By Herp News
Late last month, armed guards escorted officials marching 60 kilograms (132 pounds) of rhino horns to a pyre for burning. The event, at the Dvůr Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic, was the first public burning of rhino horns in Europe. The Czech Republic burned the horns, which came from a government stockpile as well as from past rhinos held at the zoo, in a bid to help conserve rhinos.
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Really like pythons? You’re not alone. Pythons were at the center of mankind’s earliest rituals.
From Science Daily:
The python is one of the San’s most important animals. According to their creation myth, mankind descended from the python and the ancient, arid streambeds around the hills are said to have been created by the python as it circled the hills in its ceaseless search for water.
Sheila Coulson’s find shows that people from the area had a specific ritual location associated with the python. The ritual was held in a little cave on the northern side of the Tsodilo Hills. The cave itself is so secluded and access to it is so difficult that it was not even discovered by archaeologists until the 1990s.
When Coulson entered the cave this summer with her three master’s students, it struck them that the mysterious rock resembled the head of a huge python. On the six meter long by two meter tall rock, they found three-to-four hundred indentations that could only have been man-made.
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By Herp News
Regrettably, the virtue of selflessness which largely characterised public service at the dawn of Nigerian’s Independence in 1960, has since been replaced by the ignoble culture of greed and every man for himself. This sad transformation is aptly captured in an earlier article, published in November 2012, with the above title; this month as we… [Read More…]
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By Herp News
A petition seeking to protect a little-known lizard that makes its home in large portions of an area leading the way in the new Texas oil boom remains in limbo.
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By Herp News
SAN ANTONIO (AP) — A petition to list as a federally protected species a little-known lizard that makes its home in large portions of an area leading the way in the new Texas oil boom remains in limbo. The San Antonio Express-News reports (http://bit.ly/1vEhf8o ) an environmental group has asked U.S. Fish and Wildlife to list the spot-tailed earless lizard as an endangered or threatened species.
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By Herp News
Biologists strode along the cracked, dry mud surrounding this evaporating north Los Angeles County lake last week, pausing periodically to pick up an emaciated turtle and wash alkaline dust off its head and carapace.
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By Herp News
Biologists strode along the cracked, dry mud surrounding this evaporating north Los Angeles County lake last week, pausing periodically to pick up an emaciated turtle and wash alkaline dust off its head and carapace.
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By Herp News
A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service acted properly in 2012 when the agency declined to protect a rare tiny lizard in the West Texas oil patch as an endangered species.
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Check out this video “Weekend Herping,” submitted by kingsnake.com user smetlogik.
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By Herp News
Reptile show continues to grow and widen its appeal.
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By Herp News
For thousands of years the jaguar was a God, then it was vermin to be destroyed, and today it is the inspiration for arguably the most ambitious conservation effort on the planet. A new book by renowned big cat conservationist, Alan Rabinowitz, tells this remarkable story from the jaguar’s evolutionary origins in Asia to its re-emergence today as a cultural and ecological symbol.
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Fishermen outside Golden Gate caught and released the first green sea turtle seen in the area.
From the SF Gate:
Green sea turtles normally live in the Pacific’s warmer latitudes. Their numbers are dwindling because of development along the beaches they use to nest, and because they sometimes become snared in industrial fishing nets and drown.
Climate change has also affected the ancient reptiles. Because temperature determines their gender when they hatch, females vastly outnumber males these days. And the warmer ocean currents tend to take the turtles places they’re not accustomed to going, such as San Francisco Bay.
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By Herp News
Polluted urban and farm runoff in Hawaii has been linked to lethal tumors in endangered sea turtles. A new study finds that excess nitrogen in the runoff accumulates in algae that the turtles eat and can cause the disease Fibropapillomatosis which is the leading known cause of death in endangered green sea turtles. The disease causes the formation of tumors on the animals’ eyes, flippers, and internal organs.
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By Herp News
Tortoise Energy Independence Fund, Inc. today announced that as of Sept. 30, 2014, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $483.3 million and its unaudi
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By Herp News
Tortoise MLP Fund, Inc. today announced that as of Sept. 30, 2014, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $2.4 billion and its unaudited net asset valu
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By Herp News
Tortoise MLP Fund, Inc. today announced that as of Sept. 30, 2014, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $2.4 billion and its unaudited net asset valu
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By Herp News
Tortoise Power and Energy Infrastructure Fund, Inc. today announced that as of Sept. 30, 2014, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $266.6 million an
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By Herp News
Tortoise Power and Energy Infrastructure Fund, Inc. today announced that as of Sept. 30, 2014, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $266.6 million an
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By Herp News
Tortoise Pipeline & Energy Fund, Inc. today announced that as of September 30, 2014, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $482.9 million and its
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By Herp News
Tortoise Energy Infrastructure Corp. today announced that as of Sept. 30, 2014, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $4.6 billion and its unaudited n
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By Herp News
Brooks Hays WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 (UPI) — A newly discovered species of ant, called mirror turtle ants, locates food sources by assuming the identity of its neighbors and following them to their spoils.
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By Herp News
Writing this from a hotel room in Indonesia’s second-largest city, Surabaya, I realize that I am filled with trepidation as I wait for the phone next to me to ring. When it does, the voice on the other end will tell me it’s go time; the culmination of many years of work towards ending the global trade in manta ray gills.
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By Herp News
A sailor on the Shediac Bay freed a 300-kilogram leatherback sea turtle from lobster trap lines last week as sightings of these large reptiles entangled in nets are growing in southeastern New Brunswick. Mark Daggett was enjoying an afternoon on his sail boat in Shediac Bay last week, when he came across a leatherback turtle that was trapped in the ropes attached to buoys. “We knew she didn't …
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Lizards thought to be extinct in the wild have been reintroduced into Welsh sand dunes after breeding and care from experts.
