By Herp News

The Daily Mail witnessed the animals triple-wrapped in plastic, where they slowly suffocate. Our reporter also saw soft-shelled turtles beheaded by staff.

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By Herp News

Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) (AFP) – A notorious Malaysian wildlife trafficker dubbed the “Lizard King” for his smuggling of endangered reptiles is back in business despite a 2010 conviction for illegally trafficking endangered species, according to an investigative report by Al Jazeera. Anson Wong was arrested in August 2010 at Kuala Lumpur's international airport while attempting to smuggle 95 …

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By Herp News

Fitch Ratings assigns an 'AAA' rating to the following notes issued by two closed-end funds managed by Tortoise Capital Advisors, LLC. Fitch also affirms the existing notes and man

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A new study from the University of Waterloo shows that snakes can optimize their vision by controlling the blood flow in their eyes when they perceive a threat.

Kevin van Doorn, PhD, and Professor Jacob Sivak, from the Faculty of Science, discovered that the coachwhip snake’s visual blood flow patterns change depending on what’s in its environment. The findings appear in the most recent issue of the Journal of Experimental Biology.

“Each species’ perception of the world is unique due to differences in sensory systems,” said van Doorn, from the School of Optometry & Vision Science.

Instead of eyelids, snakes have a clear scale called a spectacle. It works like a window, covering and protecting their eyes. Spectacles are the result of eyelids that fuse together and become transparent during embryonic development.

When van Doorn was examining a different part of the eye, the illumination from his instrument detected something unusual.

Surprisingly, these spectacles contained a network of blood vessels, much like a blind on a window. To see if this feature obscured the snake’s vision, van Doorn examined if the pattern of blood flow changed under different conditions.

When the snake was resting, the blood vessels in the spectacle constricted and dilated in a regular cycle. This rhythmic pattern repeated several times over the span of several minutes.

But when researchers presented the snake with stimuli it perceived as threatening, the fight-or-flight response changed the spectacle’s blood flow pattern. The blood vessel constricted, reducing blood flow for longer periods than at rest, up to several minutes. The absence of blood cells within the vasculature guarantees the best possible visual capacity in times of greatest need.

“This work shows that the blood flow pattern in the snake spectacle is not static but rather dynamic,” said van Doorn.

Next, the research team examined the blood flow pattern of the snake spectacle when the snake shed its skin. They found a third pattern. During this time, the vessels remained dilated and the blood flow stayed strong and continuous, unlike the cyclical pattern seen during resting.

Together, these experiments show the relationship between environmental stimuli and vision, as well as highlight the interesting and complex effect blood flow patterns have on visual clarity. Future research will investigate the mechanism underlying this relationship.

“This research is the perfect example of how a fortuitous discovery can redefine our understanding of the world around us,” said van Doorn.

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada supported this project.

Photo: Kevin van Doorn/ University of Waterloo …read more
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A new study from the University of Waterloo shows that snakes can optimize their vision by controlling the blood flow in their eyes when they perceive a threat.

Kevin van Doorn, PhD, and Professor Jacob Sivak, from the Faculty of Science, discovered that the coachwhip snake’s visual blood flow patterns change depending on what’s in its environment. The findings appear in the most recent issue of the Journal of Experimental Biology.

“Each species’ perception of the world is unique due to differences in sensory systems,” said van Doorn, from the School of Optometry & Vision Science.

Instead of eyelids, snakes have a clear scale called a spectacle. It works like a window, covering and protecting their eyes. Spectacles are the result of eyelids that fuse together and become transparent during embryonic development.

When van Doorn was examining a different part of the eye, the illumination from his instrument detected something unusual.

Surprisingly, these spectacles contained a network of blood vessels, much like a blind on a window. To see if this feature obscured the snake’s vision, van Doorn examined if the pattern of blood flow changed under different conditions.

When the snake was resting, the blood vessels in the spectacle constricted and dilated in a regular cycle. This rhythmic pattern repeated several times over the span of several minutes.

But when researchers presented the snake with stimuli it perceived as threatening, the fight-or-flight response changed the spectacle’s blood flow pattern. The blood vessel constricted, reducing blood flow for longer periods than at rest, up to several minutes. The absence of blood cells within the vasculature guarantees the best possible visual capacity in times of greatest need.

“This work shows that the blood flow pattern in the snake spectacle is not static but rather dynamic,” said van Doorn.

Next, the research team examined the blood flow pattern of the snake spectacle when the snake shed its skin. They found a third pattern. During this time, the vessels remained dilated and the blood flow stayed strong and continuous, unlike the cyclical pattern seen during resting.

