School officials say a boa constrictor disappeared from its cage at the Jeffords Center over the weekend. Students had a snow day Monday. On Tuesday, the professor who owns the snake discovered it was gone.

"I didn't know there was a snake on campus before now, it's kind of scary," said Justin Goulet, a sophomore.

The Castleton Community received an email this week alerting them that the 4-foot long rainbow boa was "thought to [have been] stolen from a lab."

"Based on what we've seen so far we tend to think it's been taken based on the snake's usual habits," said Dikeman. "It tended to be shy and timid, and doesn't like to be outside of a warm tropical environment."

Sunshine Coast snake catcher Stuart McKenzie said while carpet pythons are common across the north coast he’s never come across one dining out.

Mr McKenzie said the python was as big as they come.

“This is one of the bigger ones I’ve come across as a snake catcher,” he said.

“A lot of the time as snake catchers we’ll get to the property and the chicken or the guinea pig will already be in its belly, so it’s pretty awesome to see it halfway through.”

"The armor actually protected me and stopped the bite," Loxley said in a video posted online.

"I could feel the teeth on the plastic, scraping, but the armor actually stopped something," he said.

"So all those people that rag on the old stormtroopers, you know, 'the armor doesn't do this it, doesn't do that', it stopped a snake bite and probably saved my life today," he added.

The former soldier is walking around Australia dressed as a stormtrooper to raise $80,000 for the Monash Children's Hospital in his home city of Melbourne.

Frank Lundberg, a herpetologist, testified in support of the bill and was disappointed after it failed.

"It is a mistake to ever overestimate the ignorance of the Idaho Legislature," he said.

Idaho fourth grade classes study state symbols as part of Idaho history, and a fourth-grade teacher backed the bill as well.

But Rep. Ken Andrus, R-Lava Hot Springs, voted against the salamander after recalling being repulsed by them as a young boy.

"They were ugly, they were slimy, and they were creepy," he said. "And I've not gotten over that. So to elevate them to the status of being the state amphibian, I'm not there yet."

The snake can jump five metres and disappear in a trice, says wildlife biologist Bubesh Guptha who has spotted it near the temple town of Tirumala in the state of Andhra Pradesh.

Around three feet long and sporting big eyes and skin patterned in ash and olive green, he has spotted the same species twice in and around the same hills.

The mildly venomous tropical snake Chrysopelea taprobanica eats bats, lizards, geckos, smaller snake species, skirls and birds, reports Nature Asia.

Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife conservation biologist Susan Barnes called the failure to spot a single individual at 15 sites “moderately alarming.”

“It’s clear that there are not a lot of turtles out there, but it will take more years of data to understand what’s happening with local western pond turtles and why,” said Barnes, who oversaw the survey.

Pond turtle populations have declined throughout their West Coast range for a number of reasons, including destruction of their wetland habitat, conflict with invasive species and a recently discovered shell disease.

The young woman has been pushing the bill for five years now, and last year, it passed the Senate on a 33-2 vote. But it never got a committee hearing in the House. “In all fairness to her, we were really at the end of the session last year, and we had an awful lot to do,” Loertscher said. “It doesn’t mean that I’m going to vote for it, but in fairness to her, I thought it should be heard.” He said he’s expecting to set a hearing on the bill for early next week.

“I think that the Idaho giant salamander is the best candidate to represent our state,” Ilah told the State Affairs Committee this morning. “It has ‘Idaho’ in its name. The pattern on its skin looks like a topographical map of the Bitterroot Mountains. And it makes its home almost exclusively in Idaho.” She called the salamander an “intriguing animal” and said its designation as a state symbol could help engage students, like her, in learning about Idaho.

The new species is named Kurixalus motokawai to honor Dr. Masaharu Motokawa from Kyoto University. He is a researcher of mammals and has made many contributions to the study and conservation of biodiversity in Vietnam.

This is the second species of Kurixalus tree frog discovered in the Central Highlands in 2014, bringing the total number of species of tree frog in Vietnam to 73, accounting for 20% of all species of tree frogs of the world.

"This specimen is really rare," said Modesto, who was the principal investigator of the project. "It's the only specimen we know of from this particular part of the Carboniferous and it's the only reptile from that slice of time."

The research will be published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B on Wednesday.

Modesto said the fossil was discovered by a boy and his family on their farmland in Prince County, P.E.I., more than 14 years ago. It was taken to the Royal Ontario Museum in 2004 and about four years ago, Modesto and his team started their research.

The fossil, erpetonyx arsenaultorum, was named after the Arsenault family who made the discovery.

Dean thinks the snake may have been curled up in a pair of thick socks which he had also bought on Saturday’s shopping trip.

He added: “I think it’s maybe been keeping warm in them before coming out once I arrived back.”

Wayne Mailer, who runs Dragons Den Exotic Pets in Newcastle, said: “Looking at the picture, this appears to be an Amery Corn Snake.

“I think it’s probably only a hatchling maybe only a few weeks old . At the minute it doesn’t appear to be in the best of health, probably due to the cold weather.

“More than likely, it is an escapee pet.”

Using four different species of leaf litter frogs, they replicated and sampled 10 plots per year, using a plot survey technique of total leaf litter removal within each plot. They measured and sampled annual species diversity and community composition once a year during March, during the dry season, at the Organization of Tropical Studies Las Cruces Biological Station in southern Costa Rica.

Their findings were surprising in that strictly terrestrial frog species (i.e., they do not breed in water) can be influenced by extreme rainfall events much like their aquatic-breeding counterparts. The researchers discovered that species diversity and the community structure changed negatively in dramatic fashion from the two pre-La Niña years compared to the onset of the La Niña event in 2010.

The altered community structure due to extreme rainfall lasted for over 20 months. During that time, all four leaf litter frog species declined in number and several measures revealed marked changes in the community structure in terms of both plot diversity and occupancy.