By Herp News
Although only a nuisance in your home, on an isolated island chain (archipelago) off the northeastern coast of Brazil, rats pose a threat to the red-billed tropicbird (Phaethon aethereus). The seabird nests in the remote Abrolhos National Park, but two species of invasive rats prey on its eggs and young: the house rat (Rattus rattus) and the brown rat (Rattus norvegicus).
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.
By Herp News
Love wildlife? Wish you had a place online to share your photos, videos, and stories with other wild enthusiasts—kind of like a Facebook for wildlife lovers? Well, look no further than Biofaces, a new website meant to “make wildlife loving people happy,” according to its creator, Leonardo Avelino Duarte.
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.
By Herp News
Critically-endangered Kemps Ridley hatchling usually found in Gulf of Mexico receives intensive round-the-clock care after being found stranded off Barrow
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.
By Herp News
Turtle Beach Replaces Subordinated Debt With Lower Cost Financing – Quick Facts
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.
By Herp News
SAN DIEGO, Dec. 30, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — Turtle Beach Corporation (NASDAQ: HEAR) today announced that it has entered into an amendment to its loan agreement with Bank of America signed March 31, 2014 …
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.
“Corn snake!”
“Where?”
“My side about 3 feet off the road”
I slammed on the brakes and Jake, piling out of the car, ran back about 40 feet and stooped to pick up a 30″ long corn that I would never have seen. Young eyes are good! And Jake’s eyes, having the image of a snake burned time again on the retina are super in seeing off-the-road serpents.
Actually, neither Jake nor I had any particular need for a corn snake, Pantherophis guttatus guttatus. We just happened to be in Levy County hoping to hear ornate chorus frogs (a species that is becoming difficult to find). Having arrived an hour or so before dusk, and since temperatures were still fairly warm, we decided to roadhunt for a while before heading for the swamps and marshes.
So far we had seen 2 crossing garter snakes of the blue-striped variety, a cottonmouth, and now this corn snake. We always enjoy taking photos, so a few minutes were spent doing so.
The corn snakes of western Levy County are rather distinctive, very pretty, and well worth photographing. The ground color is cinnamon, the saddles are crimson and are accentuated fore, aft, and on the sides by a few black scales that are themselves preceded by a variable number of white scales.
Did we need them? No. But they are just too pretty to pass by without at least a second glance. We could only hope that the hunt for chorus frogs would be this successful.
Continue reading “The cinnamon corns of Levy County” …read more
Read more here: King Snake
No products found.
A turtle with an unusual breathing method faces extinction.
From the Scientific American:
Few reptiles can breathe underwater. Australia is home to one of the exceptions, the white-throated snapping turtle (Elseya albagula), which can extract oxygen from water through its backside via a process called cloacal respiration. This unusual technique, shared by a handful of other turtle and fish species, gave the turtles an evolutionary advantage for millennia, allowing them to hide from predators underwater for days at a time.
Unfortunately, breathing out of your butt requires very specific conditions that no longer exist in the turtles’ only habitat, Queensland’s Connors River and three nearby catchments. Dams, weirs, agriculture and mining have left the water sluggish and full of sediment. That makes it significantly harder for the turtles—especially vulnerable juveniles—to stay underwater. As a result, predation has increased to the point where populations have crashed. The problem has gotten so bad that less than 1 percent of eggs and young turtles survive to adulthood and the species has now been declared critically endangered by the Australian government
Read more here. …read more
Read more here: King Snake
No products found.
“As three-time Soapbox Derby Champ Ronnie Beck says, ‘Unguarded construction sites are a gold mine.'” -Bart Simpson
While my days of pirating materials from construction sites to build skate ramps and bike jumps are way, way behind me, my urge to re-use old building materials from my own scrap pile continues to fuel many of my reptile projects.
My pile contains all sorts of fencing, screen wire, unused materials, and wood scraps from 10 years of projects around the house, and it’s always the first place I look when I have something that needs to be built.
Thus it was I found myself scanning the detritus of a hundred different tasks, looking for bits and pieces that would help me in my next reptile project: a tortoise tractor!
What is a tortoise tractor? It’s a tortoise cage or pen on wheels that can be shuffled around the yard as needed to different spots, such as areas where the grass or weeds are greenest.
