By Herp News
A rehabilitated juvenile flatback turtle will be released into the wild and tracked by the WA Department of Parks and Wildlife using satellite technology.
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Turtle released into wild and tracked
Maritime Reptile Zoo Meets Joggins Fossil Centre
By Herp News
Museum hosts annual Halloween party
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Reptile rescuer back on route
By Herp News
A GOOD samaritan has donated Byron Bay snake catcher George Ellis a car to use until the end of the year. The call went out for a vehicle to replace Mr Ellis' snakemobile last week, after his Holden Rodeo he had used for the past seven years broke down and was not worth getting fixed.
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PHOTOS: Lizard stands its ground on track at GC600
By Herp News
The first corner on the Surfers Paradise track is not the place to be for a lizard. Photos Brian Hurst The first corner on the Surfers Paradise track is not the place to be for a lizard.
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Turtle rescue centre launched in Pulau Gaya
By Herp News
KOTA KINABALU: The first dedicated turtle rescue centre in Sabah was officially launched yesterday, marked with the release […]
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Endangered gecko seized in Assam, 3 nabbed
By Herp News
Guwahati, Oct 26 (IANS) Police Friday arrested three people after recovering a Golden Gecko lizard from their possession, police said.
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Las Vegas Reptile Expo shows off creatures on display
By Herp News
The Las Vegas Reptile Expo will be back at the Santa Fe Station Hotel and Casino
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Pictures: 441 new species described in the Amazon rainforest since 2010
By Herp News
Scientists described at least 441 previously unknown species from Amazon rainforest between 2010 and 2013, according a new report from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
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Photo essay: notes from India’s Kabini River
By Herp News
The Nilgiris, also known as the “Blue mountains,” in southern India are an extraordinary mountain range that form one of the most diverse biospheres in the country, the Nilgiri Biosphere. And the Nagarhole National Park, declared a tiger reserve in 1999 is part of this biosphere. The Kabini River flows through the National park and is the lifeline to a wide variety of flora and fauna. This river transforms Nagarhole into a water world of wonder.
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Monkey that purrs like a cat is among new species discovered in Amazon rainforest
By Herp News
At least 441 new species of animals and plants have been discovered over a four year period in the vast, underexplored rainforest of the Amazon, including a monkey that purrs like a cat.
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Huge alligator found tied to a tree behind apartment building
People broke the law, but it’s the alligator who died.
Because Florida law prohibits relocating alligators larger than 4 feet in length, this healthy, 11-and-a-half foot animal was killed after some idiot tethered him to a tree behind an apartment complex.
From the Tampa Tribune:
That alligator gator stretched 11 feet, 6 inches and may have hatched when Richard Nixon was president, said Phil Walters, the licensed trapper called out Wednesday afternoon to corral and kill the beast behind the Rivertree Landing Apartments off Sligh Avenue, east of 56th Street.
The back of the complex borders a scenic stretch of the Hillsborough River just south of Temple Terrace.
“We had heard that a couple of people had caught and tied the gator to a tree,” Walters said.
That was indeed the case. A stretch of parachute cord stretched from a tree over a 4-foot seawall and into the river, where the gator floated at the other end of the line.
Walters said some residents told law enforcement that unidentified people “had caught it and was feeding it cats,” keeping it as a backyard pet of sorts.
Whether the cat diet rumor is true or not, Walters was unsure. He does note that it’s a bad idea to feed an alligator anything because the free food makes the reptiles lose their fear of humans and associate people on the shore with getting a snack.
Read the full story here.
Photo: Phil Walters/Tampa Tribune …read more
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Tortoise Capital Advisors, L.L.C. Announces Release of Third Quarter 2013 Reports for Closed-End Funds (NDP, NTG, TPZ …
By Herp News
Tortoise Capital Advisors, L.L.C., the adviser of NDP, NTG, TPZ, TTP, TYG, TYN and TYY, announced today the release of third quarter 2013 reports for each of these funds. The reports are available online at www.tortoiseadvisors.com.
