By Herp News
More than 11 square miles of private land and prime habitat in eastern San Bernardino County have been set aside for the desert tortoise – which is sliding toward extinction – to offset the impacts of future renewable energy projects and other…
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By Herp News
A huge sea turtle found stranded on a remote South Carolina beach over the weekend was returned to the wild today (March 12). The nearly 500-lb. (215 kilograms) leatherback turtle was rescued Saturday (March 7) on Yawkey-South Island Reserve, a barrier island near Georgetown, suffering from low blood sugar and exhaustion. The rare leatherback shuffled back into the Atlantic under its own power …
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Are you going to Tinley this weekend? If not, never fear! Keep a close eye out on our Facebook page to see reports from our own Cindy Steinle. Our herp photo of the day features a look at the crowd in 2011, uploaded by kingsnake.com user PHFaust!
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By Herp News
A rare 475-pound leatherback sea turtle “immediately responded to treatments” of fluids, vitamins and antibiotics after it was rescued in South Carolina on Saturday.
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By Herp News
A rare 475-pound leatherback sea turtle “immediately responded to treatments” of fluids, vitamins and antibiotics after it was rescued in South Carolina on Saturday.
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By Herp News
Yawkey is a 475-pound leatherback sea turtle that’s had quite a week. The giant turtle was found stranded on a remote beach off South Carolina’s Coast, in the Yawkey–South Island Reserve —the origin of its name. Usually, a leatherback turtle stuck ashore means death, but wildlife officials at the state’s Department of Natural Resources weren’t going to let that happen on their watch. The team …
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By Herp News
When I was ten, I acquired my first dog. Rani was a Doberman Pinscher—tall, lean, and a huge pushover. She was wonderfully friendly, but sadly misunderstood her whole life, regularly frightening all except those who knew her intimately. There were two innocuous reasons for this—both of which reveal the power of emotions shared across species.
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By Herp News
ISLE OF PALMS, S.C. (AP) — A rare 475-pound endangered leatherback sea turtle found stranded on a South Carolina beach was released into the ocean on Thursday following five days of treatment at the South Carolina Aquarium.
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By Herp News
A rare 475-pound leatherback sea turtle “immediately responded to treatments” of fluids, vitamins and antibiotics after it was rescued in South Carolina on Saturday.
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Read more here: herpetofauna.com
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Outside it’s finely warm. I’ve been released from house arrest. I was getting pretty tired being stuck in a bathroom, living inside a cardboard box and surrounded by masses of UPS brown paper. My only form of sustenance has been hay with the occasional carrot to tease me. There they will be payback for this incarceration.
That’s right, I have joined my fellow turtles and tortoises for TORTPOCALYPSE 2015. Prepare to meet your doom humans. Waffles, a fellow sulcata tortoise from Canada, may just be a pint sized fellow but that tort has some smarts in that noodle of his. As soon as I hear of the all out initiative to eliminate mankind I said where do I sign up!
Last night I stayed up and planned out my offensive for the lower 48 states. These are my plans so far:
Day 1: Take Whole Foods Grocery Store hostage until they surrender all organic carrots. As soon as the carrots are freed, ravage the store and leave no shelf standing. Spend the rest of the afternoon basking, grazing and eating carrots to build up energy for Day 2.
Day 2: Ram PetSmart and free all captive tortoises and turtles. Stock pile cuttlebones and bagged Orchard Hay. Take only the Orchard hay. All other hay taste nasty. Annihilate the remaining PetSmart facility. Recruit freed turtles and tortoises for tort army active duty. Check out back lot for dandelions.
Day 3: Reenact this–
Day 4: Lay waste to all government buildings in downtown Mobile just because we can. Spend latter part of day accepting gifts of surrender from humans.
Day 5: Level airport all except any one plane that will fly us to Canada to meet Waffles.
As soon as we arrive in Canada, Waffles and I and thousands of turtle minions will join together as a whole shelled arm to continue our take over of the world.
Okay. Sounds spectacular. I have enough time today to ram the side of the house until mom comes out with carrots and hay. This will be my final meal served by a free human.
We should spare any human capable of service to turtles and tortoise. Mom is pretty good at that. I think I shall recruit her for tortoise servitude.
Tortoise are so brilliant. We deserve to rule.
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Read more here: Turtle Times
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If someone asks me about my five favorite Indian snakes, I would include the cat snake.
Cat snakes, Boiga trigonata, are the snakes I always like to hold in my hand and play with them. A cat snake is basically a tree snake, so it is a slow moving snake like many other tree snakes.The best thing I like about the cat snake is that, if I hold its tail upside down,bit will slowly slowly coil back to its regular position.
