The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) has lobbied for dangerous wild animal bills in various states throughout the country. As we enter the legislative season in many states, it seems timely to review the stated position of HSUS regarding wild animals as pets.

The organization states it “strongly opposes keeping wild animals as pets.” It defines wild animals broadly to include “any non-domesticated native or exotic mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian, fish, or invertebrate, regardless of whether the animal is wild caught or captive bred.” Thus, HSUS considers most pets to be wild animals.

HSUS asserts wild animals make unsuitable pets under virtually all circumstances because very few people are properly equipped or have the expertise to maintain them.

The extreme reach of dangerous wild animal legislation was revealed during a rule-making process in West Virginia last year. Pursuant to a DWA law supported by HSUS in the state, the proposed list of DWAs included all salamanders, tree frogs, clawed frogs, toads, and turtles (except those native to West Virginia).

In response to this proposed list, the WV director for HSUS supported (on page 987) the proposed list with the exception of a suggestion to clarify that domestic rabbits were not DWAs, and a request to add boa constrictors.

Although turtles, salamanders, tree frogs, clawed frogs and toads have been removed from the DWA list, it is very clear that HSUS supported their listing as DWAs.

Image: Sixth grade class learning about snakes, uploaded by kingsnake.com user leslonsdale1. …read more
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Students and staff at a Vermont college are worried after the school’s rainbow boa disappeared.

From WPTZ News:

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.”

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Little do these baby Galapagos tortoises realize, but they will soon be some of the largest tortoises in the world! These cuties are our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user jerry d fife!

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By Herp News

Lizard Squad, the group notorious for carrying out cyberattacks on the Sony PlayStation Network and Microsoft’s Xbox Live network in December, claims it hacked Facebook, Instagram and other popular services.

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By Herp News

2K and Turtle Rock Studios announced today that Evolve™, the 4v1 shooter in which four Hunters cooperatively fight to take down a single-player controlled Monster, is now available worldwide for Xbox One, the all-in-one games and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation®4 computer entertainment system, and Windows PC.

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Are there really coquis in Florida? The longer I search for these little frogs, the more certain I become that they are temporary visitors at best, and that nowhere in the United States are they resident.

There is no question that a few occasionally are found in plant nurseries in southernmost Florida and a few were once found and heard in southeastern Louisiana. But it now seems a surety that these few have either been stowaways on plant shipments from Puerto Rico, the coqui’s home island, or deliberate releases. Unless within a heated greenhouse, the little brownish frogs with a lighter triangle between the eyes, apparently succumb as soon as seasonally cooler weather set in.

Over the many years I have searched for them, I have found only 3 coquis, all males, in Miami-Dade County, Florida. One discovered in our tropical garden in Ft. Myers was also a calling male. This lone example made its first appearance in mid-summer a day or so after I had returned from a Florida City nursery with a car full of heliconias.

He was seen no more after our first cold snap when the temperature dropped into the low 40 degrees Fahrenheit. The favored calling site of this frog, from which it called almost nightly, was at an elevation of 3 to 7 feet on the smooth bark of a huge orange tree.

The call of the coqui is unmistakable. It is an oft-repeated, loud, whistled “co-kee,” with the accent on the second syllable. Heard once it will not be forgotten.

Continue reading “The coquis call says it all” …read more
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An Australian carpet python was caught in the middle of snacking on a possum.

From the Courier Mail:

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.”

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Often thought to be a fish, the rubber eel is actually a caecilian from South America — and also our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user chrish!

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By Herp News

Irene Gaz with the Volusia Marine Science Center returns Rizzo, a juvenile green sea turtle, to the ocean Monday after it was rehabilitated at the center in Ponce Inlet.

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Authorities in Sabah are failing to enforce anti-poaching laws, undermining governance and wildlife protection efforts in the Malaysian Borneo state, argues a letter published by several local conservation groups.

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By Herp News

More than 1200 turtle activities have been recorded at Eighty Mile Beach this season, according to the Department of Parks and Wildlife.

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By Herp News

Tortoise Capital Advisors announces upcoming distribution amounts and dates for its closed-end funds, reflecting distribution growth for most funds. These distribution increases st

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The often-underestimated beauty of a Macklot’s python shines through in our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user Bob Garby!

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By Herp News

For more than a decade, a vial of rare snake venom refused to give up its secret formula for lethality; its toxins had no effect on the proteins that most venoms target. Finally, an international team of researchers figured out its recipe: a toxin that permanently activates a crucial type of nerve cell protein, preventing the cells from resetting and causing deadly seizures in prey.

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One of the most beautiful snakes in the southeast is the scarlet kingsnake, Lampropeltis elapsoides. No, scratch that , the scarlet kingsnake is one of the most beautiful and colorful snakes in all of North America.

Clad in colors of bright red,black and yellow or sometimes white, this small kingsnake can be stunning.