The term “tractor” here comes from the use of wheels to make the unit more mobile, from the poultry world where chicken tractors are used by many home breeders to house their small flocks. Tractors like this can be as simple or as advanced as you have the need, desire, and budget. Some are tall with fancy coops or hides at one end, others not so much.
Continue reading “Building your own tortoise tractor “ …read more
Read more here: King Snake
No products found.
It’s our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user ToucanJungle!
Nile Monitor, uploaded by kingsnake.com user ToucanJungle” />
Upload your own reptile and amphibian photos photos at gallery.kingsnake.com, and you could see them featured here! …read more
Read more here: King Snake
No products found.
By Herp News
Singapore, Dec 29 (IANS): A team of Indian-origin scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has finalised a 'smart' maneuvering robot that can be used for oceanic surveys, inspections of pipe and cable, ship hull or a propeller's shaft.
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.
By Herp News
Bonobos, our ape cousins, love peace. Unlike chimpanzees, also our close relatives, bonobos are known to resolve conflict through sex instead of aggression. They kiss, they caress, and females display genito-genital rubbing (also called G-G rubbing) to communicate, bond, and reconcile.
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.
By Herp News
Security researcher and former cybersecurity…
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.
By Herp News
Play Reptile Trivia with your friends! This Reptile Trivia game allows you to play Reptiles live against people from around the world,…
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.
Militant attacks on a sacred shrine have lowered the number of visitors to the site, which means the local crocodiles aren’t being fed.
From Aljazeera America:
Iqbal has already paid bus fare and an entrance fee and given a donation to the shrine’s saint. Now she’s worried that the meat’s inflated price means she won’t have enough money to get home. The crocodiles’ caretaker, Shahan Mahmood, shakes his head sadly. He can’t afford to sell her the meat at a lower price.
“The crocodiles are starving,” he says. “No one is coming to feed them.”
In the last year, Mahmood and the rest of the shrine’s caretakers have buried two crocodiles. For two years, they say, very few of the eggs laid by the reptiles here have hatched. Iqbal forks over the change and watches as the caretaker walks to the makeshift iron fence to feed the closest crocodile. Mahmood says this is the first purchase of meat he has seen in three days.
Read more here. …read more
Read more here: King Snake
No products found.
By Herp News
Singapore, Dec 29 (IANS) A team of Indian-origin scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has finalised a 'smart' maneuvering robot that can be used for oceanic surveys, inspections of pipe and cable, ship hull or a propeller's shaft.
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.
By Herp News
At the top of Australia's batting order are the hare and the tortoise.
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.
It’s our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user reptillia69!
Horned Frog, uploaded by kingsnake.com user reptillia69″ />
Upload your own reptile and amphibian photos photos at gallery.kingsnake.com, and you could see them featured here! …read more
Read more here: King Snake
No products found.
By Herp News
CROSS – Deep in the woods of Berkeley County, some of the world's rarest and most endangered turtle species are being saved from collectors and Asian dinner plates.
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.
By Herp News
T he box turtle had a missing leg. The elementary school had a 3-D printer. This is the story of how they came together to produce Stumpy 2.0, a box turtle with a custom-made prosthetic limb. Stumpy arrived at Oatland Island Wildlife Center in early September with a badly injured and infected front leg. Oatland veterinarian Lesley Mailler wasted little time in amputating the limb and stitching …
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.
By Herp News
An endangered species of turtle that is indigenous to China has found refuge at Bristol County Agricultural High School as part of a long-term conservation project with an educational purpose.This is the first year that the school’s natural resource management department is raising Chinese box turtles as part of an effort in cooperation with the Turtle Survival Alliance, said Aaron Caswell, a …
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.
By Herp News
An endangered species of turtle that is indigenous to China has found refuge at Bristol County Agricultural High School as part of a long-term conservation project with an educational purpose.This is the first year that the school’s natural resource management department is raising Chinese box turtles as part of an effort in cooperation with the Turtle Survival Alliance, said Aaron Caswell, a …
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.
By Herp News
An endangered species of turtle that is indigenous to China has found refuge at Bristol County Agricultural High School as part of a long-term conservation project with an educational purpose.
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.
By Herp News
Call it a belated Christmas season miracle.
