By Herp News
The Malaysia Airlines website was commandeered Monday by hackers who referenced the Islamic State jihadists and claimed to be from the “Lizard Squad”, a group known for previous denial-of-service attacks. The website's front page was replaced with an image of a tuxedo-wearing lizard, and read “Hacked by LIZARD SQUAD — OFFICIAL CYBER CALIPHATE”. The Lizard Squad is a group of hackers that has …
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By Herp News
Message “404 — plane not found” was temporarily plastered on website.
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One of the advantages of living on a farm in rural Southeast Alabama is we often find snakes right here at the house.
One such snake is the gray rat snake, currently known by taxonomists as Pantherophis obsoletus spiloides and “oak snake” or “chicken snake” by locals.
We typically see rat snakes in the rafters of our barns, in our well pump house, or, more often than not, inside our chicken coupe coiled somewhere off the ground waiting for one of the hens to lay a fresh clutch of eggs. They’re also a species regularly seen crossing roads late on a hot summer evening, and are one the most common large snakes found in our region.
Gray rat snakes range over much of Alabama, South Georgia, and North Florida, and one color phase from Northern Florida dubbed the “white oak” gray rat snake by herpers can be extraordinarily light in coloration and is quite beautiful.
Gray rat snakes are constrictors, and are also excellent climbers. They feed on a wide variety of small mammals, birds, and their eggs, and will often take refuge high above the ground in tree hollows. We sometimes see a gray rat snake sticking its head out of an old bird house in an oak tree at the back of the property, where it will usually flick its tongue out a few times in response to our presence and then draw its head inside.
We enjoy finding and seeing them here, and although we may lose an occasional chicken egg or two, we don’t mind because the service they provide by ridding us of countless rodents makes up for it! …read more
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By Herp News
Thyroid hormone receptor alpha plays an important role in hind limb development in frogs, scientists have found. With new gene mutation technology, researchers were able to successfully mutate the gene in the tadpole models, discovering the value of tadpoles as ideal models for studying the role of hormones in development because of the timely metamorphosis from tadpole to juvenile frog, and because that transition is completely dependent on hormones.
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One man got more than he bargained after he discovered a live snake in his grocery bag.
From the Chronicle Live:
Dean thinks the snake may have been curled up in a pair of thick socks which he had also bought on Saturday’s shopping trip.
He added: “I think it’s maybe been keeping warm in them before coming out once I arrived back.”
Wayne Mailer, who runs Dragons Den Exotic Pets in Newcastle, said: “Looking at the picture, this appears to be an Amery Corn Snake.
“I think it’s probably only a hatchling maybe only a few weeks old . At the minute it doesn’t appear to be in the best of health, probably due to the cold weather.
“More than likely, it is an escapee pet.”
Read more here. …read more
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It’s our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user steveroylance1!
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By Herp News
The Malaysia Airlines website has been attacked and the Lizard Squad, one of the groups that claimed responsibility on Monday, threatened to soon “dump some loot” found on the airline’s servers. The airline said in a statement on its Facebook page that its Domain Name System (DNS) was compromised and as a result users trying to access the URL www.malaysiaairlines.com were being redirected to a …
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By Herp News
It also carried the headline “404 – Plane Not Found”, an apparent reference to the airlines' puzzling loss of flight MH370 last year with 239 people aboard.
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By Herp News
It's unclear where the reptile, Nundasuchus songeaensis, falls on the evolutionary tree, said Sterling Nesbitt, an assistant professor of geology at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. The researchers announced their findings yesterday (Jan. 20) in a statement.
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By Herp News
Green sea turtles may stop basking on beaches around the world within a century due to rising sea temperatures, a new study suggests. Basking helps the turtles regulate body temperature and may aid their immune system and digestion. By analyzing six years of turtle surveys and 24 years of satellite data, researchers have found the turtles bask more often when sea surface temperatures are lower. This vital behavior may cease globally by 2102 if global warming trends continue.
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International courier company TNT has announced it will no longer ship live reptiles in the UK for what it calls “health and safety reasons.”
Although the original announcement was made in October of last year, it was made so quietly hat many reptile hobbyists and businesses are only finding out about the change in policy now, when their packages are returned to them the following day by TNT drivers telling them that their depot was “no longer handling reptiles.”