Barely reaching two feet in length and normally averaging much smaller, this “coral snake mimc” is locally abundant to quite common in many areas of the southeastern and especially in coastal plains regions. They are, like all members of Lamropeltis genus, constrictors, and specialize on lizards, mainly skinks and anoles but will sometimes prey on other smaller snakes. They can also be trained to feed on baby mice in captivity.

Scarlet kingsnakes are fossorial, nocturnal snakes that can be found cruising roads at night. We have even shined one with a flash light more than a few feet off of the ground crawling up the side of a pine tree, no doubt in search of some sleeping lizard prey.

One female that we kept in our collection laid five tiny eggs that hatched in less than two months. The babies all fed eagerly on ground skinks, but were released soon after hatching. …read more
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A fossil discovered in China shows some good parenting from a now extinct reptile species.

From Live Science:

Given that all of these animals died within a tail’s length of one another, it’s likely that the adult was caring for the young, they said.

“Although it is possible that the individuals were all swept together during or soon after the event that killed them, it is [felt] that this specimen more likely represents an instance of postnatal parental care,” the researchers wrote in the study.

Parental care is seen in other animals, including crocodiles and birds, which lived during the time of the dinosaurs. For instance, crocodiles defend their young from predators, and birds protect and feed their young, the researchers said.

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The owner of an exotic pet store in Campbellton, New Brunswick, Canada, was arrested on February 5, 2015, and then promptly released to face charges to be made public at a hearing to be held on April 27.

A statement released by the New Brunswick Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) disclosed the pending charges are in connection with the death of two young boys in the pet store owner’s apartment, which was above the store.

The RCMP statement also stated “[a]utopsies determined the boys died as a result of being asphyxiated by an African rock python that was being housed in the same apartment where the boys were attending a sleepover.”

This new information suggests the store owner will be charged with negligent homicide, i.e., the store owner’s negligence caused the death of the children. A key fact in any such prosecution is likely to be the first-hand report that a ventilation fan removed from the ceiling of the snake’s enclosure left an opening for the snake to escape and crawl onto the drop-ceiling in the adjacent room where the children were sleeping.

Questions have remained in the reptile community and elsewhere about exactly what happened on that tragic night one and a half years ago, because it is extraordinarily rare for one of these large snakes to kill a human. Efforts are underway to obtain additional details from the autopsy report or any other documentation when such items become available.
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It’s hard to believe it’s been 18 years, but domain registrations don’t lie — today is kingsnake.com’s 18th birthday!

On February 8, 1997, kingsnake.com first appeared on the Internet; it’s been 6,574 days, or 157, 776 hours, or 9,466,560 minutes, since our servers first went active and the kingsnake.com community launched. Since then, our reptile and amphibian community has been visited by millions of people from around the world who have posted millions of photos and messages about their pets. Yahoo and Amazon.com are older, but Google, YouTube, and Facebook are still our juniors.

When kingsnake.com first started, few reptile people had even seen the Internet. Now, the Internet is so ingrained in our daily lives, in our community, and in our industry, we would be unable to function without it. Along the way, kingsnake.com has documented much of it, good and bad, and stored in its archives is essentially an almost two decade history of the reptile community. Wading through it brings back a lot of memories of great animals, events, experiences, and many friends who have moved away, moved on, or passed.

We want to thank the many users, advertisers, sponsors, volunteers, and staffers who have made kingsnake.com what it is today: the largest, most relevant, and most popular reptile community on the Internet. – Jeff Barringer and the kingsnake.com staff

Click below to see images of kingsnake.com throughout the years…

1997

1998

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By Herp News

SANDAKAN : There are about 450 habitants on Pulau Libaran and their main livelihood being fishing. Turtles are known to come ashore and lay their eggs on the island.

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The rare turtle. CREDIT: Adam Hutchings The rare turtle. CREDIT: Adam Hutchings

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The animals were found dead in a clutch deposited in a terrarium at the Cologne Zoo in Germany.

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In a first-of-its-kind case, a pair of conjoined lizards called Quince monitor lizards were discovered at a German zoo, according to a new report. The animals were found in June 2009 in a clutch deposited in a terrarium at the Cologne Zoo, in Germany.Other cases of conjoined twins have been reported in reptiles such as turtles, crocodiles and other lizard species, according to the report …

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Enter to win a copy of the game and matching Turtle Beach Evolve headphones.

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The Quince monitor lizard hatchlings were attached at the head and had two tails and eight legs

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It’s our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user ptahtoo!

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Check out this video “Buddy’s Life Story!” submitted by kingsnake.com user spotsowner.
Submit your own reptile & amphibian videos at http://www.kingsnake.com/video/ and you could see them featured here or check out all the videos submitted by other users! …read more
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By Herp News

Some termite species erect massive mounds that look like great temples springing up from the world’s savannas and drylands. But aside from their aesthetic appeal—and incredible engineering—new research in Science finds that these structures do something remarkable for the ecosystem: they hold back the desert.

