After arriving at the National Reptile Breeders' Expo in Daytona, I spent some time walking around the exhibit hall and hitting the talks.

I had so much trouble deciding which talk I wanted to go to, that I ended up bouncing between all three: the annual turtle talks, which are a regular hit and very popular; the boa talks along with a legal chat by Bill Brant, Dave Barker and Andrew Wyatt; and the Gecko Symposium.

Afterward, Chris Law and I hooked up with Jason Hood, a friend from the Chicago Herp Society, for what we had hoped would be a night of herping.

But sometimes all you do is hope. A Vinegaroon later, we came up pretty with nothing more than a bunch of frogs bopping across the road. But hey, we hung out and I tested out my brand spanking new headlamp.

Maybe where we went wrong was I was actually prepared. Usually I have nothing more than my wits. This time I had everything: collapsible hook, flashlights, headlamp, and good friends. I guess I'll try leaving something behind next time -- but definitely not the friends!

The flatworm parasite, Ribeiroia ondatrae, has been known for a decade to cause deformities. While distribution is not spreading, the location of this parasite in monitored sites has moved.

"We found that, although the distribution of Ribeiroia across wetlands changed, there was little net effect on overall parasite prevalence, with 31 percent of wetlands gaining the parasite and 27 percent losing the parasite," according to the study.

But "what was most intriguing," Johnson said, "was that the locations of hot spots had changed substantially over the last decade."

For instance, ponds where scientists had found few "grotesque" frogs in 1999 now had 30 percent or more frogs with deformed limbs, he said. Likewise, former hot spots now had fewer of the diseased amphibians, according to their results, which are not yet published in a journal.

Because some of the hot spots can house threatened or endangered amphibians, conservationists need to know where the parasite is moving.

Predicting future hot spots by keeping track of environmental factors—for example how land is used—may also help scientists figure out what's happening to amphibian populations.

"These severe malformations—even though it's not in the headline news—these continue to occur in a lot of amphibian populations in the western U.S.," said Johnson, who received funding from the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration. (The Society owns National Geographic News.)

To read the full article, click here.

Beating all odds, this Loggerhead turtle is recovering nicely after being shot in the head with a spear and with the help of community outcry, perhaps the culprits will be caught. An increasing reward is being offered and currently sits at $10,750 cash and other items offered by community members.

"The whole community is so up in arms about it," said Richie Moretti, who founded the Turtle Hospital in Marathon in 1986.

The victim is a sub adult, 15 to 18 years old. Although the turtle is too young for its gender to be determined, its rescuers named it Sara, after a family member who was celebrating her 18th birthday.

Doug Mader, an expert reptile veterinarian who removed the four-foot, steel-shafted spear, said Sara is one lucky turtle.

The story began on Aug. 3, when father and son Charlie and Nicholas Borg, vacationing from Michigan, were returning to Big Pine Key from a fishing trip in the Atlantic. They spotted something floating, with flippers in the air, near Little Palm Island.

As they got closer, they discovered it was a sea turtle with a long spear protruding from its face. "I've seen turtles before that were hit by boats, but that was not anything I expected to see," said Nicholas Borg, 22.

"At first we thought it was dead, but it pulled its head up, took a breath and dove back down," he added. "We both looked at each other and knew we needed to do something."

[....]

He expects that Sara will be well enough to be released back into the wild within a month or so.

"I don't think it will have any permanent injuries, just a great story to tell its kids," Mader said.

To read the full article. click here.

Despite the fact that Florida is a battle ground for invasive pythons, thousands of reptile owners are preparing to land en masse there over the next few days.

To the reptile community, Daytona is the Mecca of our journey. Our very own forums here at kingsnake.com, Facebook and Twitter are buzzing with folks planning to meet up. With our community spread far and wide, this is the one time we often get to meet our "friends."

We'll be enjoying the chance to bring the show to those not able to be there. And if you are at the show, we will keep in touch with you as well. Live blogs of the talks, photos from the show floor, interviews with vendors and attendees as well as taking you along on any herping trips will all be happening.

A few ways to keep up with us this week are listed after the bump.

A Galapagos tortoise at the Dubbo Western Plains Zoo became a first-time mother and, as you can see by this pic, created one of the most adorable shots ever!

Slow to get started but T3 the tortoise is a mum at age 90.

And Galapagos tortoise T3 is also a cougar: the two possible fathers at Dubbo Western Plains Zoo are 40 and 41. It is the first time a Galapagos tortoise – the fifth longest-living animals in the world, with some being recorded as reaching 177 years of age – has been bred in captivity in Australasia.

