But now the cause of the fire salamanders’ rapid decline has been revealed. According to a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the fire salamanders in the Netherlands contracted a previously unknown fungus related to Bd, the fungus that causes chytridiomycosis. The paper dubs the new fungus Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans spec. nov. It causes superficial erosions on the salamanders’ skin, followed by deep ulcerations and microscopic skin necrosis. Captive-bred amphibians which the scientists exposed to the fungus died in as little as seven days.

"At this moment we don’t know the origin of the fungus," says the paper’s lead author, An Martel of the Department of Pathology, Bacteriology and Avian Diseases at Ghent University. "It can be an endemic species that became virulent or it can be an invasive species that was introduced in the Netherlands. Worldwide monitoring can give us an answer to this question. But still, if the fungus would spread a lot of amphibian populations are at risk."

Scientists had thought that the Gardiner’s Seychelles frog—at 11 millimeters among the tiniest in the world—was deaf because it doesn’t have a middle ear, a critical component of hearing that’s found most land animals.

[...]

So the scientists x-rayed one of the tiny frogs. The images revealed that the frogs’ pulmonary system is poorly developed, suggesting that the lungs aren’t contributing to hearing, according to the study, published September 2 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

So the scientists refocused their experiments on the frogs’ heads. By making various 3-D simulations of how sound travels through the frogs’ heads, the scientists found that the bones in their mouths act as an amplifier for sound waves.

The incident, reported in Hayward, is one of three incidents in as many days that scammers tricked their way into homes to check for reptiles. Earlier burglaries took place in Union City and Fremont, police said.

Officers were called about 6:30 p.m. on Aug. 22 to a home in the 2200 block of Bennington Lane after a woman reported her home had been burglarized, said Hayward police Sgt. Mark Ormsby.

The victim told police that a suspect posing as a Hayward Animal Control Officer came to her home wearing a green uniform and said he needed to check her backyard for snake eggs. While the victim was in the backyard with the suspect, a second suspect entered the home and stole property. Police did not say what was taken or how much it was worth.

We have had to trust that these lab-raised, perhaps ecologically naïve, snakes would possess the innate behaviors needed to integrate into the natural framework of finding shelter, avoiding predators, foraging and capturing prey, surviving the winter, reaching maturity, finding mates, reproducing, and so forth. Thus far the indications are that the snakes are hitting the ground with the needed intrinsic behaviors.

We can also view this reintroduction to be successful on a partnership level. Academic institution, state and federal agencies, and non-profit conservation and educational organizations have come together for the benefit of the eastern indigo snake. Auburn University has been at the center with research and implementation but the project would not have been possible without support and contributions from the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, The Orianne Society, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, U.S. Forest Service, Zoo Atlanta, and Ft. Stewart (U.S. Army).

Eastern Indigo Snakes freely roaming the forest have opened up an avenue of educational opportunities. Snakes, nor any other organism, recognize artificial human boundaries, and our indigo snakes have on many occasions made this very evident. Not too distant from the release area is the Blue Lake Camp, a rustic camp of the United Methodist Church. Within a few weeks at least one snake found their way to the camp. As readers of this blog know, the appearance of a snake on a property is often met with a hoe, shovel, or firearm, but not in this instance. Having a radio transmitter allowed Jimmy and Sierra, our Conecuh ambassadors of snake education, to locate the snake(s) on the property, speak with managers of the camp, and illuminate the importance of the snakes. The fact that they eat Copperheads was not downplayed.

Ultimately the Eastern Indigo Snakes must be accepted by the human visitors of Conecuh National Forest. Being a national forest dictates a multi-use approach, and the visitors to the forest span all of society. Signs have been posted within the forest to alert and educate visitors of the presence of the indigo snake. Some will see the presence of the indigo snake as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience first-hand an iconic ruler of the longleaf pine ecosystem, others, unfortunately, not so much. But when we set forth with this reintroduction effort we made the decision that snake persecution would be a real possibility and that information and education were the best tools to combat it.

Federal funds are running out at the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center and officials plan to close the site and euthanize hundreds of the tortoises they’ve been caring for since the animals were added to the endangered species list in 1990.

“It’s the lesser of two evils, but it’s still evil,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service desert tortoise recovery coordinator Roy Averill-Murray during a visit to the soon-to-be-shuttered reserve at the southern edge of the Las Vegas Valley last week.

Beyond being fascinating science, the ability to freeze and unfreeze living organs and tissues without damaging them has potentially profound implications for areas such as organ transplantation.

“There’s an obvious parallel between what these frogs are doing to preserve all of their tissues simultaneously and our need to be able to cryopreserve human organs for tissue-matching purposes,” said [researcher Jon] Costanzo, noting that attempts to successfully freeze human organs for transplants have so far proved unsuccessful, perhaps due to their relative size and cellular complexity.

“If you could freeze human organs even for a short period of time, that would be a major breakthrough because then these organs could be shipped around the world, which would greatly [improve] the donor-matching process,” noted Costanzo.

