By Herp News

Horny geckos are spiraling through outer space on a fantastic voyage that may never end.

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Check out this video “Bullfrog Calling,” submitted by kingsnake.com user PH FasDog.
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By Herp News

Gomez bought it to surprise his son, but took it to the ballpark first.

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By Herp News

The lusty geckos will have plenty of time alone.

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By Herp News

Myrtle Beach State Park ranger Ann Malys Wilson isn’t worried about a quiet sea turtle season – which ends in August – following a record year in 2013.

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By Herp News

It's not the year of the turtle. Only half as many sea turtle nests as usual have been laid at Cape Island, which usually holds one-third of the nests laid from North Carolina through Georgia. The rest of the coast is no better. But wildlife biologists say an “off” year was expected.

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By Herp News

“Alaska wood frogs spend more time freezing and thawing outside than a steak does in your freezer, and the frog comes back to life in the spring in better shape than the steak,” said the lead author on a recent paper demonstrating that freeze tolerance in Alaska wood frogs is more extreme than previously thought.

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By Herp News

Get ready to learn a new word: defaunation. Fauna is the total collection of animals—both in terms of species diversity and abundance—in a given area. So, defaunation, much like deforestation, means the loss of animals in all its myriad forms, including extinction, extirpation, or population declines.

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The very first Philippine crocodiles to be bred in Britain made their debut at the London Zoo.

From the Orange News:

The six new-born critically-endangered crocs – born over a 48 hour period – are among the world’s rarest reptiles.

As they are native only to the Philippines the baby crocodiles were named after the islands they typically inhabit; Jolo, Luzon, Mindoro, Samar, Sulo, and Mindanao.

It is hoped that their arrival will help to boost the numbers of the species which has been hit by habitat loss and hunting for their skins.

The parent crocodiles. which play a significant role in the European breeding programme for the species, were born at a conservation centre in the Philippines.

Deputy Head of the Reptile House, Iri Gill, said: “The arrival of these six Philippine crocodiles at ZSL London Zoo is a massive cause for celebration for us, and we couldn’t be more thrilled.”

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By Herp News

Lush Cosmetics has agreed to support an effort to battle trafficking of the Sunda pangolin.

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By Herp News

Tortoise Capital Advisors, L.L.C. announced today the release of 2014 semi-annual stockholders' reports for each of NDP, NTG, TPZ, TTP and TYG, as well as TYY and TYN, which merged

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By Herp News

SAN DIEGO, July 22, 2014 /PRNewswire/ – Turtle Beach Corporation (NASDAQ: HEAR) today announced that it will report second quarter 2014 financial results after the market close on August 11, 2014.  On …

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By Herp News

A coalition of conservation groups have established a new protected area in one of Latin America’s most neglected ecosystems: the Colombian-side of the Serranía de Perijá mountain range. Following decades of bloody conflict and rampant deforestation, experts say only five percent of rainforest is left on the Colombian side of this embattled mountain range.

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A 4-foot alligator was rounded up near Wisconsin’s Sheboygan River.

From the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel:

A team of sheriff’s deputies and Sheboygan police officers corralled and snared the snarling reptile in a ditch near the Sheboygan River after a brief search that started in the 2700 block of Indiana Ave. in the city of Sheboygan, Sheriff’s Sgt. Matt Spence said Sunday.

The sheriff’s office received a call around 10:30 a.m. Sunday of an alligator sighting in that block, east of S. Taylor Drive, Spence said.

After the gator’s snout was taped shut for the officers’ safety, the animal was turned over to a conservation warden with the state Department of Natural Resources, according to Spence.

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Photo: Sheboygan County Sheriff’s Office …read more
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By Herp News

CEBU – A 30-year-old hawksbill turtle found wounded in Barangay Bato in Toledo City died at the University of San Carlos Marine Research Station in Lapu-Lapu City on Tuesday.

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By Herp News

If you’re monkey—say a samango monkey in South Africa—probably the last thing you want is to be torn apart and eaten by a leopard or a caracal. In fact, you probably spend a lot of time and energy working to avoid such a grisly fate. Well, now there’s a simpler way: just stick close to human researchers.

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As temperatures in their native ranges change, male reptiles may need to disperse to survive. That’s according to a study published in the journal BMC Ecology.

From BBC Nature News:

Alligators, some turtles, and the tuatara – found only in New Zealand – all produce offspring whose gender is determined by temperature.

These species are considered to be especially vulnerable to climate warming, because at higher temperatures they produce only one sex.