T3′s baby, named NJ, will be alive long after every keeper, and the youngest human visitor to Dubbo Western Plains Zoo, has passed away.

For the full article, click here. Video after the bump.

One of the most interesting parts of any conference are the field trips away from the actual talks. At the International Herpetological Symposium, I was left in hysterics over one of them. Really, how many other groups would go on a field trip to look at dead things in jars? But for reptile folks, it just seems normal.

Stopping by Carl Franklin's office at the University of Texas - Arlington to see the state's largest specimen collection was definitely interesting. There were a few species I saw that I dont believe I would have seen alive. Carl has a great sense of humor and I will deeply regret missing him speaking at the Chicago Herpetological Society in August. The collection is used nationwide by researchers to learn more about genetics, locality specific data, taxonomy and much more.

After our visit with Carl, it was time for lunch. Dead things, check. Food and drink, check. Live things? Those, too.

Lunch was a trip to the Dallas World Aquarium. After we ate, we headed to the third floor and worked our way down. The aquarium is set up as a descending spiral that brings you different regions as you go. Not just fish, there a selection of mammals, birds and reptiles. Knowing our group, we could not contain ourselves walking through and educating along the way.

I'm telling ya, the Aquarium should have paid us for that day. Every step of the way, all members of our group worked with the general public on reptiles primarily, but everything we knew about. Our little community of gypsies is kinda cool after all. As the day wound down, we headed back to the hotel for the ice breaker party and to prepare for a day of talks.

Photos after the bump.

After being injured by boat propellers last summer, Andre the loggerhead was returned to the same place he found a year ago.

"It's a beautiful thing to see a turtle who had overcome so many obstacles," Ranly said.

Last summer, Andre was spotted by beachgoers on a sand bar on just a few miles from Loggerhead.

Andre had been struck by two boat propellers and was near death. He had a collapsed lung, severe infections and three pounds of sand resting on his shell.

Andre's injuries were so serious, Bethlyn McCloskey, a Loggerhead volunteer, didn't think he was going to make it.

"I thought we were wasting our time," McCloskey said. "But this staff performs miracles."

Ranly said Loggerhead used a "wound vacuum" to draw out all infectious fluids. The center also used grafting material to repair Andre's spinal cord, which was exposed.

To read the full article, click here. Video of the release is after the bump.

photo courtsey of planet save.

A new ointment is proving to save lives by slowing the work that the venom does inside increasing survival rates by 50 percent in Australia.

In experiments on humans and mice, researchers in Australia showed that a class of compounds called nitric oxide donors delays the entry of toxins from potentially deadly snakebites into the blood stream.

Nitric oxide (NO), a molecule involved in regulation of blood pressure and the control of brain activity, has been shown to lower blood pressure in patients who suffer acute strokes.
The new finding is of more than academic interest: every year some 100,000 people worldwide die from snakebites, and another 400,000 must amputate limbs that have been injected with poison.

It has long been known that many snake venoms contain large molecules that transit the human body's lymphatic system before entering the bloodstream.

Separately, scientists have also established that nitric oxide slows down a pumping mechanism within the lymphatic system, a part of the body's immune system that carries a clear fluid -- called lymph -- toward the heart.

To read more, click here.

After 48 months, the final battery may have died, but there is still hope for the snakes relocated in the Lenexa Rattlesnake Relocation Project in Kansas.

The first clue is when Walker calls timber rattlers "the puppy dogs of the rattlesnake world."

The Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks has warm feelings too, listing them among the "species in need of conservation" — animals that cannot be hunted or killed unless they are threatening to attack.

But the little rattlers, living and let living for as long as 20 to 25 years, are mild-mannered.
"Timbers will rarely rattle, let alone strike. It takes a lot of energy to strike," Walker said, so the strike is saved for hunting and feeding. "Their first line of defense is to blend in."

Walker thinks the relocation project was unprecedented -- moving an entire nest of dozens to save them from ultimately fatal contact with humans.

Herpetologists and wildlife specialists from five surrounding states converged to help Walker and her research partner, retired KU professor George Pisani, now an adjunct with the Kansas Biological Survey.

"Our initial intent was to save as many as we could catch and move them," Walker said.
However, these were not a few slithering singles, but a serpent community, established over a decade.

"Snakes have family groups, are familiar with one another, and they recognize their den mates," said Walker.

To read the full story, click here.

Author of Stolen World, Jennie Erin Smith spoke today at IHS. We thought there would be a lot of interest from our members, so enjoy.