The CDC report might lead health authorities to accelerate the research and approval of a Lyme vaccine. Promising results were found earlier this year on one vaccine under development. That would be a popular item in prime Lyme disease territory, largely the Northeast and northern Midwest states where up to 30% of deer ticks carry the infection. Almost all cases of the disease — 96% -- occur in 13 states.

California isn’t among them, and one reason for that is that we have, in a sense, our own little natural vaccine program going. In this state, nymphal ticks’ favorite host is the common western fence lizard, which has a protein in it blood that kills the bacterium responsible for Lyme. As a result, few adult ticks are carriers.

[...] Galápagos National Park and its partners launched a program to eradicate the rats and other invasive species throughout the archipelago, starting on smaller islands such as Pinzón, which as of last year was home to an astonishing 180 million rats. Last December more than 20,000 kilograms of poison were dropped on the 18-square-kilometer island. The poisons, which dissolve after a few days, were specially designed to attract rats but repel birds and other wildlife that might accidentally consume them. The rodents quickly took the bait and Pinzón has now been tentatively declared rat-free.

Late last month Galápagos National Park took the third step and returned 118 juvenile tortoises to Pinzón from a breeding center on Santa Cruz Island.

Mr Powell said the arrangement would save many animals from an uncertain fate.

"Every year our wildlife rangers are called on to help native birds and reptiles which, for a number of reasons, cannot be released into the wild,'' he said.

"It may be because we can't identify the area from which they came or that they were born in captivity.

"Some animals are the innocent victims of illegal activity, others are surrendered by wildlife carers whose circumstances have changed and they simply can no longer look after them.

"Historically they were offered to zoos and wildlife parks but, if they had no space, there was no alternative but to euthanise them."

Price and his colleagues sought to understand the fate of turtles in the Charlotte, North Carolina, metropolitan area, where galloping growth has swallowed 60 percent of the undeveloped land in some counties.

The researchers set out nets baited with tins of sardines in 20 local ponds. Some ponds were on golf courses, others in cattle pastures or neighborhood parks. The scientists checked the traps every other day, extracting any occupants by hand.

The surveys showed that two common species—the painted turtle and the slider—were just as abundant in golf course ponds as in farm ponds ... while neighborhood ponds placed a distant third.

And golf course ponds boasted a richer variety of turtle species than farm and neighborhood ponds, because the area around golf course ponds tended to have better connections to other green space, the scientists report in an upcoming issue of the journal Landscape and Urban Planning.

It's not clear why more kinds of turtles hang out near the fairways than down at the local park. Perhaps it's because golf courses often boast multiple ponds and even lakes or streams. And the courses' large stretches of grass and field are good for turtle nests.

Sarasota Officer Derek Conley was on patrol at 1 a.m. Saturday when he saw sea turtle hatchlings crawling toward the front door of the Lido Beach Resort. A passerby also told Conley that several dozen other baby turtles were walking around the hotel's parking lot.

Conley, along with some resort guests, scooped up the hatchlings in a box and released them into the water.

"I began collecting hatchlings from the street and stopped traffic several times to do so," wrote Conley in a report.

A news release says that Conley spotted three dead turtles, and he estimates that 90-100 turtles were saved.

Conley also called two area marine rescue groups.

In Washington's Olympic Mountains things are looking dryer than normal. On a recent day, Maureen Ryan is out looking for the wet spots. She's a researcher with the University of Washington and an expert on amphibians that live at high elevation.

These mountain trails are Ryan's lab, so to speak. She studies tiny snow-fed potholes of water, cupped in the folds of high mountain ranges in the Northwest, a perfect habitat for Cascades frogs. But as the global climate warms, that habitat is receding.

"What's happening to these frogs is in no way dissimilar to what's happening to us, even if we can't necessarily see it," Ryan says. "These frogs are reliant on snowmelt for the water they need to live."

People in the Pacific Northwest also rely on snowmelt to supply water for agriculture, industry, hydropower and drinking water.

Cascades frogs spend most of the year beneath dozens of feet of snow. But for a few short months in the summer, the frogs come to warm sunny ponds to feed and mate. While they're at it, they make what some describe as a "chuckling" sound.

[...]

"Last year we had a good number of ponds ... [that] dried up before the tadpoles had metamorphosed, so they didn't survive there," she says.

Ryan worries that with less snowpack and hotter summers, more egg sacks and tadpoles will be stranded out of water. That could ultimately decimate the population, unless they can move into deeper alpine lakes that are more resilient to the warming climate.

While it’s not especially natural to empathize with beady-eyed creatures that have been demonized throughout history and rounded up for mass killing, the idea that “the only good snake is a dead snake” is an erroneous one, says Steven J. Beaupre, Ph.D., a biology professor at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Snakes play an important role in sustaining the earth’s fragile balance of nature, and, although often unjustly persecuted, they offer humans many benefits. For example, according to the National Institutes of Health, snakes are the prized research animals for some scientists seeking better treatments for such disorders as high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, and cancer.

