He has dedicated his free time over the past three years studying a set of nine rock pools on the shore of Loch Alsh, near Reraig.

His Loch Alsh studies have unearthed an unexpected breeding population of palmate newts and has been monitoring their numbers.

It is an unusual find because the newts generally live in freshwater, rather than the more challenging conditions of the sea loch.

His work has been noticed by the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust who have invited him to present his findings to the experts at the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Symposium in Edinburgh this weekend.

According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the number of loggerhead turtle nests remained high and the number of leatherback turtle nests reached a record this year.

Researchers surveyed more than 800 miles of Florida beaches for two reports that document the number of nests and nesting trends.

"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.

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.

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.

"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."

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

The 9ft (2.7 metre) creature has been taught to walk towards a series of yellow targets, getting a treat if he manages to complete the task successfully.

Despite its terrifying reputation, this Komodo dragon often responds to its keepers call by waddling towards the targets.

As Komodo dragons spend most of their time resting in the sun, the training provides much-needed exercise for Sunny throughout the day.

And once he masters the trick, keepers can ask Sunny to move into a different area of the exhibit.

The training is also helpful if medical attention is needed, as Sunny could voluntarily move without the need for sedation.

Footage from the GoPro camera is currently being used to review the sessions and give an insight into how Sunny sees his training.

According to the federal agency, the black pinesnake is found only in Mobile, Washington and Clarke counties in Alabama, and 11 Mississippi counties, including Jackson and George. It has not been seen in Louisiana in more than 30 years.

If deemed threatened under the Endangered Species Act, the government would impose certain restrictions on activities like the use of herbicides, controlled burns and some timber activities in the affected habitat areas.

"The black pinesnake is an important part of the longleaf pine ecosystem in southern Alabama and Mississippi," Fish & Wildlife Southeast Regional Director Cindy Dohner said in a prepared statement. "Conservation efforts for the black pinesnake align closely with efforts already ongoing in this ecosystem for other wildlife like the gopher tortoise, eastern indigo snake, dusky gopher frog and the red-cockaded woodpecker."

A total of 51 Leptodactylus fallax, known as mountain chicken frogs because they reportedly taste like chicken and make a clucking-like noise, were released on the Jersey-sized island of Montserrat, a British Overseas Territory.

In 2009, conservationists rescued a population of the critically endangered frogs from the island to avoid them being wiped out by a chytrid fungus which has devastated amphibian numbers worldwide. The mountain chicken frog population has also dwindled due to people eating them – the species is the national dish in nearby Dominica.

Following a breeding programme with the rescued frogs by London Zoo and Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, which produced 76 frogs from just two females, 51 frogs in July were put in custom-built shipping containers, flown to Antigua and then by a smaller plane to Montserrat. On arrival at their remote forest home on the volcanically active island, they were kept in tents for several days to avoid being stressed by their new environment, before being released into the wild.

The python is one of the San's most important animals. According to their creation myth, mankind descended from the python and the ancient, arid streambeds around the hills are said to have been created by the python as it circled the hills in its ceaseless search for water.

Sheila Coulson's find shows that people from the area had a specific ritual location associated with the python. The ritual was held in a little cave on the northern side of the Tsodilo Hills. The cave itself is so secluded and access to it is so difficult that it was not even discovered by archaeologists until the 1990s.

When Coulson entered the cave this summer with her three master's students, it struck them that the mysterious rock resembled the head of a huge python. On the six meter long by two meter tall rock, they found three-to-four hundred indentations that could only have been man-made.

Green sea turtles normally live in the Pacific’s warmer latitudes. Their numbers are dwindling because of development along the beaches they use to nest, and because they sometimes become snared in industrial fishing nets and drown.

Climate change has also affected the ancient reptiles. Because temperature determines their gender when they hatch, females vastly outnumber males these days. And the warmer ocean currents tend to take the turtles places they’re not accustomed to going, such as San Francisco Bay.

Herpetology keeper Ruth Smith said: “Sand lizards are the UK’s rarest lizard and populations in some areas are so low that we can’t just rely on protecting the site, we have to help breed them to boost their numbers.

“Surveys have shown that sand lizard numbers have significantly improved in the locations where they have been released before and it’s proven that those bred in the likes of zoos have a higher chance of survival than those that hatch in the wild.

“That’s because we’re able to give them plenty of food and intensive care in their vital early days and build them up for around four to six weeks, giving them a great head start.

But far from being scared, Mr Korostelev was delighted with his deadly encounter.

He said: 'It was not an accidental meeting, the main purpose of my trip was to capture an American crocodile in its natural environment.

'I met this crocodile underwater face to face. When it swam close to me, the only thought I had was about how great it was that I could take great pictures.

'It nuzzled into the camera several times and sometimes it touched me with its tail.'

"We were supposed to come out on a Friday the first time," said Swanson. "We ended up being delayed by a day because he was burying his aunt, who had just died from breast cancer the day before. When he found out that we were out here to collect these snakes to try to use them for cancer research, it changed their whole outlook on it."

It changed the Hubbards' outlook so much that they plan to turn part of their property into a conservation area so people can view the creatures in their natural habitat. They're hoping to open up the eco-tourist venture by sometime next summer.

Lonsesome George was the last of the Pinta Island giant tortoises on the Galapagos. Due to human intervention in the ecosystem his entire species whittled down to just George. Since his discovery he'd been well cared for and revered by scientists across the board. Several attempts at mating George just never panned out and he died from old age. Within 24 hours of his death he was frozen with the decision to taxidermy him.

The first step of the process was to get George to the museum for evaluation. This involved huge amounts of coordination and paperwork to get him to NY through customs and into the States safely intact. They worked against the clock to minimize any types of freezer burn or damage done to George that could happen when kept frozen too long or transported poorly. After the museum assessed George, he was brought to the Wildlife Preservations taxidermy studio in Woodland Park, NJ.

George Dante, president of Wildlife Preservations and an expert in the field of taxidermy, lead the effort in bringing George's likeness back into existence. Since there were no other animals of his species to base him off of, extensive amounts of research went into making sure the process was as accurate as possible.