Video streaming by Ustream

With so many friends and family members spread through the country, I wanted to live stream my talk so they could be here to support me. In fact two of the most important people in my life, my husband and my father, are tucked away in Wisconsin while I was here presenting. The good news is the talk is here for you all to enjoy. This is an ever evolving talk, so if you have more input, please feel free to email me!



Video streaming by Ustream

I wish I would have made the David Lazcano talk, I happened to come in at the end and he was funny. Emmanuel Van Heygen was the first talk I caught. Speaking on the North-Western Madagascar and the Phelsuma Geckos he gave a quick break down of each species and its distribution range. Any talk that Emmanuel gives is always accompanied by lovely photos he has taken when in the field. Bamboo sounds as if it is the key to proper husbandry of the Phelsuma geckos. There was a lot of breakdown of each species with photos of them in their natural habitat.

A multi-disciplinary approach needs to be used to look at vet med for endangered species. More than treating the illness but treating the situation and environment. The program that they worked with for the Rio Grande River Cooters targeted the area pollution as well as the water pollution oat the TX-Mexico borders. The compared both pristine as well as contaminated river systems for the research and they used the animals from the Devil’s and Peco’s Rivers as their baseline species.

They did sampling, physicals, blood work, to compare with the Rio Grande population. They also assisted on the Cyclura pinguis project on the Virgin Islands. It was a head start program to help reintroduce the species on the wild. The benefits of releasing head-started animals are obvious, but the drawbacks are issues. They tend to imprint on the birth location, they have a harder time finding hide spots, feeding and basking locations. The project head-started, implanted transmitters and then tracked the animals after release.

The post-lunch talks started with Dr. Gary Ferguson on his field work with the Texas Horned lizards. They are secretive, slow moving, and cute. How true that is.

They are opportunistic insectivores however while they will go after anything that moves it appears the ants are what they can only catch/ The common agreements seem to be that they are a longer-lived animal, with the oldest so far tracked at 8 years ago going strong. In Texas they seem to be a species of concern, but their global status is fairly stable.

In Texas, pretty much everyone knows the Horny Toad; they are the mascot of TCU. In captivity, they are very hard to maintain, but it really is possible. The diet seems to be the hardest part of the husbandry. One lizard can eat between 30-100 ants per day. They also have a very large space requirement and for their size they need an exceptionally large cage in comparison. He explained the UV and thermal gradient studies that they did. Sharing a bit of the natural history of their campsite, he went on to describe the techniques. One difference between the sexes is that the males tend to spend more time midday hiding at ground level under the vegetation, but the females, while still staying out of direct sunlight, they tend to climb higher.

Ari R Flagle then spoke on the basking levels of Boelen’s Pythons.

My original reason for visiting the Albuquerque Bio Park was to see Doug Hotle and his sea snakes, but the prize was the Komodo Dragon. How did I not know there was one there?

After leaving the Chiricahuas early in the morning, Bryan Fry and I headed on our long journey to visit Doug and see his amazing collection. We arrived a bit later than we would have liked, but it worked out in the end as Doug had a slight emergency to deal with in the morning.

After making my first drive in mountains and a very long desolate drive from one side of the state to the other, we arrived at the Bio Park mid-afternoon. Grabbing Doug quickly at the end of the day, we had an amazing tour. Starting with some of the animals in his garter snake program and ending with the sea snakes, it was one of the top venomous collections out there.

The true joy for me came when I turned around in one room and saw the sign on the door. KOMODO. The sheer happiness and excitement that those words put in all of us was epic. But when Doug said we could play, that sent me to insane peaks of ecstasy!

Guiding us in to meet the male, I was very glad I wore shoes that covered my toes. An outgoing man of beautiful shades of turquoise and orange, he slowly took the time to greet each of us. Then one of Doug's assistants made my day offering to allow me to feed him. Snuggling and feeding? Can it get more epic?

More photos after the bump.

Saturday night, the Biology of the Rattlesnakes Symposium ended with an auction to benefit the Student Grant Program. On Sunday, that was followed up with a wonderful barbecue at the Chiricahua Desert Museum, owned by Bob and Sherry Ashley.

Having watched the museum built from the beginning up, I cannot tell you how excited I was to finally get there. The store itself put me into shopping overload and I couldn't decide what to buy (I got a long sleeved shirt), but the main gallery is an amazing walk down memory lane for the reptile community. Letters from famous herpetologists, artwork, a stamp collection, book collections, kitchy items, pop culture -- amazing, all of it. One of the memories I will hold dear and take home is sharing time hearing about Mark O'Shea's hero and sharing the story of my IHS talk with Mark.

