a crocodile farm.

Traditional owners didn’t want the reptiles killed – crocs are the totem animal for some Yolngu.

Read more...

What can cause someone to go through "reverse puberty?" A snake bite.

From Live Science:

In some cases, the bites of venomous snakes called Russell's vipers, which inhabit South and Southeast Asian countries, can cause bleeding in the pituitary gland. This damages the organ and can prevent it from performing its basic function, the production of hormones including those that regulate sexual functioning.

In a report published in October 1987 in the journal The Lancet, researchers examined 33 cases of patients bitten by Russell's vipers. Some of those patients developed serious hormonal abnormalities, which resulted in decreased libido; loss of pubic and armpit hair; erection problems in men; and irregular, scant or absent menstrual periods in women.

Read more...

The world's a pretty hostile place for herps these days, with a number of emerging pathogens threatening the existence of many species of reptiles and potentially all amphibians. Here are four of the worst threats:

1. The big daddy of them all, which some scientists say might wipe out pretty much every amphibian on earth: chytridiomycosis. It's caused by Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. While protocols exist to cure it in the laboratory, the only positive news for animals in the wild is some amphibians may be able to mount an immune response to the fungus. Maybe.



2. Snakes worldwide, mostly in the boid family, have been struck by Inclusion Body Disease, thought to be caused by a retrovirus. The disease is fatal in symptomatic animals, and there's ongoing research into it at the University of Florida.



3. A deadly virus recently diagnosed in box turtles in Southwest Florida and affecting amphibians worldwide: ranavirus.



4. A nasty fungus killing snakes in the Midwestern and Eastern U.S.: Ophidiomyces ophiodiicola. The good news: There's a new test for the disease. The bad news: So far, there's no cure, and the fungus seems to outwit all current disinfectants. At great risk is the last eastern massasauga rattlesnake population in Illinois.

Check out this video "Toad Enjoys Scratching," submitted by kingsnake.com user PH FasDog.
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!

Dave Pauli is taking banned Montana red-eared sliders on a trek to Texas.

From the Independent Record:

The lake is on a wildlife sanctuary created for relocated Grand Canyon burros. Pauli’s trip is no pedal-to-the-metal exercise. Turtles take time. The ones Pauli receives will spend weeks in large ponds in Montana getting used to catching food, diving deep and swimming beyond the glass walls of an aquarium.

A turtle that has lived in shallow water in a short glass tank doesn’t know how to manage the sink-or-swim pond life. Pauli said the animals will be tested to see which are fit for release and which continue to need looking after.

Thursday, Pauli was working with a red-eared slider that was swimming the length of a pool 25 feet long. That turtle will be joined by other turtles submitted during the one-time, red-eared slider turtle turn-in program.

Read more...

Elementary school students helped pass a law that names the threatened California red-legged frog the state amphibian.

From the Desert Sun:

Two students — Samantha Lambarena and Freedom America Payne — traveled to Sacramento in April to sell lawmakers on the idea.

The red-legged frog is the largest native frog in the western United States.

“We think people will protect it just like they protect America’s bald eagle,” Lambarena said during the April hearing.

Read more...

The commercial ties an island has may be key to understanding biodiversity and invasive species.

From the New York Times:

Historically, the diversity and complexity of life on an island was determined largely by its size and distance from other landmasses; if animals couldn’t easily travel to and from an island, few new species would arrive and establish themselves.

But with the shipping trade now allowing species to stow away from one island to the next, commerce has overtaken geography as the key factor in cross-island speciation.

“Humans have switched the system to one that in the past was dominated by speciation but now is dominated by colonization,” said Matthew R. Helmus, an ecologist with the Amsterdam Global Change Institute and the lead author of the study, published in Nature. “That’s really a fundamental shift to the system.”

Read more...

Humans and advanced primates are capable of learning through imitation, and now evidence suggests reptiles are too.

From Science Daily:

There is considerable debate about the extent to which non-primates are capable of true imitation.

Now researchers from the UK and Hungary have presented the first compelling scientific evidence that reptiles could be capable of social learning through imitation.

They set out to investigate whether the bearded dragon (Pogona vitticeps) is capable of imitating another bearded dragon through a simple experiment using a wooden board which contained a doorway.

All subjects successfully copied the actions of the demonstrator lizard, suggesting for the first time that reptiles exhibit social learning through imitation equivalent to that observed in 'higher' species.

Read more...

Check out this video "Northern Copperhead," submitted by kingsnake.com user PH FasDog.
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!