“Serious diseases lurk in nature, and healthy ecosystems provide protective effects. Rattlesnakes exactly fit the bill,” Beaupre says. “They’re critically important natural rodent-control agents and voracious small-animal predators that help keep rodent-born diseases like hantavirus and bubonic plague in check.”

Beaupre also says Arkansas timber rattlesnakes may actually help control Lyme disease by consuming large numbers of white-footed mice that carry the bacterial infection. “Plus, any rancher who stores grain knows how devastating rodents can be to his supply,” he notes.

Human cases of Lyme disease, a bacterial illness that can cause serious neurological problems if left untreated, are on the rise. The disease is spread by black-legged ticks, which feed on infected mice and other small mammals. Foxes and other mammal predators help control the disease by keeping small mammal populations in check. The decline of these mammal predators may be a factor in Lyme disease's prevalence among humans.

Timber rattlers are also top predators in Eastern forests, and their numbers are also falling, so former University of Maryland graduate student Edward Kabay wanted to know whether the rattlers also play a role in controlling Lyme disease.

Kabay used published studies of timber rattlers' diets at four Eastern forest sites to estimate the number of small mammals the snakes consume, and matched that with information on the average number of ticks each small mammal carried. The results showed that each timber rattler removed 2,500-4,500 ticks from each site annually.

Because not every human bitten by an infected tick develops Lyme disease, the team did not estimate how many people are spared the disease because of the ecosystem service that timber rattlesnakes provide. But Kabay, who is now a science teacher at East Chapel Hill High School, and his research colleagues will talk about the human health implications of their work at 4:20 pm today (Aug. 6) in Room 1011 of the Minneapolis Convention Center.

Timber rattlesnakes are listed as endangered in six states and threatened in five more under the Endangered Species Act.

"Habitat loss, road kills, and people killing them out of fear are the big issues," said University of Maryland Associate Biology Prof. Karen Lips. "They are non-aggressive and rarely bite unless provoked or stepped upon."

A man tried to smuggle his pet turtle through security in Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport by hiding it in a KFC hamburger.

The incident occurred on the morning of July 29, when a man, surnamed Li, was about to board China Southern Airlines flight 345 to Beijing, Guangzhou Daily reported. As Li passed through airport security, X-ray screening machines detected a few “odd protrusions” sticking out of a KFC burger that the man had packed in his bag.

Airport staff determined that the protrusions looked suspiciously like turtle limbs, and asked to inspect Li’s luggage.

“There’s no turtle in there, just a hamburger,” Li reportedly insisted. “There’s nothing special to see inside.”

Li finally acquiesced to an inspection after repeated requests from airport staff, who uncovered the pet turtle hidden inside the burger. When asked why he had devised this strange idea, Li said that he had only wanted to travel together with his “beloved” turtle.

Reports that crocodiles have a taste for fruit go back decades, says Thomas Rainwater at the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Charleston, South Carolina. "But since these animals were long considered carnivores, no one paid much attention."

In a routine analysis of American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis) living in the Everglades National Park in Florida, Rainwater and his colleagues found fruit including pond apples in the alligators' stomachs. They then turned up reports that at least 13 of the 23 living crocodilian species are fruit eaters.

Whether or not crocodilians actively go after fruit is debatable – especially as the predators are secretive and tend to do most of their foraging at night. A crocodile might simply eat an animal that has itself recently dined on fruit, for example.

But there is some evidence that fruit is consumed deliberately, too.

Among the snakes that were found were some of the most deadly, including five albino western diamondbacks and a Gaboon viper.

“The Gaboon viper is considered one of the most dangerous snakes in the world,” said Brad Hunt of the Utah Division of Wildlife. “It has very long fangs and very potent venom.”

The Gaboon Viper is indigenous to Africa, and anti-venom for the snake is not readily available in the United States.

Having venomous snakes is illegal in the state of Utah, and even native snakes must be registered and have permits. It is suspected that the owner, whose name has not been released but who officials believe is a snake professional or breeder, smuggled at least the Gaboon viper from out of state.

He was cited for possession of illegal animals, and Animal Control was in contact with an attorney to consider options for pressing any misdemeanor charges.

The snakes that he owned legally will be returned to him, officials said.

First let me address an issue that is a pet peeve of many biologists, and that is the difference between the terms “venomous” and “poisonous.” Many lay people use the terms interchangeably, when, if fact, they are very different. A poison is typically ingested, whereas venom is injected or actively introduced into the victim’s body. An example of the former is the cane toad (Bufo marinus)—potential predators of the toad are poisoned by toxic secretions produced by glands on the skin when they try to ingest the animal. An example of the latter is the king cobra (Ophiophagus hannah), a large predatory snake that literally injects venom through its syringe-like fangs that are connected to venom glands. Some venomous species, such as rear-fanged snakes and gila monsters (Heloderma suspectum, one of the world’s few venomous lizards) must chew in order to introduce the venom, since they have no efficient way of injecting it. In addition, some poisons can be introduced through means other than ingestion, as for example, when someone with a cut on their hand picks up a poison dart frog, and the poison enters the blood stream through a skin abrasion.