Another memory is meeting one of the more infamous herpers we have ever had grace our site. FR, aka Frank Retes, happened to be there and, amazingly, recognized me. He was not quite what I expected, yet every ounce of what I expected. We had a few long discussions on husbandry and got along like old friends. That is what this community is about, putting aside everything else, sitting down and having a beer together.

Bob and Sherry did a wonderful job and I also want to thank them for their hospitality for the Chiricahua Lodge. Seriously, if you are thinking of somewhere to crash and go herping, you can NOT pass up this lodge.

Photos of the event after the bump.

When talking about coming to Arizona, there was one single animal that was the cream of the crop for me to see in the wild, the all mighty Gila Monster. I love these little tenacious creatures; they remind me of bulldogs with their stocky thick build and big ole smiles.

We headed out in a group caravan after grabbing a quick bite to eat. Hitting yet another location with rocky hills, I didn't fare quite as well as the previous night, taking one amazing tumble and rolling my ankle, spraining it. Unfortunately I sprained it fairly early in the hike, and, well, the Gila were calling. Luckily my girl Linda from the CHS stayed behind and took the slow walk with me.

Our first find was a road kill frog, however we followed that up with a lovely tarantula.

Finding the girl was amazing. Bryan Fry sexed her out as a sub-adult female on look. Smiley stunning girl with that big old grin sillouetted in the moonlight (and, of course, our lamps and flashlights). Tonight we may head out after the banquet for the other goal species, the Sidewinder, but for now, I am a happy girl and can leave Arizona satisfied. BTW, did I mention Chip is a rockstar herper?

We started off today with a quick continental breakfast at the Marriot and then a short bus ride to the Sonoran Desert Museum. All our talks today for the Biology of the Rattlesnakes Symposium will be here.

We got here early enough -- crack of dawn, actually -- to spend the morning hiking. Bill Love and I took turns taking pictures of each other taking pictures, but my highlight was seeing a Ctenosaur similis male sitting proud and big on a rock. I managed to grab a quick coffee and head to the talks at the end of William B. Hayes talk on niche partitioning on living environments. One of the points from the talk was that niche differences do not appear to result from partitioning. It also seems to show that it is related to pre size. The research primarily compared the living environments of helleri and Southern Pacific in California.

Matt Holding spoke next on the effects of short distance translocation on the Northern Pacific rattlesnakes. All images are Harry Greene approved. One thing we need to look at to deal with human and rattlesnake interactions is the biggest thing is we need to observe the location of translocation; however, we also need to train people to properly handle the animals. Long distance translocation is often extremely bad resulting in a high mortality rate. The downfall with short distance, though, is the animals often will return.

Corticosterone is a hormone that, mobilizes energy stores. Chronic rises in CORT can be very detrimental to the health of the animal. What the study looked at was how they can control and adjust handling to adjust the chronic stressors to reptiles. The study also focused on adult males. They took two different blood samples of both baseline and stress sample. To get the stress blood sample, they took baseline, held the animal in a secure bucket and then drew again. When they compressed the data at the end, when the baseline was taken at both initial and final, the baseline levels were equal however the stress level was greatly increased on the second stress induced test. The testosterone levels, however, did not seem impacted in the initial capture, however in final capture; there was a huge drop of testosterone at the final stress testing.

The conclusion is that rattlesnakes seem to bounce back with short distance relocation. Although there is a difference it doesn’t appear to cause long term health issues.

We're on the road again! I'm heading out to represent kingsnake.com at the Biology of the Rattlesnakes Symposium in Tuscon, Ariz., starting today.

Like last summer, you can come with us! From the talks, to the tours, to field herping with the greats, we will bring you along.

This year, follow me on kingsnake connect and you'll see everything I'm doing as it happens. As long as there is life in my phone I will be a posting fool.

You can also follow us on the Kingsnake.com blog here.

We have a photo gallery made specifically for this show. Upload shots from the show while you're down there to share with everyone. You can find the Biology of the Rattlesnakes gallery here.

Be sure to "like" us on Facebook here.

Follow us on Twitter here.

Are you a regular Twitter user? We have started a hashtag for the event! Post from the show with #bor to join in on the fun! Not familiar with how hashtags work? No problem! Check out this helpful link for more information.

Safe travels to all on their way to and from the show. If you see me, please stop and say hi! But don't be shocked if I ask for a photo with you!