Previous studies have suggested that the best way for reptiles to respond is to alter the temperature of their nest by seeking shaded areas, digging deeper nests and nesting earlier in the season.

But the authors say their study is the first to demonstrate that dispersal by the sex that occurs least in a population may be just as important, if not more so, in compensating for the effects of climate change.

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By Herp News

A pet lizard and the family cat are safe this morning in Taft after being rescued by the Kern County Fire Department from a house fire on Saturday.

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By Herp News

So far, Kotaku has introduced an array of animal cafes in Japan: cat cafes , black cat cafes , owl cafes , bunny cafes , squirrel gardens and even penguin bars . Now, check out the country's reptile cafes. Read more…

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By Herp News

Paleontologists have recreated the cranial structure of a 308-million-year-old lizard-like vertebrate that could be the earliest example of a reptile and explain the origin of all vertebrates that belong to reptiles, birds and mammals.

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By Herp News

Anne Marie Schudy of Springfield, Mo., Austin Barone of Lawrence, Kan. and Olivia DeSmit of Columbia, Mo. are the 2014 recipients of the annual Tortoise Young Entrepreneurs Scholarship Awards.

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By Herp News

A green sea turtle migrates 2,472 miles in a year

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Don’t you just hate it when the tortoises turn on you?

From the BBC:

A police officer in Uganda has reportedly shot a tortoise dead after being attacked by the “aggressive” creature.

The incident happened in the Nebbi district in the north of the country near the Congolese border. The officer – named as Charles Onegiu by the New Vision newspaper – said the animal entered his home and attacked him while he was enjoying a post-work cup of tea. “I tried to scare it but the tortoise became very aggressive. I took a stick to chase it but it instead became more violent,” he told the paper. After attempting to fend off the tortoise with a plastic chair, he said he “instinctively” drew his firearm and shot it dead. A local Christian group later prayed for Onegiu, “before burning the dead reptile to ashes.”

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By Herp News

A reptile expert said Friday that he wants to go “on the record” and confirm that New Jersey authorities are searching for an anaconda, not a boa constrictor in the state's largest lake.

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By Herp News

Did a sea turtle “hug” a surfer who rescued it from fishing nets? Call it what you will, but the moment caught by a GoPro camera on the stunning video shows there was a connection there.

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By Herp News

Did a sea turtle “hug” a surfer who rescued it from fishing nets? Call it what you will, but the moment caught by a GoPro camera on the stunning video shows there was a connection there.

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Big day for me on Thursday: gecko management & feeding, working with two injured turtles, cursing a phone that hasn’t worked in 35 hours, two doctor appointments, painting trim outside, and haunting thoughts, without relief, over the torture of another turtle.

With no sleep to help me navigate the day the only escape I get is watching Frankie’s endless pursuit of absolutely nothing. He walks everywhere in his yard getting no where special yet with focus of vital importance. At least the weather today is comfortable. Awake since eight in the morning, Frankie is taking advantage of every moment as he has.

At three I decide I deserve a nap so I go inside, recline on my sofa, turn on TV, and relax. The Godfather is on and even though it’s violent, the scene of the Don chasing his grandson and having a heart attack is surreal so I may wake up just to see that.

Cat in lap, I slip off into a very comfortable state of not-completely-asleep-but-pretty-much-unavailable-to-the-world for a nice stress relief and temporary halt to reoccurring thoughts of mobster-like-violence I’d like to try on turtle abusers but absolutely know I’m incapable of physically hurting anyone.

How long was I napping? Thirty minutes? Forty-five? A god awful clatter unfamiliar to my trained reptile emergency and Frankie-catastrophe-in-process ear causes me to bolt up from the chair. The recently sleeping cat goes flying to the ground. I clear my mind and wait fully aware to see if it happens again.

Probably Frankie, I think, but it could be a neighbor.

Rumble! rumble! crack!

It’s got to be Frankie I think as I open the back door but also confounded that the sound is muffled like it’s happening in a tunnel.

The back porch is cluttered with things waiting storage. There was a ladder next to Frankie’s dogloo but that’s been push aside, probably by Frankie (remember the video of the sulcata moving the ladder? Yeah, Frankie does this now). I pull aside an empty cardboard box and there it is.

Frankie is head first into his dogloo. All I see are two back feet are posed on the edge of the dogloo. He is just sitting there. I tilt my head to one side to think what’s in that dogloo that has Frankie’s undivided attention?

Those two feet squarely set on lip of the dogloo are there for a reason. I witness that huge shell pull back on top of those feet which then launch Frankie deep into the dogloo accompanied by a huge, but muffled, BAM!

