By Herp News
Maestro PMS™ Enterprise Property Management announced the Turtle Bay Resort on Oahu's fabled North Shore implemented the Maestro iPad Xpress Check-In to pamper guests with personalized service from the moment they arrive. Maestro's mobile iPad solution is fully-integrated with Maestro PMS and updated in real time to perform all aspects of front office functionality and service. Maestro PMS …
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By Herp News
A team of scientists has reconstructed a detailed ‘tree of life’ for turtles. Next generation sequencing technologies have generated unprecedented amounts of genetic information for a thrilling new look at turtles’ evolutionary history. Scientists place turtles in the newly named group ‘Archelosauria’ with their closest relatives: birds, crocodiles, and dinosaurs.
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By Herp News
A team of scientists has reconstructed a detailed ‘tree of life’ for turtles. Next generation sequencing technologies have generated unprecedented amounts of genetic information for a thrilling new look at turtles’ evolutionary history. Scientists place turtles in the newly named group ‘Archelosauria’ with their closest relatives: birds, crocodiles, and dinosaurs.
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By Herp News
South Africa has surpassed last year’s grisly record for slaughtered rhinos—1,004—more than a month before the year ends. In an announcement on November 20th, the South African Department of Environmental Affairs said that 1,020 rhinos had been killed to date.
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By Herp News
( California Academy of Sciences ) A team of scientists, including researchers from the California Academy of Sciences, has reconstructed a detailed 'tree of life' for turtles. Next generation sequencing technologies in Academy labs have generated unprecedented amounts of genetic information for a thrilling new look at turtles' evolutionary history. Authors place turtles in the newly named group …
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By Herp News
Do parents defend their offspring whenever necessary, and do self-sacrificing parents really exist? To answer this question, researchers examined defense behaviors of parent blue tits. They investigated whether birds would risk everything to protect their young from predators. Their conclusion: parents weigh the risks. It is not only the risk to the nestlings, but also their own risk that plays a role when defending their nests.
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Dragging some old 4×4 fenceposts for the first pen I used a saw to cut them down to four 40-inch lengths.
Using our recently purchased auger, I dug out four holes spaced 8 feet apart as four corners of my square pen. Dug down approximately 18 inches, we wanted our posts to stick up 22 inches.
Even with the auger, digging into the hard, dry, baked, clay soil was difficult. Every time I tried to dig, the auger bit would bounce off the big chucks it would gouge until they finally choked the bit to stoppage. A simple solution turned out to be pouring a bucket of water into a started hole and letting the dirt soak it up. With the clay thus loosened, the auger had no trouble boring holes in the dirt quickly and as designed,
Once the holes were dug, the 4×4 posts were set into them, dry, and then topped by 2x4s on three sides, one side at a time, the “open” side being left for expansion to the other two pens. With the pens’ frame in place on one corner, a cordless drill with a drill bit and another with a Phillips bit were used to mount the corrugated steel walls of the pen.
With all four walls mounted in a simliar fashion and leveled as best possible, the 4×4 posts for the first pen were then set in the ground with approximately a bag and a half of quik-crete per hole. Once set, the first basic pen was complete and we were ready to add the remaining pens. While this was a lot of work it only took a couple hours of labor.
More to come!
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School children in Ireland spent time handling Rascal the Burmese python at the Reptile Conservation Zoo.
From the Independent:
The scary encounter was to celebrate the launch of the zoo’s search for an Irish Junior Conservation Hero.
The new initiative is to help raise awareness about the rapid rate of extinction that is wiping out unique species across the planet.
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It’s our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user gerryg!
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By Herp News
MARATHON, Fla. (AP) — A loggerhead sea turtle named Sapphire is getting ready for a cross-country trip on Thursday to a permanent home in Southern California after convalescing for more than a year at the Florida Keys-based Turtle Hospital.
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By Herp News
MY first sighting of a biawak (monitor lizard) in 1999 happened by chance whilst watching hornbills roost along the Kinabatangan River in northeast Sabah.
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It’s that time of the year again when I loose all sense and intelligence and start thinking of bringing Frankie indoors. Yes, the South is headed to the plummeting cold of 30
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By Herp News
It's the latest addition to the Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla.
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By Herp News
What if the tortoise visited the hare in the hospital, years after the race? This story comes from writer Amelia Gray's collection “Museum of the Weird.”