There are 7-8 species of cat snakes found in the Indian sub-continent.The common Indian cat snake is the most commonly found amongst other cat snakes. Cat snakes are semi-venomous snakes which are also called rear fanged snake. Cat snakes are found across the world and in many places they are named as cat-eyed snake because of their vertical eye pupils which ressembles a cat’s eye.
The common Indian cat snake is long and thin, and the body and tail are slightly compressed. It has large head with large cat -ike eyes and vertical pupils.
Colour is light brown with darker brown zig-zag markings. There’s a brown streak behind each eye. The ventral part is yellow or white with small spots. The size varies from 100-125cms in an adult. As it is a tree snake it is mainly found on trees and bushes in grassland. It is a shy natured snake and usually does not bite but, when it is disturbed, lifts head to strike and vibrates its tail. Common cat snakes feed on lizards, frogs, geckos, small birds, and mice. It is oviparous and lays 5-8 eggs in tree hollows and it is nocturnal in nature.
I never got a chance to rescue a cat snake as they prefer hilly and dense jungle areas and unfortunately I live in a city. For every time I go out on herping I wish I could find a cat snake, it’s like looking for a diamond in a coal mine.
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Read more here: King Snake
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The authorities in Mexico have stopped traffickers that were abusing and selling animals.
From Fox News Latino:
The discovery in Monterrey, the capital of Nuevo Leon, was the result of a joint investigation by Profepa and the Attorney General’s Office.
Officers found a freezer containing 40 dead animals, among them 17 python regius snakes, two sugar gliders (Petaurus breviceps), two eastern grey squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis), two black-tailed prairie dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus), one squirrel monkey (Saimiri sciureus) and one cotton-top tamarind (Saguinus Oedipus).
They also found one parrot (Psittacidae), two common kestrels (Falco tinnunculus), three water monitor lizards (Varanus salvator), two swamp crocodiles (Crocodylus moreletti), four Burmese pythons (Python bivittatus), one corn snake (Pantherophis guttatus) and red-eyed tree frogs (Agalychnis callidryas).
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Photo by kingsnake.com use ke. …read more
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There is in South Florida, a salt marsh in which dwell some of the prettiest mangrove saltmarsh snakes, Nerodia clarkii compressicauda, I have ever happened across.
There are many, of course, that are rather run-of-the-mill, but there are some that are clad in scales that are the brightest red I have ever seen on a water snake.
Many evenings the search first turns up one or more mangroves that are the more traditional dull olive green with variably distinct dark markings that are also variable in shape–sometimes blotches, sometimes bands, and sometimes stripes. The latter, if present, usually on the neck and anterior body.
Although also variable, the red examples tend towards a solid, unpatterned color, be it a rather pale orange red, a medium red, or the bright red, the phase I search most eagerly for, for no reason other than I enjoy seeing it.
As an entity, mangrove salt marsh snakes are fairly common in coastal areas along the southern two-thirds of the Florida peninsula and the Keys. The farther north in their range you find them, the more apt they are to be of grayish ground color and have broken dark striping. At the northernmost end of the range on both coasts, there is a intergradation with the subspecies next northward. That is the Gulf salt marsh snake, N. c. clarkii on the Gulf Coast and the Atlantic salt marsh snake, N. c. taeniata, on the Atlantic Coast.
Continue reading “The magnificent red snakes of the mangroves” …read more
Read more here: King Snake
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Stunning is the only word to describe this Oregon red spotted garter snake in our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user Concinnitor!
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Upload your own reptile and amphibian photos photos at gallery.kingsnake.com, and you could see them featured here! …read more
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By Herp News
A nearly 500-pound leatherback sea turtle was admitted for treatment at the South Carolina Aquarium Sea Turtle Hospital after washing ashore
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By Herp News
Marine biologists at the South Carolina Aquarium are treating a rare, 475-pound leatherback sea turtle that washed up Saturday on a nearby beach.
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By Herp News
What do hunters and birdwatchers have in common? Both groups are much more likely to support conservation than the average rural American, according to new research published in the Journal of Wildlife Management.
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Home to some of the rarest crocodile species, the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust is fundraising to bolster their work.
From the New Indian Express:
Meanwhile, even as it is struggling to raise the money needed for undertaking its initiatives, the facility also has to rebuild a portion of it which would be affected by the ongoing road widening work.
“The front counter and the entrance office will go. So we are planning to revamp the frontage and three exhibits near the entrance first,” said Zahida.
The MCBT and Center for Herpetology was started in 1976 by Herpetologist and reptile conservationist Romulus Earl Whitaker, and was the first crocodile breeding centre in Asia, set up to save the dwindling crocodile population and preserve snakes.