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Bee sting allergy could be a defense response gone haywire
By Herp News
Scientists are providing an evolutionary explanation for severe allergic reactions. Researchers show that mice injected with a small dose of bee venom were later resistant to a potentially lethal dose of the same venom. The study is the first experimental evidence that the same immune response involved in allergies may have evolved to serve a protective role against toxins.
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Armored giant turns out to be vital ecosystem engineer
By Herp News
The giant armadillo (Priodontes maximus) is not called a giant for nothing: it weighs as much as a large dog and grows longer than the world’s biggest tortoise. However, despite its gigantism, many people in its range—from the Amazon to the Pantanal—don’t even know it exists or believe it to be more mythology than reality. This is a rare megafauna that has long eluded not only scientific study, but even basic human attention. However, undertaking the world’s first long-term study of giant armadillos has allowed intrepid biologist, Arnaud Desbiez, to uncovered a wealth of new information about these cryptic creatures. Not only has Desbiez documented giant armadillo reproduction for the first time, but has also discovered that these gentle giants create vital habitats for a variety of other species.
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Featured video: bears work together to take down camera traps
By Herp News
Scientists with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) have captured stunning images of Andean bear families taking down camera traps in Bolivia’s Apolobamba National Natural Area of Integrated Management. In one series of images a mother and her two cubs bite, claw, and whack one of the cameras. However even as they destroy one camera, the bears’ antics are captured by another as researchers typically set several cameras to capture different views of animals, a process that helps them identify individuals.
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More bad news for frogs about chytridiomycosis
On Monday, we reported on an immune system characteristic that leaves amphibians particularly susceptible to the chytrid fungus, which is responsible for massive declines in amphibians populations around the world. Now, it looks like the herbicide atrazine is also increasing the susceptibility of frogs to chytridiomycosis.
From Phys.org:
USF Biologist Jason Rohr said the new findings show that early-life exposure to atrazine increases frog mortality but only when the frogs were challenged with a chytrid fungus, a pathogen implicated in worldwide amphibian declines. The research is published in the new edition of Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
“Understanding how stressors cause enduring health effects is important because these stressors might then be avoided or mitigated during formative developmental stages to prevent lasting increases in disease susceptibility,” Rohr said.
Read the full story here.
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Early-life exposure of frogs to herbicide increases mortality from fungal disease
By Herp News
A new study shows the herbicide atrazine increased mortality from chytridiomycosis, a disease causing worldwide amphibian declines.
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Alligator Snapping Turtle Caught In Oregon, Found In Prineville Reservoir [PHOTO]
By Herp News
ODFW Wildlife Biologist Jason Journey with the invasive alligator snapping turtle captured at Prineville Reservoir. ODFW
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Alligator snapping turtle discovered in Oregon
By Herp News
Alligator snapping turtle, native to the Southeast but an invasive species in Oregon, was discovered by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife last week. The alligator snapping turtle is the largest freshwater turtle in North America and can grow up to 250 pounds.
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Fishermen illegally killing dolphins for shark-bait in Peru (video)
By Herp News
Peruvian fishermen slaughtered dolphins to use as bait for shark fishing, an undercover investigation has revealed. Footage showed infant and adult dolphins being harpooned then stabbed and clubbed before, in some cases, being cut open and butchered while still alive. The slaughtered dolphins were cut up and used as bait. Dolphins are also killed for human consumption in Peru even though it is illegal.
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Scientist splits Amazonian giants into separate species
By Herp News
It’s hard to mistake an arapaima for anything else: these massive, heavily-armored, air-breathing fish (they have to surface every few minutes) are the megafauna of the Amazon’s rivers. But despite their unmistakability, and the fact that they have been hunted by indigenous people for millennia, scientists still know relatively little about arapaima, including just how many species there are. Since the mid-Nineteenth Century, scientists have lumped all arapaima into one species: Arapaima gigas. However, two recent studies in Copeia split the arapaimas into at least five total species—and more may be coming.