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.
By Herp News
A trollish hacking group says it brought down Sony and Microsoft's gaming networks over the holiday.
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.
By Herp News
Call it a belated Christmas season miracle.This is a story of an eccentric Internet entrepreneur who singlehandedly may have managed to save gamers around the world — and the Christmas season — from a hacking collective known as Lizard Squad.Microsoft's Xbox Live and Sony's PlayStation Network both suffered outages Christmas Day that extended into today, frustrating gamers who were unable to …
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.
By Herp News
A week ago, I read an article that claimed the infamous Lizard Squad had been dismantled for good, taken down not by the FBI, but by a rival group of “whitehat” hackers, Finest Squad. It's a rather good piece, chronicling how the new group essentially beat the digital vandals at their own game, and outed them to authorities.
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.
By Herp News
A week ago, I read an article that claimed the infamous Lizard Squad had been dismantled for good, taken down not by the FBI, but by a rival group of “whitehat” hackers, Finest Squad. It's a rather good piece, chronicling how the new group essentially beat the digital vandals at their own game, and outed them to authorities.
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.
By Herp News
A week ago, I read an article that claimed the infamous Lizard Squad had been dismantled for good, taken down not by the FBI, but by a rival group of “whitehat” hackers, Finest Squad. It's a rather good piece, chronicling how the new group essentially beat the digital vandals at their own game, and outed them to authorities.
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.
By Herp News
A large number of Tor relays have popped online, all named some variant of “LizardNSA.” Hmm.
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.
By Herp News
By and large, Indonesia is a peaceful country. In fact, on the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime’s list of homicide rates, Indonesia ranks number 10, making Indonesians one of the least murderous people on Earth. A ban on gun ownership probably helps, although obviously there are many other ways to snuff out another person. Maybe Indonesia’s general tendency to avoid conflict helps, too. Whatever the reason why Indonesians are relatively unlikely to kill each other, such favors are not extended to Indonesia’s non-human wildlife. The relative safety of Indonesia’s people does not guarantee similar security for its animals.
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.
By Herp News
By and large, Indonesia is a peaceful country. In fact, on the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime’s list of homicide rates, Indonesia ranks number 10, making Indonesians one of the least murderous people on Earth. A ban on gun ownership probably helps, although obviously there are many other ways to snuff out another person. Maybe Indonesia’s general tendency to avoid conflict helps, too. Whatever the reason why Indonesians are relatively unlikely to kill each other, such favors are not extended to Indonesia’s non-human wildlife. The relative safety of Indonesia’s people does not guarantee similar security for its animals.
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.
By Herp News
Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online As part of an ongoing attempt to develop underwater robots capable of thinking on their own, engineers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have created a mechanical turtle capable of performing complicated tasks such as surveillance and energy harvesting. In addition, the turtle robot is maneuverable, operates on a self-charge mode …
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.
By Herp News
A week ago, I read an article that claimed the infamous Lizard Squad had been dismantled for good, taken down not by the FBI, but by a rival group of “whitehat” hackers, Finest Squad. It's a rather good piece, chronicling how the new group essentially beat the digital vandals at their own game, and outed them to authorities.
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.
Most reptiles and amphibians do better in a captive environment if given a place to hide or burrow.
Thankfully there are lots of commercial hides and hide boxes available in all different sizes, shapes, and formats. From simple plastic hides, to elaborate logs and caves, these commercial hides work great if you only have a few animals. If you’re dealing with a large number of animals, however, they can sometimes be problematic. Aside from being expensive to buy or replace, they can be difficult to clean, they may not fit the cage or the animal well, or they may not do all the things you need them to do.
I needed a hide box that would work for my medium-sized colubrid snakes. And I needed one hunderd of them, so they had to be inexpensive, replaceable, easily cleaned, and, as a special requirement, they needed to “hold” a replaceable water dish, in this case a 16-oounce round deli container. Although I found several that met most of my needs, none of the commercial ones met them all. So I made my own.
Using a few tools, including a cordless drill and two hole saw bits, and cheap black spray paint, I re-purposed a stack of used plastic containers into the (almost) perfect hide box for my needs.