I’m not sure what aspect of the reptile shipping service could be considered unhealthy or dangerous, but then I doubt if this is the real reason for the company’s change of policy. Whatever the reason, to those of us who understand reptile transportation protocols, the decision is crazy. I’ve written several magazine features about transporting and packing reptiles safely based on my experience of shipping many thousands of reptiles over several decades. To me it seems like a dumb decision, whichever way you look at it.
According to a piece in UK pet trade publication PBW News, a TNT spokesman said, “The company has made the decision not to transport any animals due to health and safety reasons. As a result, we are not taking on any new customers in this area.”
In response to queries from Pet Business World about potential health and safety issues with transporting reptiles, Judith Hackitt, chairman of the Health and Safety Executive, said, “I see this time and time again, companies using health and safety as a blanket excuse and it’s got to stop. It is misleading for members of the public to constantly read headlines blaming non-existent health and safety laws for stopping people for going about their everyday business. It detracts from the real business of health and safety.” …read more
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An article about a supposed reptile ban has been making it’s way around social media. It has a headline designed to frighten any herper: “BREAKING NEWS: NC Reptile Ban Legislation! HSUS to Push for Dangerous Wild Animal Legislation in NC; Boas, Pythons and Venomous at Risk.” Sounds really ominous, doesn’t it?
The article was based on information posted on the website of Carolina Tiger Rescue (CTR), stating CTR will join with the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) to introduce a bill that “bans bears, non-human primates, and wild cats.” It further states this “legislation has nothing to do with farming practices. It is about bears, nonhuman primates, and wild cats. Not pigs. Not chickens. Not cows.”
Nevertheless, that hasn’t stopped speculation by voices intent on inflaming the community with messages saying things like “this legislation may cover more than big cats. The HSUS model Dangerous Wild Animal (DWA) legislation, for which they received the stamp of approval from the American Bar Association (ABA) Animal Law Committee in 2014, includes large constrictors (even boa constrictors) and venomous snakes.”
It should be noted that the above referenced model legislation has not been adopted by the ABA; but is merely a recommendation by a committee.
A simple phone call to the executive director of CTR, Pam Fulk, immediately answered the speculation as to whether the legislation included or would include reptiles or amphibians. Fulk responded that such speculation is “absolutely untrue.” She said the legislation is in its final process of review, adding, “People are already making things up.”
When a group has any association with HSUS, USARK is vigilant to verify their statements to us. USARK has mechanisms in place to identify legislation introduced in all 50 states, including amendments to existing laws that would affect the herp community. Let’s not speculate, and waste our energy and activism, when we can verify, and focus our efforts on confirmed threats.
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By Herp News
It's a sea turtle mystery that has stumped scientists for decades: How does the female sea turtle, which travels across thousands of miles of open ocean each year, still manage to navigate back to the same beach where she hatched to lay her eggs?
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By Herp News
A 22.5-kilo olive ridley sea turtle measuring almost 2 feet long is released in the waters of the Hundred Islands National Park in Alaminos City last Thursday by a team led by Dr. Westley Rosario of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources and joined by local and Korean members of the Lions Club. (Jojo Riñoza)
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By Herp News
Green sea turtles may stop basking on beaches around the world within a century due to rising sea temperatures, a new study suggests. Basking helps the turtles regulate body temperature and may aid their immune system and digestion. By analyzing six years of turtle surveys and 24 years of satellite data, researchers have found the turtles bask more often when sea surface temperatures are lower …
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By Herp News
A rare turtle found washed up on a Cumbrian beach and being cared for at a county aquarium has died.
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By Herp News
Green sea turtles may stop basking on beaches around the world within a century due to rising sea temperatures, a new study suggests. Basking helps the turtles regulate body temperature and may aid their immune system and digestion. By analyzing six years of turtle surveys and 24 years of satellite data, researchers have found the turtles bask more often when sea surface temperatures are lower …
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By Herp News
Dr. Paul Gibbons, managing director of the Behler Chelonian Center in California, is on a mission to save endangered turtles from extinction.
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By Herp News
One of the key members of Lizard Squad tells Forbes an insider was to blame for the database leak of an attack service the crew is offering, not an outside hacker, contrary to previous reports. The group was handing out the database, he claimed, indicating customers of the Lizard Stresser service have already had their online accounts comrpromised by the Lizards.
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By Herp News
One of the key members of Lizard Squad tells Forbes an insider was to blame for the database leak of an attack service the crew is offering, not an outside hacker, contrary to previous reports. The group was handing out the database, he claimed, indicating customers of the Lizard Stresser service have already had their online accounts comrpromised by the Lizards.