I am not stupid, okay maybe my priorities are skewed, but disregarding what ever is being rammed to pieces in that dogloo, I got to video this and it just happens the camera is just inside the door. I get it.

It takes about forty seconds to fetch, turn on, switch to video, compose my self (so the camera doesn’t shake) …read more
Read more here: Turtle Times

By Herp News

A reptile specialist leading the search for a snake on the loose in Lake Hopatcong now says it is a green anaconda, not a boa constrictor, as officials had maintained.

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By Herp News

Less than a mile from downtown Newberry sits a group of unmarked gray warehouse buildings that contain either endless wonders or the stuff of nightmares, depending on how you feel about snakes.

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By Herp News

Ever since the desert tortoise was declared a threatened species, the government has spent hundreds of millions protecting them. Some might question whether it's paid off.

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By Herp News

Researchers have used mRNA sequences, rather than DNA, to more efficiently create a reference database that can be used for proteomic analysis of Xenopus frogs. The researchers used their reference database to identify over 11,000 proteins from an unfertilized Xenopus egg and estimate the abundance of these proteins. The method outperformed comparison proteomic analyses based on a preliminary, unpublished Xenopus genome and other protein reference databases.

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By Herp News

The little green heads popping up from the sands of Tybee Island's beaches Thursday served as proof that a major event was finally occurring…

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By Herp News

Shelly the turtle is home safe in her summer backyard pond in Hay River, N.W.T. after a neighbour spotted her crossing a nearby street. An expert had warned of a possible ecological disaster when she escaped three weeks ago.

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By Herp News

Byline: The Lizard’s Tamar class all-weather lifeboat Rose launched yesterday morning (16 July) to go to the assistance of a 100 year old sailing vessel Ruth with four people on board which had lost its main mast three miles southwest of Lizard Point. Page Content: The Lizard lifeboat volunteer crew launched just after 9:30am after the Master of Ruth had contacted Falmouth Coastguard requesting …

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Check out this video “Chameleon changing color,” submitted by kingsnake.com user PH FasDog.
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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By Herp News

Ontario’s once plentiful turtles are rapidly disappearing as poachers grab the reptiles for sale on the international pet trade market. Some turtle populations in the province have completely vanished over the past decade. “My turtles are gone,” Jacqueline Litzgus, a spotted turtle researcher, told the The Canadian Press last week. Most of the turtles end up for sale in pet shops in Asia and …

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By Herp News

A faster and more accurate way to test for infection with Ophidiomyces ophiodiicola, a fungus that is killing snakes in the Midwest and eastern United States, has been devised by researchers. The test also allows scientists to monitor the progression of the infection in living snakes. Researchers first took notice of Ophidiomyces in snakes in the mid-2000s. Today the fungus threatens the last remaining eastern massasauga rattlesnake population in Illinois and has been found to infect timber rattlesnakes, mud snakes, rat snakes, garter snakes, milk snakes, water snakes and racers in several states.

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By Herp News

A new study casts doubt on long-held suspicions that persistent organic pollutants in the environment make green turtle more susceptible to the virus that causes fibropapilomatosis, a disease that forms large benign tumors that can inhibit the animal’s sight, mobility and feeding ability.

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By Herp News

Polar bears are big animals. As the world’s largest land predators, a single male can weigh over a staggering 700 kilograms (about 1,500 pounds). But as impressive as they are, it’s difficult to imagine counting polar bears from space. Still, this is exactly what scientists have done according to a new paper in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

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So, that snake infamously fished out of an Alabama toilet? It was retrieved by police officer Ali Thompson and identified by Hueytown Police Chief Chuck Hagler as a venomous cottonmouth. Local herpers came out of the proverbial woodwork, however, to say he was wrong.

From AL.com:

tidey : Don’t know about fangs… but this appears to be a rat snake. Very common and not poisonous. Doesn’t have the markings of a cottonmouth or copperhead.
umgrizz1: good grief… I know any kind of snake in the house is frightening… but that snake is NOT even venomous, much less a cottonmouth…
AUwildlife81: All snakes can’t climb, primarily here in Alabama only the rat snake and corn snake are able to climb because they also feed on birds they would need this ability. Water moccasins eat fish and fish don’t live in trees so they don’t need to climb. Water moccasins as with most venomous snakes have stocky bodies which will prevent them from climbing. I have a degree in wildlife biology have taken numerous herpetology classes and I used to remove snakes for living. Yes other snakes can climb but those snakes are found in South America, Asia, and Africa.

Hagler’s standing firm on his ID, however.

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Photo: Hueytown Police Department …read more
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