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"Gatorcane: See You Later, Alligator" concludes reptile saga
By Herp News
Presented by Gatorland, the third installment of “Gatorcane” concludes the edge-of-your-seat trilogy with reporter Jon Busdeker meeting face-to-face with the Mother Gator.
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Anoles thriving in Los Angeles neighborhood
A thriving population of green anoles is living in a Los Angeles neighborhood.
From KCET.org:
The lizards that biologists just found thriving in the Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles aren’t a new species: they’re the extremely well-studied green anole. But as the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum’s Lila Higgins reports, the discovery marks the first confirmed established population of the common reptile in Los Angeles County, and scientists are curious as to what effect the little lizards may be having on native wildlife.
Green anoles are native to the southeastern U.S. and nearby islands, where — ironically they’re in trouble due to competition from exotic reptiles. Hancock Park isn’t the first beachhead green anoles have made in the state: a population has been established in San Diego’s Balboa Park for many years, and reptile watchers also report a thriving colony of the sleek lizards in and around Temecula. Individual green anoles have been documented in places like Northridge and Chino Hills.
And according to Higgins, Hancock Park neighbors have told Natural History Museum herpetologist Greg Pauly that the anoles have been there as long as they can remember.
Read the full story here.
Photo: PiccoloNamek/Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons License …read more
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Small invertebrates could be key to uncovering the mysteries of killer amphibian fungus
By Herp News
In 2004, the first-ever Global Amphibian Assessment (GAA) reviewed all 5,743 amphibian species known to science and concluded that 32% were threatened with extinction – a number far exceeding corresponding figures for birds and mammals (12 to 23% respectively). In addition to the usual culprits of climate change and habitat destruction, a startling 92.5% of amphibians listed as Critically Endangered were found to be undergoing enigmatic declines linked to an unexpected perpetrator – the chytrid fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd).
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Alligator snapping turtle pulled from Prineville Reservoir
By Herp News
The first alligator snapping turtle found in the Central Oregon wilderness was pulled out of the Prineville Reservoir, the ODFW reported Monday.
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98% of marine fish headed for the aquarium trade die within a year in the Philippines
By Herp News
Almost all wild caught marine fish for the aquarium trade will die within a year of capture, according to WWF. Following months of interviews with Filipino marine exporters and hobbyists, WWF-Philippines have found that roughly 80% of all marine fish die before they are sold, and those that survive long enough to be bought by hobbyists are extremely likely to be dead in under a year.
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Walmart Alligator: 6-Foot Reptile Invades Store, Startles Shoppers
By Herp News
An alligator in Walmart would be enough to make most people run in terror, but shoppers in Florida went about their business on Sunday when a 6-foot reptile invaded their store. The incident happened at a Walmart in Apopka, Florida, just after midnight. Shoppers noticed the alligator wandering near the front door of the Walmart,… Read more » Walmart Alligator: 6-Foot Reptile Invades Store …
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The ‘dead’ ocean: eyewitness says overfishing has emptied the Pacific
By Herp News
An Australian sailor has described parts of the Pacific Ocean as “dead” because of severe overfishing, with his vessel having to repeatedly swerve debris for thousands of kilometers on a journey from Australia to Japan. Ivan MacFadyen told of his horror at the severe lack of marine life and copious amounts of rubbish witnessed on a yacht race between Melbourne and Osaka. He recently returned from the trip, which he previously completed 10 years ago.
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Lodge Owner's Efforts At Turtle Egg Hatchery A Success
By Herp News
SANDAKAN (Bernama) — By any stretch of imagination, this should have been a very mundane event. For centuries, turtles have been coming ashore to lay eggs, the event happening without much ado.
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Why amphibians are so susceptible to chytridiomycosis
Scientists are honing in on the immune factor that is allowing amphibian populations to succumb to the fungal disease chytridiomycosis, which has caused a loss of nearly 4 percent of amphibian populations every year between 2002 and 2011.
From Popular Science:
It’s been most baffling, given the amphibians’ complex immune systems, not far off from the immune complexity of humans and other mammals.