From the Daily Post:
Herpetology keeper Ruth Smith said: “Sand lizards are the UK’s rarest lizard and populations in some areas are so low that we can’t just rely on protecting the site, we have to help breed them to boost their numbers.
“Surveys have shown that sand lizard numbers have significantly improved in the locations where they have been released before and it’s proven that those bred in the likes of zoos have a higher chance of survival than those that hatch in the wild.
“That’s because we’re able to give them plenty of food and intensive care in their vital early days and build them up for around four to six weeks, giving them a great head start.
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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 Sept. 30, 2014 and cumulati
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By Herp News
Studies in conservation biology often focus on rare, threatened species faced with impending extinction, but what about common animals of least concern? Could they too help conservationists fine-tune their approach? Doctoral researcher Laurel Yohe not only claims that they can, but demonstrates how in a new study. She and five other researchers compared ranges of five babblers with development across Vietnam.
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By Herp News
The human cost of war is horrendous. However, while most attention is focused on the suffering caused to people—and rightly so—an understudied element is the impact on wildlife conservation. This is worrying given that many of the world’s conflict zones are situated in biodiversity hotspots.
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By Herp News
New research has for the first time provided evidence that reptiles could be capable of social learning through imitation. The ability to acquire new skills through the ‘true imitation’ of others’ behavior is thought to be unique to humans and advanced primates, such as chimpanzees.
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Photographer Mike Korostelev spent some one-on-one time with a crocodile, resulting in remarkable underwater photos.
From the Daily Mail:
But far from being scared, Mr Korostelev was delighted with his deadly encounter.
He said: ‘It was not an accidental meeting, the main purpose of my trip was to capture an American crocodile in its natural environment.
‘I met this crocodile underwater face to face. When it swam close to me, the only thought I had was about how great it was that I could take great pictures.
‘It nuzzled into the camera several times and sometimes it touched me with its tail.’
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By Herp News
The tooth of a 220-million-year-old semi-aquatic phytosaur has been found embedded in the thigh bone of a terrestrial rauisuchid. Both are giant prehistoric reptiles distantly related to the modern crocodile.
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By Herp News
A turtle expert in Windsor, Ont., says because it's illegal to import turtles without a permit into Canada the high demand for the shelled reptiles may be pushing smugglers to bring them into the country. A Windsor man was charged in both Canada and the United States last week, after he was found with 51 turtles strapped to his body trying to enter through the Detroit-Windsor tunnel in early …
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By Herp News
The bite of a slow loris can be painful, and sometimes even lethal. After all, this cute-looking YouTube sensation is the only known ‘venomous’ primate in the world—a trait that might have strangely evolved to mimic spectacled cobras, according to a recent paper. Mimicry in mammals is rare. But anecdotal evidence and studies in the past have noted the uncanny cobra-like defensive postures, sounds, and gait in slow lorises.
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By Herp News
After warmer winters, wood frogs breed earlier and produce fewer eggs, a researcher has found. The same study also found that frogs produce more eggs during winters with more rain and snow.
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By Herp News
SAN DIEGO and SHANGHAI, Sept. 29, 2014 /PRNewswire/ – Turtle Beach, the leading audio brand in the video games industry, today announced the XO Four and XO Seven officially-licensed Xbox One gaming headsets are now on sale in China. Turtle Beach is the gaming audio brand of Turtle Beach Corporation (HEAR). The Turtle Beach XO Four and XO Seven gaming headsets are being sold individually and in …
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By Herp News
It's been over a full month since hacker collective 'Lizard Squad' rose to notoriety for taking down Sony's PlayStation Network, Xbox Live and other gaming servers, but above all else attracting the FBI's attention for tweeting out a bomb threat to a Sony executive's American Airlines flight, which grounded the plane and launched a nationwide hunt for the group.
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Owners who purchased a property overrun with copperheads used to kill one hundred of the snakes each year, but when they learned how important snake venom is to medical research, they had a change of heart.
From Click2Houston:
“We were supposed to come out on a Friday the first time,” said Swanson. “We ended up being delayed by a day because he was burying his aunt, who had just died from breast cancer the day before. When he found out that we were out here to collect these snakes to try to use them for cancer research, it changed their whole outlook on it.”
It changed the Hubbards’ outlook so much that they plan to turn part of their property into a conservation area so people can view the creatures in their natural habitat. They’re hoping to open up the eco-tourist venture by sometime next summer.
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By Herp News
Byline: Children from Landewednack School at The Lizard have recently requested the help of The Lizard Lifeboat in their quest for winning new musical instruments for the school. Page Content: The children have entered a competition run by James Rhodes & The Great Instrument Amnesty and have produced a video which has been uploaded to You Tube. Other schools have also been involved in the …
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By Herp News
Byline: The Lizard Lifeboat Station has received another very generous donation from a visitor who is currently on route from Lands End to John O'Groats. Page Content: James Alty is currently undertaking a mammoth sponsored bike ride on a single speed bicycle to raise money in aid of the Buwan Kothi International Trust. This is a charity which raises funds to help families educate their children …
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By Herp News
A bright orange poison dart frog with a unique call has been discovered in Donoso, Panama. Because this new frog species appears to be found in only a very small area, habitat loss and collecting for the pet trade are major threats to its existence. The authors recommend the formulation of special conservation plans to guarantee its survival.
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By Herp News
Cute kids get into a fight, a hungry lizard eyes up his dinner and the secrets of tattooing are revealed.
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