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Sassy as babies, sassy as adults! This roaring baby snapping turtle is our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user makonai777!
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California’s flat-tailed horned lizard is a candidate for endangered species protection, and further research may give it permanent protected status.
From the Yuma Sun:
“From our perspective the most important thing is now the state is going to have to be consulted on for any development that happens within the flat-tailed horned lizard habitat,” she said.
There is dispute over whether the species is in fact declining, and how many live in the dunes. A biologist with the Bureau of Land Management, Larry LePre, told the Yuma Sun in December the dunes aren’t prime habitat since they don’t have many of the harvester ants which are the basis of the lizards’ diet, and there’s no reliable data to suggest they’re going up or down in numbers, mostly because they’re difficult to detect.
The BLM, which maintains the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area, is part of a joint Rangewide Management Strategy for the species covering almost 500 acres in California and Arizona. The center’s petition contends this is inadequate since most of the land is open to off-road vehicle use.
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Many, many, years ago when I first saw a photo of Elaphe situla (now Zamenis situla) I did a double take. Although it was captioned “Leopard Rat Snake,” at first glance (and even at second glance) it sure looked like a corn snake.
Eventually I was lucky enough to see a leopard rat snake and to learn there are two distinctly different patterns, a saddled and a striped. Later still, I acquired a pair of each phase and bred the taxon. I learned that despite the similarity of the saddled phase to our corn snake the slender, Old World, leopard rat snake was and is quite unlike the New World species.
Please allow me to introduce you.
First, although often referred to as a European taxon, the leopard rat snake is actually Eurasian in distribution. This snake has a ground color of warm brown to gray and, depending on the phase, either a pair of dark-edged red stripes or neck-to-tail irregular dark bordered red saddles.
Both phases have a row of prominent black spots along each side. A dark interocular crescent is present as are other dark markings on neck and face. The venter varies from being nearly solid black to being light with black checkers. This scrubland snake is adult at a slender 2 to 3 feet in length.
I was told that captive bred examples will feed readily on suitably sized lab mice. Those I had, though, were wild caught and refused lab mice, but readily accepted wild mice of the genus Peromyscus (white-footed and cotton mice). To comply with their tastes we began a breeding program of the desired mouse species. This was a bit time consuming but proved well worth the effort. The snakes thrived, bred, and as I had been told the hatchlings did indeed feed readily on pinky lab mice.
Continue reading “Looks can be deceiving when it comes to the leopard rat snake” …read more
Read more here: King Snake
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This great looking pair of Australian water dragons helps us feel a little closer to spring in our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user cochran!
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By Herp News
A squat lizard with dragon-like head spines won a temporary reprieve from encroachment by urban development and alternative energy facilities on Thursday when California’s Fish and Game Commission declared it a candidate for protection under the state Endangered Species Act.
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By Herp News
Solstice, an endangered olive ridley sea turtle, arrived at SeaWorld San Diego on Tuesday after a trip on a Coast Guard aircraft from Oregon to Coronado.
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Reptile rescues need the community’s support now more than ever. With the recent addition of the the reticulated python and all species of anaconda to the injurious species list, rescues will lose a large adoption and placement pool.
I have operated my rescue for 21 years now, and for much of that time I have relied on my friends to the south to assist when I had giant species. Depending on what I have in the rescue at any given time, I may need to call upon my Illinois friends to take even a large boa constrictor. Thankfully, I still have that outlet for boas, but at the end of our 30-day grace period, I will lose that ability with retics and all anacondas. Crossing state lines with those species will no longer be legal, and working with my partners in Illinois would make me an instant felon. I am not alone in this; there are rescues across the country that will need assistance from our community.
As the community rallies behind USARK in the upcoming battle to remove these species from the list, it would be wonderful if those of you who have the ability to own one of the restricted species would take this moment and reach out.
Contact your local herp society, which undoubtably runs a rescue program, as well as local reptile rescues to let them know you are willing to help.
Need help locating a rescue near you? Please post in the comments or check out our rescue listing located here. …read more
Read more here: King Snake
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By Herp News
Via Daily Picks and Flicks If you think about it, we’re all just a tortoise named Herman locked in a box in the refrigerator.
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Read more here: herpetofauna.com
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By Herp News
You wake up at 4:30 AM, a little before the first rays of tropical sun begin to dance behind the treetops. You put on your wet clothes from the previous day, pack your bag, and pick up your tripod. The jungle is shrouded in a thick mist from the previous nights rain. As you walk, you recognize many of the strange calls that echo between the trees.