Together, these experiments show the relationship between environmental stimuli and vision, as well as highlight the interesting and complex effect blood flow patterns have on visual clarity. Future research will investigate the mechanism underlying this relationship.

“This research is the perfect example of how a fortuitous discovery can redefine our understanding of the world around us,” said van Doorn.

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada supported this project.

Photo: Kevin van Doorn/ University of Waterloo …read more
Read more here: King Snake

By Herp News

The idea for a reptile rescue came to Tonya Hinshaw when she picked up two geckos that were advertised on Craigslist. The critters were malnourished, and their little terrarium was dirty and littered with dead cockroaches.

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By Herp News

An unusual species of mouth-brooding frog was likely driven to extinction by the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), making an unusual example of ‘extinction by infection’, argue scientists writing in the open-access journal PLOS ONE. Rhinoderma rufum has not been seen in the wild since 1980.

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By Herp News

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 21 — His wildlife smuggling earned him the title “Lizard King” and led wildlife groups to dub him “public enemy number one”, but the name Anson Wong drew a blank with Natural…

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By Herp News

A 10-year study by the US Fish and Wildlife Service shows some good news for frogs and toads on national wildlife refuges. The rate of abnormalities such as shortened or missing legs was less than 2 percent overall — indicating that the malformations first reported in the mid-1990s were rarer than feared. But much higher rates were found in local “hotspots,” suggesting that where these problems occur they have local causes.

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By Herp News

India’s last dancing bear has retired. As the stars of their cruel little roadshows, sloth bears danced to the piercing sounds of the damru for hundreds of years. Orphaned by poachers and trained by the Qalandars, a nomadic Muslim community, these bears trudged through towns and villages to earn their masters a meager livelihood.

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Snake venom and other harmful substances can save lives as well as take them.
From LiveScience.com:

“Poisons can be bad for some things and good for others, including humans,” said Michael Novacek, senior vice president of the American Museum of Natural History, at an opening of a new poison-themed exhibition Tuesday (Nov. 12).

[…]

The strongest of poisons occur in evolutionary arms races, Siddall explained. For example, opossums can feed upon some venomous snakes thanks to a resistance to the snakes’ venom. In response, the snakes over generations have amped up the toxicity of their venom to keep these marsupial predators at bay. Meanwhile, the opossums continue to evolve resistance to the ever-stronger venom, he said.

Read the full story here.

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By Herp News

Tortoise Energy Capital Corporation (TYY) Ex-Dividend Date Scheduled for November 20, 2013

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By Herp News

Tortoise MLP Fund, Inc. (NTG) Ex-Dividend Date Scheduled for November 20, 2013

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By Herp News

Tortoise Energy Infrastructure Corporation (TYG) Ex-Dividend Date Scheduled for November 20, 2013

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Florida commercial fisher Eddie Toomer was awarded the Gladding Memorial Award by the Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute for his lifetime commitment to protecting endangered sea turtles.

From KBTX.com:

Toomer is most renowned for his important contributions to the design of turtle excluder devices (TEDs) for shrimp trawlers. “TEDs maximize shrimp harvest while allowing endangered sea turtles to escape. Shrimpers’ use of TEDs has spared hundreds of thousands of endangered sea turtles around the world,” said Pamela Plotkin, director of Texas Sea Grant and author of the book, Biology and Conservation of Ridley Sea Turtles.

With his mom and dad and a dozen or so others, Toomer also is responsible for the 3 million-acre no trawling pink shrimp nursery area in the Gulf.

“I feel fortunate to be a part of the history of the TED,” said Toomer. “Finding a successful design was achieved by joining the practical experience and creativity of fishers, with the design ideas and studies of scientists.”

Read the full story here. …read more
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By Herp News

A North Carolina Man needed anti-venom for a dangerous snake bite over the weekend and officials there asked the Kentucky Reptile Zoo for help.

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By Herp News

Byline: The Lizard lifeboat has been launched to assist two yachts in difficulties off Lizard Point and has also been involved in a search over a three day period. Page Content: On Tuesday 12 November at 8:30am The Lizard lifeboat was launched to a lone sailor onboard Yacht Quintess 2 on passage from Brixham to Ireland that required assistance after the yachts sails were blown out and the …

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By Herp News

A recent study from the Biological Conservation journal brings shocking news: every year across the globe, an estimated 400,000 seabirds are killed by gillnets. Gillnets, a common term for any net used to entangle and catch fish, are used all over the world, and at any depth. These nets, whether used in subsistence or commercial fishing, trap anything that swims through them. When unintended marine wildlife, or “bycatch,” is caught in these nets, the results can be significant.