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By Herp News
Tortoise Capital Advisors, L.L.C., the adviser of NDP, NTG, TPZ, TTP and TYG announced today the release of 2014 annual stockholders’ reports for each of these funds.
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Check out this video “Giant Waxy Monkey Frog Tadpoles Hatching!” submitted by kingsnake.com user mjnovy.
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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It’s our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user nategodin!
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While some species are suffering due to drought, leaf litter frogs are struggling with too much rainfall.
From the University of New Mexico Newsroom:
Using four different species of leaf litter frogs, they replicated and sampled 10 plots per year, using a plot survey technique of total leaf litter removal within each plot. They measured and sampled annual species diversity and community composition once a year during March, during the dry season, at the Organization of Tropical Studies Las Cruces Biological Station in southern Costa Rica.
Their findings were surprising in that strictly terrestrial frog species (i.e., they do not breed in water) can be influenced by extreme rainfall events much like their aquatic-breeding counterparts. The researchers discovered that species diversity and the community structure changed negatively in dramatic fashion from the two pre-La Niña years compared to the onset of the La Niña event in 2010.
The altered community structure due to extreme rainfall lasted for over 20 months. During that time, all four leaf litter frog species declined in number and several measures revealed marked changes in the community structure in terms of both plot diversity and occupancy.
Read more here. …read more
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Back in 1970, while scanning a pricelist from Hank Molt, the name Mt. Kenya bush viper, Atheris desaixii, caught my eye. I was familiar with several species in the genus, but A. desaixii was one that I didn’t know.
In those days there was no Google to turn to for information. Even the word computer was seldom heard and if heard it was not thought about as belonging to a magazine-sized entity that would reside in average homes, schoolrooms, backpacks, and vehicles.
But we did have telephones. And back then we dialed the number of the person we hoped to talk with. Since there was no caller ID to alert them that it was a pest calling, they almost always answered the phone. So I called Hank. Hank answered, and a few moments later he was describing a Mt. Kenya bush viper to me. It seems that the snake was primarily black, had yellow tipped scales, and its venom composition was basically unknown. Hank said it was a beautiful snake, really, really pretty.
Sounded pretty to me, so I asked Patti “Do I need a Mt. Kenya bush viper?” She looked at me like I had just stepped off a spaceship, and said “no” (and it was an emphatic no).
So I called Hank back, told him that Patti couldn’t wait to see the viper, and to ship it ASAP. Two days later I was getting acquainted with my first Mt. Kenya bush viper.
And Hank had been right. It was a beauty.
Continue reading “Nothing comes between a man and his bush viper” …read more
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It’s our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user motorhead!
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By Herp News
© Dado Ruvic/Reuters People pose in front of a display showing the word “cyber” in binary code. The hacker cohort Lizard Squad, who gleefully shut down the Xbox Live and PlayStation networks over the holidays, has been hit with a cyberattack on its own network.
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By Herp News
Last month, an estimated 350,000 liters of fuel oil spilled into the Sundarbans delta on the Bay of Bengal. An oil tanker that had collided with a cargo vessel on December 9th sank into the Shela River, spilling its oil into a protected sanctuary for the rare and endangered Irrawaddy dolphins (Orcaella brevirostris) and the Ganges river dolphins (Platanista gangetica).
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By Herp News
Camera trap video from Khlong Saeng Wildlife Sanctuary in southern Thailand has revealed an impressive array of wildlife, including scent-marking clouded leopards and a whole herd of Asian elephant. The camera traps were set by HabitatID, an organization devoted to using remote camera traps to prove to government officials that wildlife still flourishes in forgotten places.
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By Herp News
Camera trap video from Khlong Saeng Wildlife Sanctuary in southern Thailand has revealed an impressive array of wildlife, including scent-marking clouded leopards and a whole herd of Asian elephant. The camera traps were set by HabitatID, an organization devoted to using remote camera traps to prove to government officials that wildlife still flourishes in forgotten places.
…read more
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By Herp News
A new study is sounding the alarm about climate change and its potential impact on more than 30 years of conservation efforts to keep sea turtles around for the next generation. Climate change is causing sea-level rise, and how coastal communities react to that rise could have dire consequences for sea turtles and other wildlife that rely on an unobstructed beach for survival, researchers say.
