By Herp News

A BUM-BREATHING turtle is not something you hear of every day and without more protection it won’t be heard of anymore either.

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By Herp News

This notice provides stockholders of Tortoise Power and Energy Infrastructure Fund, Inc. with information regarding the distribution paid on Nov. 28, 2014 and cumulativ

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This notice provides stockholders of Tortoise Pipeline & Energy Fund, Inc. with information regarding the distribution paid on Nov. 28, 2014 and cumulative distribu

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The Turtle Back Zoo is hosting a weekend holiday lights spectacular.

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It was time to add the hoophouse roof, but as planned, the final greenhouse would be considerably larger than this first prototype.

That’s why I only wanted a temporary solution, until I could determine the size of the final greenhouse, and could plan accordingly. Thus I wanted to try to use the 16-foot steel livestock panels as a temporary solution, and didn’t want to permanently affix them to the structure.

Allowing the remaining posts concrete to set overnight, I then placed the steel livestock panel arches into the pens, allowing the bottom of one end to dig into the dirt while I pushed from the other side.

As the other end stopped upon encountering the wall, it began to bow upwards, forming the arch needed for the roof. Once the end I was pushing was also inside the pen, I set it down, allowing the spring effect to push it outward and dig into the dirt as well.

Were this the plan for the permanent solution for the roof, and had this been as big as I was planning it would have been, I would have framed the bottom with 2x4s and cemented the livestock panels in as well. As it was, only their weight, and the pressure exerted by their spring tension from being bent, held them in place, which was enough for a temporary solution.

Once I had the livestock panels in place, I covered the whole thing with poultry wire and then zip-tied some inexpensive tarps across the top to provide temporary shade.

And we were ready for turtles. Not finished, but ready enough to move them from their temporary home.

This worked really well, was quick to build out, used a minimal of materials at hand or easily available, and could be finished as-is with doors, or expanded to be part of a larger entity. Since I had purchased the auger, I had long ago decided to make this part of a larger entity. But, would my design expand in real life as well as it did on the computer? I was about to find out — and so will you, in the next in this series!
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Check out this video “Pink Eastern Worm Snake,” submitted by kingsnake.com user Minuet.
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It’s our herp photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user cycluracornuta!

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By Herp News

For Stu McKenzie, guitarist and “creative director” in local psychedelic garage band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, the process of making an album is more than a linear aggregation of distinct songs. 

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By Herp News

A Loggerhead Turtle that was washed up on the Clare coast in November last year is set to return to warmer climes in time for Christmas.

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By Herp News

For Stu McKenzie, guitarist and “creative director” in local psychedelic garage band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, the process of making an album is more than a linear aggregation of distinct songs. 

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

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If I were only going to do a single pen, I could have stopped with where I was in my last post, and do the finish out. All that was left was to set the steel panel hoophouse roof up, cover it in wire, and throw a tarp over it. But not yet.

We had planned on three pens for our initial test, so digging another four holes with the auger, I quickly expanded to three pens, using the same approach as for the first pen, one pen at a time. Then I added the posts, the 2×4 toppers on the edges, then the corrugated panels.

The only difference was I needed to snip out a small amount of corrugated steel with tin snips on each of the interior wall panels, to allow the 2×4 top frame to seat properly on the 4×4 posts. Building the two remaining pens took about the same amount of time as building the first pen.

Once all three pens were up, all the walls were checked where they met the ground to ensure that there were no gaps that could provide an escape path. Once that was done, fill dirt excavated from the post holes was used to build up the dirt around the edges of the pens to a depth of 3-5 inches. This would prevent immediate escapes. but would do little to dissuade a burrower from either direction.

When we were done with the basic pens. it was time to consider our herp greenhouse roof. Stay tuned!
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By Herp News

Humans, or Homo sapiens sapiens, are really just upright apes with big brains. We may have traded actual jungles for gleaming concrete and steel ones, but we are still primates, merely one member of an order consisting of sixteen families. We may have removed ourselves from our wilder beginnings, but our extant relatives—the world’s wonderful primates—serve as a gentle living reminder of those days.

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Researchers at the Yuma Proving Grounds are making headway tagging tortoises to study their movements.