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Using a simple computer graphics program and a clean canvas, I began to rough out a design for a “small” greenhouse solution, a single pen 8 foot by 8 foot square, covered by steel livestock panels arched over to form the hoophouse roof.
The walls of the pen would be 8 foot x 2 foot corrugated steel roof panels secured to 4 inch x 4 inch posts set in concrete and rising 22 inches out of the ground, topped by 2x4x8s around the outside. As designed, it used both existing materials on hand and new materials that needed to be sourced and priced. And it proved to be relatively easy to duplicate and expand the number of pens as needed. Simply copying the single pen design image and pasting it next to the original allowed me to easily expand the design and figure the budget accordingly.
But while everything looks good on the computer, real life has a tendency to interfere. So we had to prove the design.
After a quick trip to the store for some corrugated steel panels, concrete, and importantly a gas powered auger, we set about our mission, building a permanent 3-pen herp greenhouse that could be inexpensively and readily expanded.
Placement of the greenhouse was the first decision. It needed to be on ground that was relatively flat, yet have a slight grade, on good soil, and positioned so that it was expandable to a considerable size. The perfect place turned out to be right next to my power pole, which was convenient to my house and driveway. Laying out my materials in a rough approximation of where they were to be placed, I was ready to start.
Watch for part 3… …read more
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Check out this video “Garter Snake A My Garden,” submitted by kingsnake.com user Minuet.
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 Allroy!
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By Herp News
The signs mark an area where turtles of various species are killed by vehicles as they try to cross a busy road on the northern edge of the Wabashiki Fish and Wildlife Area.
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By Herp News
LA JOLLA, Calif. — For the first time ever, the Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography welcome a rescued sea turtle to its collection of marine life. After a cross-country flight the young loggerhead turtle, weighing nearly 100 pounds, landed in San Diego Wednesday night. “Just last night we flew in a loggerhead sea […]
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By Herp News
A genome of a rare species of tapeworm found living inside a patient’s brain has been sequenced for the first time. The study provides insights into potential drug targets within the genome for future treatments.
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By Herp News
Crews put up 'Turtle Crossing' signs along road where vehicles hit many in Indiana
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By Herp News
A 40-pound sea turtle is headed back to the open water after successfully being treated for red tide. The turtle was found in bad shape on Marco island two weeks ago and was the first patient treated by CROW for red tide this season.
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By Herp News
For the first time, Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, welcomed a rescued and rehabilitated sea turtle to its collection of marine life.
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The distribution of the Escambia map turtle, Graptemys ernsti, long thought to be a variant of the Alabama map turtle, is restricted to parts of the Choctawhatchee, Escambia, Yellow, and Shoal rivers and tributaries in western Florida and adjoining Alabama.
The Escambia map turtle is quite similar in appearance and habits to the more easterly Barbour’s map turtle and the more westerly Alabama map turtles.
As with other map turtles, there is marked sexual dimorphism in this species. Females attain an adult carapace length of 9 to 11 inches and males are less than half that size. Like several other map turtle species, females develop an immense head and the diet of the adult shifts from the insects of the juveniles to the snails, clams, and mussels of the adult. Males eat insects throughout their lives.
At 14 to 20 years of age the females attain sexual maturity. Males, as noted, smaller and less bulky, may begin breeding when only 3 to 6 years old. Females nest from late spring through midsummer. From 3 to 6 nests are produced, more or less at 3 week intervals and produce an average of four nests containing 5 to 13 eggs.
Continue reading “Meet the Escambia map turtle” …read more
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An exotic pet hospital in Australia saved a monitor lizard that was hit by a car, and warns drivers to keep an eye out.
From the Daily Telegraph:
“If you see one hurt … it’s best to be cautious and call an expert.
“Also, try and look out for them on the roads. They tend to move slowly across the road when they want to warm up or look for food.”
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It’s our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user Marijan!
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By Herp News
Auburn University is researching a species that could cause problems in Alabama.
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By Herp News
Jane Goodall is not only arguably the most famous conservationist who ever lived, but also the most well-known and respected female scientist on the planet today. Her path to reach that stature is an unlikely as it is inspiring. Told to ‘never give up’ by her mother, Goodall set out in her 20s to pursue her childhood dream: to live with animals in Africa. By the time she was 26 she doing just this.