Starting with the plastic containers, once yearling cages, I used a 2-inch hole saw to cut out a side entrance at one end of the container. On the top of the container, at the other end, I used a 4-1/2 inch hole saw to cut a hole in the top of the box. These were hole saw bits that I already had, and if I had to purchase a new one for this project I would use a 4-3/8 so that the deli cup would fit tight in the hole. With the 4-1/2 inch bit the tolerance is too close for a tight fit, but my hides prevent the bowls from being tipped over, and that was the goal. I also found that the hole saw bit’s teeth would often grab the plastic as it broke through and “fling” the box around. Running the drill in reverse to do the cutting once the initial pilot hole was drilled prevented this. It took longer, but created less dust and a cleaner hole.
With my boxes cut, I took some $1 flat black spray paint and gave the boxes single ruddy coat of paint. It doesn’t need to be a solid perfect coat, just enough to obscure the light filtering through. Once dried, the hide boxes were placed in the cages, water bowls filled, and my kingsnakes all had new homes. …read more
Read more here: King Snake
No products found.
It’s our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user Snakeskii!
Angels in a Box, uploaded by kingsnake.com user Snakeskii” />
Upload your own reptile and amphibian photos photos at gallery.kingsnake.com, and you could see them featured here! …read more
Read more here: King Snake
No products found.
Check out this video “Soft Shell Turtle?” submitted by kingsnake.com user freymann.
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
Read more here: King Snake
No products found.
It’s our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user ninthof9!
Merry Christmas, uploaded by kingsnake.com user ninthof9″ />
Upload your own reptile and amphibian photos photos at gallery.kingsnake.com, and you could see them featured here! …read more
Read more here: King Snake
No products found.
It’s early Christmas eve and Greg and I doing what we usually do for the Christmas Holidays….avoiding the Christmas Holidays.
It’s not that we are Bah-humbug, but Christmas is the longest holiday we have to endure. It starts well before Thanksgiving when the first tv commercial features the sounds of Christmas bells or an outright Christmas song. The array of things to do for Christmas for the next 45 days is so vast no one family can do it all. We pick and choose what we do but the rest still comes at me like bad celebrity news. It is exhausting.
Our plan for the next two days is to watch commercial free TV, stay outta the stores, make home-made pizza (both days), relax and pretend it is January.
The only other thing to be done is take care of Frankie, the cat, and the geckos.
It’s getting cold tonight so Frankie is inside in the big bathroom. I was prepared. Room cleaned, rags and newspaper available, cardboard palace set up. I went out and picked Frankie some grass. I mixed it with some lettuce, vitamins, and calcium. I brought Frankie his Christmas Eve din-din.
Frankie sat, rear blocking the the door, munching on his feast. He was happy. And then he peed.
I’ve said this before, it is absolutely astonishing how much pee can come out of the back end of a 100 pound sulcata. I can hear it from the gecko room. I arrive in time to grab rags and inspect the damage.
One can never have enough rags with a 100 pound sulcata.
Now this has never happen before: Frankie’s pee went under the door and into the hall where there is a rug.
I start throwing rags at the door to sop up as much pee as possible. It was too late. Although I could not open the door (Frankie is blocking), I can peek out enough to see that the rug just outside the bathroom door is getting soaked. I squeeze through to door.
“GREG!”
“What?”
“Can you bring me the rug cleaner spray, NOW?”
You see, as much as sulcata poop seems to bother people, there really isn’t anything, including sulcata poo that smells as bad as sulcata pee….in 24 hours. Getting the sulcata pee out of the rug is a Holiday emergency!
I sop up what pee I can from the rug. I start spritzing the rug with rug cleaner. Then I just open the rug spray container and pour it where the pee is. Rub, rub, rub, pat, pat, pat, pray, pray, pray.
I finish all the rug cleaner and go through a dozen rags. I squeeze back into the bathroom, pushing Frankie butt away from the door. Good timing. Frankie just finished up another round of pee.
At this point I am ready to have Frankie move so I can get under him but he …read more
Read more here: Turtle Times
No products found.
By Herp News
Talk to any avid gamer these days and they’ll tell you about Lizard Squad.
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.
By Herp News
By mimicking the red and green colors of falling leaves, Bornean lizards avoid falling prey to birds whilst gliding, new research has found.
…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com
No products found.