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By Herp News
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — A rare leatherback sea turtle, nicknamed Yawkey and weighing an estimated 500 pounds, was being treated at the South Carolina Aquarium on Monday after being rescued on a remote coastal beach – the first leatherback known to have been stranded alive in South Carolina.
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By Herp News
A rare leatherback sea turtle weighing 500 pounds is being treated at the South Carolina Aquarium after being rescued from a remote island over the weekend.
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By Herp News
By Harriet McLeod CHARLESTON, S.C. (Reuters) – An endangered 500-pound (230-kg) leatherback sea turtle was being treated at a South Carolina aquarium on Monday after wildlife officials made a rare rescue of the reptile found alive and stranded on a remote beach. It is the first living leatherback turtle to be recovered in South Carolina and one of only a handful ever treated at rehabilitation …
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By Herp News
There is a growing consensus among scientists that we have entered the age of the Anthropocene, or the epoch of humans. In other words, at some point between the 12,000 years separating the beginning of agriculture and the Industrial Revolution, humans became the dominant source of change on the planet, shaping everything from the land to the atmosphere to even the geologic record where we etch our reign.
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By Herp News
A squat lizard with dragon-like head spines won a temporary reprieve from encroachment by urban development and alternative energy facilities on Thursday when California’s Fish and Game Commission declared it a candidate for protection under the state Endangered Species Act.
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Read more here: herpetofauna.com
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Growing up in the Deep South, I heard all sorts of incredible tales regarding snakes.
One of the more famous stories was about the “coachwhip” snake. As the story goes, if a coachwhip sees you it will chase you down, wrap around you and then proceed to whip you with its whiplike tail and body.
The eastern coachwhip, Masticophis flagellum flagellum, can be a rather large snake, growing to 6-7 feet in length, and can be an impressive sight to behold. If, that is, you ever get the chance to see one up close.
These snakes, contrary to the story, will not chase or whip you; in fact, their main defense is to get out of your way as fast as possible — and did I mention that they are incredibly fast? These snakes are literally so fast that usually when we encounter them, they are gone before we can even catch them. The only way we’re ever able to catch one for pics is if we get them out in the open or flip them under artificial cover and surprise them. If they are cornered and cannot escape, they will bite, often striking at the face of their captor.
There are currently seven subspecies of coachwhip recognized through out the United States and northern Mexico. In Alabama we have the eastern variety, Masticophis flagellum flagellum, and it is slowly declining due to habitat loss. They are a slender built snake, that in most localities posses a solid black head and neck that transitions into the light tan braided whip pattern that gives them their common name, although specimens from certain other locations can often be a solid light tan coloration and in some cases show faint bands.
I often find this species in agricultural fields or in areas of open-canopy, dry forests.
Although more commonly known for eating lizards, don’t be surprised to catch this snake devouring small birds and hunting small mammals as well as smaller snakes!
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Read more here: King Snake
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Hundreds of live and dead reptiles were found in cigarette containers and children’s books, as men tried to smuggle them out of Perth Airport.
From the Daily Mail:
Skinks, geckos, frogs, pygmy pythons, and a dead death adder – one of the most venomous snakes in the world – were found in the staggering haul.
A number of invertebrates and 33 dead reptiles, which appear to have been tagged for use as specimens, were also discovered amongst more than 157 reptiles and amphibians being transported out of Western Australia.
Four men were arrested and charged – two from Russia and two from the Czech Republic – at Perth International Airport on February 6 after an investigation by the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service and the WA Department of Parks and Wildlife.
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Read more here: King Snake
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By Herp News
A squat lizard with dragon-like head spines won a temporary reprieve from encroachment by urban development and alternative energy facilities on Thursday when California’s Fish and Game Commission declared it a candidate for protection under the state Endangered Species Act.
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
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By Herp News
Solstice, an endangered olive ridley sea turtle, arrived at SeaWorld San Diego on Tuesday after a trip on a Coast Guard aircraft from Oregon to Coronado.
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Read more here: herpetofauna.com
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By Herp News
Many fear that an endangered 100kg soft-shell turtle caught by a fisherman in Daro may end up in the cooking pot for a mere 2,000 ringgit (US$553
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Read more here: herpetofauna.com
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Start your week off right with this happy looking fire salamander in our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user travisdimler!
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By Herp News
The Marathon Turtle Hospital received a new patient Friday, after a Key West Wildlife Center worker rescued a sick sea turtle near the seawall by the Key West International Airport. read more
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Read more here: herpetofauna.com
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By Herp News
It took five people crossing a swinging bridge and riding through the mud and marsh in a 4
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