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By Herp News
The world has lost a giant: this week the IUCN Red List officially declared St. Helena giant earwig extinct. While its length of 80 millimeters (3.1 inches) may not seem like much, it’s massive for an earwig and impressive for an insect. Only found on the island of St. Helena in the remote southern Atlantic, experts believe the St. Helena giant earwig was pushed to extinction by habitat destruction.
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By Herp News
Blackwater Elite's Ogie Menor proves Philippines Basketball Association style is wilder than NBA style.
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By Herp News
Blackwater Elite may have lost their seventh straight game in the 2014 PBA Philippine Cup but forward Ogie Menor was the big winner in social media as he stunned everyone with his unique lizard hairstyle.
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By Herp News
Photo by Tonje Thilesen Dirty Beaches ', aka Alex Zhang Hungtai, recently announced he would be ending his work as Dirty Beaches with the promise of “NEW PROJECTS NEW MUSIC COMING SOON 2015”. Now, as Stereogum reports, he's shared two new tracks under his new alias Last Lizard. Listen to the instrumental “Dickie’s Theme” and “Detroit (Excerpt)” above. Zhang released his final album as Dirty …
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While our little temporary greenhouse was great for its purpose, it wasn’t much of a barrier to large threats, such as a big dog, or heavy winds or weather. It wasn’t anchored at all, and could be lifted up and moved with two hands. And in the end it was temporary, just as planned.
To do box turtles, and tortoises, properly, and in the quantities I was planning on, I needed to design something larger, more permanent, and most importantly, expandable, so I could add on as needed.
It didn’t require heating or cooling, but did need to be screened to keep the pets in and the threats out. And it needed to have overhead cover during the summer to provide some shade during the oppressive heat of July and August.
It wouldn’t need electrical connections, but it would need water for the planned misting system. Most of all, it had to be stable in the weather, and with winds often gusting over 50 mph and higher, it would need to be secured and anchored well. And it had to be designed so a single person could build and install it.
Some things I tried worked well, others not so much. Some design elements didn’t scale, and attempting to use existing materials sometimes burdened the design, leading to somewhat catastrophic failures.
Along the way I found better ways to do things, and better materials and tools to use. But first, I needed to start with a single small greenhouse for the first groups of box turtles. Stay tuned for part 2! …read more
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What does the evolution of the tortoise shell have to do with breathing?
From Phys.org:
Lead author Dr Tyler Lyson of Wits University’s Evolutionary Studies Institute, the Smithsonian Institution and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science said: “Tortoises have a bizarre body plan and one of the more puzzling aspects to this body plan is the fact that tortoises have locked their ribs up into the iconic tortoise shell. No other animal does this and the likely reason is that ribs play such an important role in breathing in most animals including mammals, birds, crocodilians, and lizards.”
Instead tortoises have developed a unique abdominal muscular sling that wraps around their lungs and organs to help them breathe. When and how this mechanism evolved has been unknown.
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By Herp News
The rare reptile has been in the Bhitarkanika National Park for the past 39 years
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It’s our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user pikiemikie!
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By Herp News
This ain’t your granddaddy’s South Georgia gopher. What we have here is a Sulcata African land tortoise, one of 11 that belong to Randy Gallager of North Carolina.
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By Herp News
Recent two-week field tests in Nebraska of the Hybrid Public Safety Microphone–or Turtle Mike–allowed law enforcement, medical, fire and rescue and public works personnel to test a merge of land mobile radio (LMR) and broadband systems to enable first responders to communicate with each other. Funded by S&T's First Responders Group (FRG) at the request of DHS's U.S. Customs and Border …
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By Herp News
Heppell spoke to nearly 200 scientists, government officials and environmentalists at the Second International Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle Symposium, convened to call attention to the sudden reversal of fortunes for the world's most endangered sea turtle. Andre Landry Jr., former director of the Sea Turtle & Fisheries Ecology Research Laboratory at Texas A&M University at Galveston, helped organize …
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By Herp News
For a long time, this rare white spotted bush frog lived a secretive life: the Critically Endangered Chalazodes bubble-nest frog (Raorchestes chalazodes) was last seen in 1874 and presumed to be extinct. That is until 2010 when a year-long expedition to try and locate ‘lost’ amphibians in India found the elusive frog in the wet evergreen forests of the Western Ghats, after more than 130 years.
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