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Reptile hobbyists in the UK are watching closely as new legislation unfolds in other member countries of the European Union.

Legislators in Holland have imposed “white list” restrictions on the types of mammals that can be kept in that country, with similar lists for reptiles and birds to be revealed soon.

White list legislation comprises a list of species that can be kept in that country, with all other species becoming illegal. Although this type of legislation is condemned by most pet and welfare experts, it is becoming the holy grail of animal-rights groups in Europe and around the world, as these laws impose the greatest restrictions on the number of species that can be kept.

The alternative “black list” approach to legislation, which only outlaws those species that are proved to be problematic or invasive, is more widely adopted where proper research and consultation has been conducted. However, with several European countries considering white-list laws, British keepers are worried that this legislation could be adopted and rolled out across the entire Euro-zone.

Britain’s reptile hobby and trade have been well protected by advocate organizations such as The Reptile and Exotic Pet Trade and the Federation of British Herpetologists, and so home-grown legislation is unlikely to be problematic. However, reptile keepers are poorly represented in European political circles where animal rights groups are active, well-funded, and organized.

Should the EU Commission decide to heed the lobbying of these groups, the legislation produced there would override any British laws. …read more
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By Herp News

Last year, more than 6,000 people gathered for the World Parks Congress 2014, an event held around every ten years by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The World Parks Congress discusses myriad issues related to protected areas, which recent research has shown are in rough shape.

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Today the range of the greenhouse frog, Eleutherodactylus planirostris, (now one of the most common of Florida’s frogs) extends, at least locally, as far north as coastal southern South Carolina and eastern Texas. This tiny Bahaman, Cuban, and perhaps Cayman Island interloper has a weak, almost tremulous voice: a chirping whistle that is often mistaken for the stridulations of crickets.

However, the tinkling calls are more musical and have less of a cadence. Loose mulch, leaf litter and the moisture holding cups of terrestrial bromeliads are among the favored habitats, but any and all manner of surface debris – discarded newspapers, construction materials, or vegetable debris, be it in backyard or woodland – provide ready homes for this inch long tropical frog.

Since this frog has direct development (no free-swimming tadpole stage), standing water is neither necessary nor sought. The eggs are laid in moist locales,such as on a bromeliad leaf, and when the young emerge they are miniatures of the adult.

The ground color of this frog may be brown to reddish brown and usually blends remarkably well with the background. The pattern of lighter striping or darker reticulations serves to break up the outline making this anuran even more difficult to see. In fact it is only the almost imperceptible stirring of a dead leaf made as the alert frog darts quickly from sight that discloses its presence.

So if you’re herping in the deep south and you think you see a leaf move when you turn debris, take a moment and check it out. You might have just seen a departing greenhouse frog. It would be good to keep tabs on their actual distribution.
Continue reading “Hide and seek with a greenhouse frog” …read more
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Walking around Australia to raise money for a hospital, a man’s stormtrooper suit saved him from a king brown snakebite.

From the New York Daily News:

“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.

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By Herp News

As part of its ongoing efforts to enhance aftermarket support to investors, Tortoise Capital Advisors, L.L.C. announced today that it will begin reporting daily NAVs for each of it

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It’s our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user cochran!

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By Herp News

To the delight of giggling children, the lizard and the bird tried to make the sun appear. Click to Continue »

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By Herp News

Byline: The Three Tuns at St Keverne held a fantastic charity evening at the hotel recently, which raised £600 for The Lizard RNLI lifeboat. Page Content: When Chris and Dawn McKay, the proprietors of the Three Tuns Hotel in St Keverne, decided to hold a fundraising event at their establishment, there were no holds barred. Wanting to raise as much money as possible in one night they came up with …

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Worried about federal overreach, and because they’re “creepy,” lawmakers rejected a bill championed by a local school girl to name the Idaho giant salamander the state amphibian.

From the Star Tribune:

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.”

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Worried about federal overreach, and because they’re “creepy,” lawmakers rejected a bill championed by a local school girl to name the Idaho giant salamander the state amphibian.

From the Star Tribune:

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.”

Read more here. …read more
Read more here: King Snake

Worried about federal overreach, and because they’re “creepy,” lawmakers rejected a bill to name the Idaho giant salamander the state amphibian.

From the Star Tribune:

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.”

Read more here. …read more
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It’s our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user Eve!

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By Herp News

Only about 3,000 of these rare turtles are believed to remain in the wild, a number that is shrinking rapidly. Over the past two months at least 186 forest turtles—more than 6 percent of the entire known population—have been rescued from five groups of poachers who intended to sell them on the illegal international pet trade, according to a report this week from TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade …

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