“There’s been a big question in terms of why the amphibian immune system hasn’t been able to respond to this nasty skin infection,” Louise Smith-Rollins, an associate professor of pathology, microbiology and immunology at Vanderbilt, tells Popular Science. “The question is, if it’s a failure to recognize the pathogen, what’s the defect?”
Rollins-Smith has been studying this immune response for more than 10 years, and she and her team have found another clue as to why amphibians can’t clear this fungus. This week in Science, a paper she co-authored brings in new information to understanding the answer to that question. The study, led by Vanderbilt graduate students J. Scott Fites and Jeremy Ramsey, shows that it may be the second line of immune defense where the breakdown occurs.
The first line of defense, antimicrobial peptides produced in the skin, seemed to be effective at producing an immune response. But during the next stage, something happened to stop the usual inhibiting response.
“It appears that the defect is that the fungus itself is able to release factors that target vulnerable lymphocytes and induce them to commit suicide,” Rollins-Smith says. “Mediators that should be regulating and calling in the troops, they’re stopped right there.”
Read the rest of the story here.
Photo: Joel Sartore/Popular Science …read more
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Animal Foundation Puts Tortoise Up for Adoption
By Herp News
The Animal Foundation is putting its first Desert Tortoise up for adoption. Ted, the tortoise, is waiting for his forever family.
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Orphaned gorillas successfully reintroduced where apes had been hunted to extinction
By Herp News
The reintroduction of captive gorillas to areas where they have been hunted to extinction appears to working, suggesting a possible new front in efforts to save great apes, finds a new study published in the journal Oryx.
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Tortoise Power and Energy Infrastructure Fund, Inc (TPZ) Ex-Dividend Date Scheduled for October 22, 2013
By Herp News
Tortoise Power and Energy Infrastructure Fund, Inc (TPZ) Ex-Dividend Date Scheduled for October 22, 2013
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Art, education, and health: holistic conservation group embarks on new chapter
By Herp News
It’s unlikely conservation organizations can survive if they are unwilling to embrace change: as an endeavor, conservation requires not just longterm planning, but also an ability to move proactively and fluidly to protect species and safeguard ecosystems. Environmental and education NGO, the Art of Conservation, is currently embarking on its biggest change since its foundation in 2006: moving away from its base in Rwanda, while leaving a legacy behind.
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Turtle Beach Xbox One headsets and adapters to appear in 2014
By Herp News
Third parties waiting in line
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Herp Video of the Week: Ball Python Clutch, Day 41!
Check out this video “Ball Python Clutch, Day 41,” submitted by kingsnake.com user kcalderala.
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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Yeti may be undescribed bear species
By Herp News
The purported Yeti, an ape-like creature that walks upright and roams the remote Himalayas, may in fact be an ancient polar bear species, according to new DNA research by Bryan Sykes with Oxford University. Sykes subjected two hairs from what locals say belonged to the elusive Yeti only to discover that the genetics matched a polar bear jawbone found in Svalbard, Norway dating from around 120,000 (though as recent as 40,000 years ago).
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Members-of-The-Lizard-lifeboat-crew-represent-the-RNLI-at-St-Pauls-Cathedral-se1
By Herp News
Byline: Three crew members of The Lizard lifeboat were selected from all the stations in the south-west to represent the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) at the National Seafarers service at St Paul’s Cathedral in London. Page Content: The Lizard lifeboat Coxswain Andrew Putt, Third Mechanic Steve Tattersall and Head Launcher Jeff Ashby were selected to carry the RNLI standard at the …
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Exotic pet trade a threat to tortoises
By Herp News
Populations of the spur-thighed tortoise have been decimated not because of disease but as a result of the exotic pet trade. / James Cornett, Special to The Desert Sun
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Turtle Beach Announces Extended Partnership with Microsoft
By Herp News
VALHALLA, N.Y., Oct. 18, 2013 /PRNewswire/ – Turtle Beach, the leader in gaming audio products, today announced an extended partnership with Microsoft to create innovative hardware, software, and applications …
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