From the Yuma Sun:

To track the tortoises and study their habits, biologists attach small VHF transmitters and GPS data loggers to the shell of each tortoise they find. They also paint a unique number on the tortoise’s shell, and file a small notch through one of the keratin scutes at the thin rear edge of the shell, which has a consistency similar to a human fingernail. All this is done after an examination of the tortoise’s health and weight.

Coaxing one of the creatures out of their shelters can be a challenge: if they feel threatened, they oftentimes wedge themselves against the rear wall and ceiling of their miniature caves, which can be yards deep.

“They’re shockingly strong,” said Hillary Hoffman, a herpetologist with the Arizona Game and Fish Department who has been coming to YPG since 2009. “If they don’t want to come out, they’re not coming out.”

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

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By Herp News

A tortoise owner in Wormit, Fife, bought a new pet on the trading website for £100 but to his horror it arrived utterly immobile inside a purple box of Choco Hoops.

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By Herp News

In just two forest patches may dwell a tiny, little-known chameleon that researchers have dubbed the world’s most endangered. Chapman’s pygmy chameleon from Malawi hasn’t been seen in 16 years. In that time, its habitat has been whittled down to an area about the size of just 100 American football fields.

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By Herp News

VALHALLA, N.Y., Nov. 25, 2014 /PRNewswire/ – Turtle Beach, the leading audio brand in the video games industry, today announced that the officially licensed Heroes of the Storm ™ PC Gaming Headset is …

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I sat in the yard this morning watching the ducks swim in their little pool and the dogs play rambunctiously over the expanse of the yard. It was a sunny 75 degrees Fahrenheit and very comfortable overall. Then came the blue jays. Within moments there were 8 or 10 of them, all screaming at the top of their lungs.

Then came an American crow, and then another. Cawing and gurgling they joined the screaming jays. At first I thought this to be an owl response, but even with binoculars I could see neither an owl nor a hawk. But then I noticed the birds seemed to be looking down and finally, in a leafy limb-end bower, I made out a sinuosity of form – a snake. It was small, probably only 3 feet long or perhaps even a bit smaller.

As I watched, it began moving downward and it was apparent that it was a yellow rat. The snake’s movement prompted the jays to find a new upper level of volume to their cacophonous calls. The snake didn’t seem to care. I stood and moved towards the tree and the crows, more nervous than the jays, departed.

The snake continued downward until less than 20 feet separated us. The jays, with a final look of disdain, flew away. The rat snake got to the lowest limb, moved in towards the trunk and the last I saw it was coiling slowly, largely secluded between the trunk and an immense grape vine that clambered up the tree.

I walked away thinking this was a lucky snake. Perhaps it was because I was so close that the frenzied calls of the jays and crows hadn’t summoned a red-shouldered hawk. Had one of these herp-eating buteos arrived the ending for this tale and the snake would probably have been just that: a literal ending.
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A just-published study has turned scientific concensus upside down by suggesting turtles aren’t very closely related to snakes and lizards after all. Instead, their closests cousins are birds, crocodiles, and dinosaurs, a group researchers are now calling “Archelosauria,” which is believed to be the largest group of vertebrates to be assigned a new scientific name.

From Phys.org:

A team of scientists, including researchers from the California Academy of Sciences, has reconstructed a detailed “tree of life” for turtles. The specifics of how turtles are related—to one another, to other reptiles, and even to dinosaurs—have been hotly debated for decades. Next generation sequencing technologies in Academy labs have generated unprecedented amounts of genetic information for a thrilling new look at turtles’ evolutionary history. These high-tech lab methods revolutionize the way scientists explore species origins and evolutionary relationships, and provide a strong foundation for future looks into Earth’s fossil record.

Research results, appearing in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, describe how a new genetic sequencing technique called Ultra Conserved Elements (UCE) reveal turtles’ closest relatives across the animal kingdom.

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

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By Herp News

Electronic Arts Inc. is still experiencing a number of problems with its EA online service after a DDoS attack late Sunday.

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By Herp News

Chameleons are an unmistakable family of wonderfully bizarre reptiles. They sport long, shooting tongues; oddly-shaped horns or crests; and a prehensile tail like a monkey’s. But, chameleons are most known for their astonishing ability to change the color of their skin. Now, a update of the IUCN Red List finds that this unique group is facing a crisis that could send dozens of chameleons, if not more, to extinction.

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By Herp News

A Philippine court has found nine Chinese fishermen guilty of poaching and environmental crimes for fishing in disputed waters.

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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

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.

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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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