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By Herp News
A new study is sounding the alarm about climate change and its potential impact on more than 30 years of conservation efforts to keep sea turtles around for the next generation. Climate change is causing sea-level rise, and how coastal communities react to that rise could have dire consequences for sea turtles and other wildlife that rely on an unobstructed beach for survival, researchers say.
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By Herp News
Lizard Squad's “boot-for-hire” service compromised, with more than 14,000 names revealed.
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Axolotls (Ambystoma mexicanum) are a neotenic aquatic salamander that lives exclusively in central Mexico in Lake Xochimilco and Lake Chalco. Axolotls regrettably are as good as extinct in the wild due to their habitat being highly polluted and many invasive fish being introduced to their lake.
Although listed as as a “critically endangered” species on the ICUN Red List of Threatened Species, it does not do much good if their environment is not protected alongside with the species.
In addition to axolotls’ uniqueness of remaining in larval form their entire lives, they are also known for their regenerative abilities. They can grow back entire limbs, damaged lungs, cut spinal cords, vital organs, and even pieces of their brain.They are also 1,000 more times less likely to get cancer than most mammals. Scientists are investigating a biological technique to introduce these genes to humans in hopes that within the next 20 years we will be able to grow our own new limbs.
Axolotls can easily be obtained in captivity and can come in many different color variations. A single axolotl can be kept quite successfully in a ten-gallon aquarium feeding on earthworms, bloodworms, waxworms, salmon pellets, and occasionally beefheart. They can be a very rewarding, long-lived pet you never have to worry about growing up. …read more
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Used in food and folk medicine, Thai fishermen may be catching too many sea snakes.
From National Geographic:
Some scientists are raising concerns about the practice. Little is known about the region’s sea snakes, including what species and how many live there, so it’s not clear whether the harvest is sustainable.
An overharvest, these researchers worry, could jeopardize potential medicinal discoveries. Compounds in venom, once processed and administered in controlled amounts, can be beneficial in treating human ailments like heart disease.
The sea snake catch—a side job for the region’s Vietnamese squid fishers—takes in over 80 tons (73 metric tons) of the marine reptile annually. That’s roughly 225,500 individual sea snakes per year, valued at over $3 million.
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The colorful Malabar pit viper, Trimeresurus malabaricus, is one of the most beautiful snakes one can come across in India. Most herpetologists would agree with this. because malabaricus is found in a stunning variety of color morphs including red, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, chocolatey, pink, and grey color forms. Usually malabaricus is found on trees as it is an arboreal pit viper, but some of them are also found on rocks. Most of those are grey in colour and they are called the rock Malabar pit viper.
An adult malabaricus is about 45cm to 105cm in size and usually found in southwestern and southern jungles of India. However, the usual locations where malabaricus is found varies according to the seasons. For example, in summers it’d found on higher branches of trees, whereas during monsoons it’s found on the lower branches a foot or two off the ground, as well as on rocks.
Last weekend I visited a friend in Amboli, a hill station in the Western Ghats, a mountain range that runs almost parallel to the western coast of India, and a paradise for herpetologists who are in search of malabaricus. It was a cold night and I had no intention of herping as I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t find anything, but the area looked so scenic and perfect for herping I couldn’t stop myself and went on a night field trip.
To my good luck I found a malabaricus within 20 minutes. It rekindled my spirit, as this the primary reason that I love snakes and feel a bond with them. It was about 50cm long and green in colour, and it was coiled up on small fallen branch of a tree.
These snakes are active at night and shy in nature, and are sometimes seen during day basking in the sunlight. They are very rare to find in winter, as it is assumed to go into hibernation at that time of year.
Encountering this Malabar pit viper added happiness to my weekend! …read more
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It’s our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user ke!
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By Herp News
Tortoise Capital Advisors today announced the tax characterization of 2014 distributions paid to stockholders of:
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By Herp News
A quantum light source demonstrates that light-sensitive cells in frog eyes can detect single photons. Miniature light detectors in frog eyes known as retinal rod cells are directly and unambiguously shown to detect single photons of light — an astounding sensitivity considering that a humble 60 watt light bulb spews out a staggering 1020 photons per second.
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By Herp News
Paleontologist Sterling Nesbitt's latest addition to the paleontological vernacular is Nundasuchus, a 9-foot-long carnivorous reptile with steak knifelike teeth and bony plates on the back.
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