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By Herp News

A recent study from the Biological Conservation journal brings shocking news: every year across the globe, an estimated 400,000 seabirds are killed by gillnets. Gillnets, a common term for any net used to entangle and catch fish, are used all over the world, and at any depth. These nets, whether used in subsistence or commercial fishing, trap anything that swims through them. When unintended marine wildlife, or “bycatch,” is caught in these nets, the results can be significant.

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By Herp News

Did you ever have one of those days that starts out good and just gets better as the day goes by?

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By Herp News

LAS CRUCES >> If your pet has scales instead of fur, or if you're interested in adding a tortoise, snake or lizard to your household, Awesome Reptiles in Las Cruces offers everything

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By Herp News

If you've driven in downtown Louisville lately and found yourself doing a double take after seeing a man walk a giant turtle you're not hallucinating! The turtle and his handler are the real deal and becoming quite a local attraction.

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Veterinarians in Germany didn’t just treat the injuries on an injured tortoise brought in to a local animal shelter after being inured. They raided the toy box and built him a prosthetic wheeled leg.

From The Local:

“First we fitted a double wheel but it was difficult for him to turn corners so we replaced it with a single wheel and that is much better for him,” Dr Panagiotis Azmanis told The Local.

He works at the Birdconsulting International veterinary practice of Marcellus Bürkle in Achern in Baden, and ended up raiding the toy box of the practice manager’s daughter for wheels and spacer blocks.

Initially though the focus was on saving the tortoise’s life. “He was in pretty bad shape when they brought him to us. The lower part of his front leg was missing, and the upper part was very bad, with bone showing, and maggots in necrotic flesh.”

One the animal had been stabilized, the vets amputated the injured leg at the shoulder and treated him with antibiotics and fluids, as well as giving him pain killers.

Then came the question of lifting his fourth corner so he could move around.

“Tortoises need to run free in gardens, so he needed a prosthetic,” said Azmanis.

Read the full story here.

Photo: DPA …read more
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By Herp News

The crowd greeted the 140-pound loggerhead turtle like a rock star Thursday — a collective “awwww” swelled up as she touched beach sand for the first time in 106 days.        

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By Herp News

The crowd greeted the 140-pound loggerhead turtle like a rock star Thursday — a collective “awwww” swelled up as she touched beach sand for the first time in 106 days.        

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By Herp News

The crowd greeted the 140-pound loggerhead turtle her like a rock star Thursday — a collective “awwww” swelled up as she touched beach sand for the first time in 106 days.

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By Herp News

You're probably asking, why would a site devoted to the protection of sea turtles launch an iDevice tracker? Here's why — and how it might survive a challenge from Apple. Originally posted at News – Apple

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By Herp News

A Web site devoted to sea turtles has set up a Web page that shows which Apple stores have the new iPad Mini in stock.

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By Herp News

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — ANGKOR GOLD CORP. (“ANGKOR”) is pleased to announce that it has closed a Purchase Agreement with Mesco Gold Ltd. (“Mesco”) which extends their existing …

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A Florida paleontologist says climate change may turn back the species clock to a day when mammals were tiny and reptiles huge.

From NBC News:

“You see the size of these animals dancing with the climate,” said Jonathan Bloch, a paleontologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Bloch delved into the connection between body size and global temperatures, particularly during a hot time known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, on Monday during the ScienceWriters2013 conference here in Gainesville. Like so many facets of global change, the lessons from the distant past don’t make the far future look all that sunny. Super-snakes, anyone?

Read the full story here.

Photo: Artist’s conception of the largest snake the world has ever known from Jason Bourque / University of Florida. …read more
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By Herp News

Security cameras record the mystery woman holding and petting the reptile on a train hours before it was found at O'Hare airport.

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Considering they’re still making news 66 million years after going extinct, dinosaurs are clearly one of humanity’s favorite animals. Here is a round-up of dino-centric stories from the last week:

From National Geographic:

An enigma for decades, a giant dinosaur known only for its brawny arms actually towered over the local tyrannosaurs, paleontologists report. It also ate plants and perhaps sported a surprising sail or hump on its back.

The dinosaur Deinocheirus mirificus (which means, essentially, “terrible hands that look peculiar”) had been a stubborn fossil enigma for nearly 50 years.

Nothing except the dinosaur’s eight-foot-long arms, tipped in three huge claws, and a handful of other bone fragments had ever been found.

But at the annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontology conference held in Los Angeles last week, Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources paleontologist Yuong-Nam Lee presented a wealth of new fossils that make Deinocheirus stranger than anyone had previously imagined.

From Discovery.com:

A nursery of bizarre-looking dinosaurs known as therizinosaurs has been found in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia.

The nesting colony contained at least 17 clutches of eggs.

“Not only is this the largest colony of nonavian theropods, but this is the best documented site,” said study co-author Yoshitsugu Kobayashi, a vertebrate paleontologist at Hokkaido University in Japan, who presented the findings here at the 73rd annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontology conference.

The finding suggests the odd little creatures were social animals. Read more…

From NBC News:

Paleontologists on Wednesday unveiled a new dinosaur discovered four years ago in southern Utah that proves giant tyrant dinosaurs like the Tyrannosaurus rex were around 10 million years earlier than previously believed.

A full skeletal replica of the carnivore — the equivalent of the great uncle of the T. rex — was on display at the Natural History Museum of Utah alongside a 3-D model of the head and a large painted mural of the dinosaur roaming a shoreline.

It was the public’s first glimpse at the new species, which researchers named Lythronax argestes (LY’-throw-nax ar-GES’-tees). The first part of the name means “king of gore,” and the second part is derived from poet Homer’s southwest wind. Read more…

Photo: National Geogrphic

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By Herp News

Some good news out of the Amazon rainforest: given enough time, deforested land can rebound enough to host bird species that had previously deserted the area, according to a recent study in The Auk. When people abandon deforested land, the rainforest slowly reclaims it. Eventually, birds begin to use the clumps of secondary forest as corridors between thickets of old growth.

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By Herp News

Sonny Fernandez and volunteers put Lefty, a loggerhead sea turtle, in a pool at the new Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center in Surf City last Thursday. The new building is 16-times larger than the old facility used since 1996.

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By Herp News

In 1992, scientists made a spectacular discovery: a large, land mammal (200 pounds) that had somehow eluded science even as humans visited the moon and split the atom. Its discoverers, with WWF and Vietnam’s Ministry of Forestry, dubbed the species the saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis). Found in the Annamite Mountains in Laos and Vietnam, the saola is a two-horned beautiful bovine that resembles an African antelope and, given its rarity, has been called the Asian unicorn. Since its discovery, scientists have managed to take photos via camera trap of a wild saola (in 1999) and even briefly studied live specimens brought into villages in Laos before they died (in 1996 and again in 2010), however the constant fear of extinction loomed over efforts to save the species. But WWF has announced good news today: a camera trap has taken photos of a saola in an unnamed protected area in Vietnam, the first documentation of the animal in the country in 15 years.

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The Chicago Herpetological Society is caring for a two-foot alligator found under an escalator at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport.

From the Chicago Tribune:

The group has about 500 members, including about 30 in the Chicago area who open their homes, bathtubs and backyards to reptiles and amphibians who need a place to stay or recover. While by many accounts this was the first alligator found at the airport, it’s not the first Floridian reptile found in Illinois that the volunteers have taken in.

The Illinois Department of Natural Resources confiscates a dozen to two dozen alligators every year, said Scott Ballard, the department’s expert in herpetology, the branch of zoology that pertains to the study of reptiles and amphibians.

No one in the state, other than zoos and licensed facilities, should have one. Because the reptile is protected by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Endangered Species Act, a permit is required to own one in Illinois. The state stopped issuing permits for people to keep them as pets about a decade ago, Ballard said. While violators can be convicted of a Class A misdemeanor under the state’s Endangered Species Protection Act, a spokesman for the Chicago Police Department said there is no criminal investigation into the abandoned animal at O’Hare.

Read the full story here.

Photo: Chicago Tribune …read more
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By Herp News

Puppet shows, posters and children’s activities that draw from local traditions are helping to save an endangered monkey in China. The activities, which encourage villagers—children and adults alike—to protect their forests and adopt fuel-efficient cooking stoves, have worked, according to a report published in Conservation Evidence. Local Chinese researchers, supported by the U.S.-based conservation organization Rare, designed the campaign to protect the monkeys.

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By Herp News

Certain closed-end funds managed by Tortoise Capital Advisors declared the following distributions today:

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By Herp News

Rescued just in time. An injured loggerhead sea turtle was pulled out of a Coconut Grove canal by Florida Fish and Wildlife Officials after receiving a call from a good Samaritan of a turtle in distress.

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By Herp News

Sailors assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman rescued a sea turtle that was tangled in a makeshift fishing net last week. “They called away, 'man the port davit,' because a lookout saw some containers attached to a net in the water, and there was a sea turtle trapped in it,” said Lt. j.g. Lillian Bean, who served as the boat officer for the rigid-hull inflatable boat used in the …

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