By Herp News
In open areas, like the African savannah, scientists often estimate wildlife populations through manned aerial surveys. However a new study in mongabay.com’s open access journal argues that using small drones may be more cost-effective, safer, and capable of reaching more remote areas. Researchers tested the accuracy of drone counts in Bazinga Game Ranch (NGR) in Burkina Faso.
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By Herp News
Scientists have applied a species prioritization scheme to Brazil’s diverse mammals to deduce which species should become the focus of conservation efforts over the next few years in a new paper published in mongabay.com’s open-access journal Tropical Conservation Science.
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By Herp News
In 2009 conservationists estimated that less than 2,000 lions survive in Kenya, a drop of 26 percent in just seven years. In addition, the East Africa country continues to hemorrhage lions: around a hundred a year. Poaching, poisoning, and large-scale habitat loss has put lions on the defensive across Africa, but even countries once thought lion strongholds–like Kenya–have seen populations harried to devastation and in some cases local extinction. Shivani Bhalla, a fourth-generation Kenyan, is working to turnaround this trend in Samburu National Reserve.
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By Herp News
“I went to medical school to care for patients, not to fill out forms.”
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Check out this video “Egyptian Uromastyx,” submitted by kingsnake.com user stingray.
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
As executive director of the Colorado Reptile Humane Society, Ann-Elizabeth Nash hears some odd stories, but the post-flood call that began “I've got this black and yellow lizard in our window well” topped most of them.
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By Herp News
A Utah reptile expert who consults with police has seen a rise in illegal reptiles in Utah.
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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:
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By Herp News
Hillary and Chelsea Clinton on Thursday deployed their mother-daughter star power to help the effort to save African elephants, brokering an $80m effort to stop the ivory poaching which threatens the animals with extinction.
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By Herp News
Torrent frogs use their toes, belly, and thighs to attach to rough, wet, and steep surfaces. In a multipart study, researchers compared the attachment abilities of two species: torrent frogs (Staurois guttatus) and tree frogs (Rhacophorus pardalis). They found that the torrent frog is better able to attach to extremely wet, steep, and rough surfaces due to its superior attachment abilities.
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By Herp News
In Missouri, about a third of the ponds are infected with chytrid, the notorious skin fungus that has sickened and killed amphibians in other parts of the world. Why only a third, scientists wondered? A comprehensive study of the ponds suggests there are hidden constraints on the survival of the fungus. One possibility is that invertebrates present in some ponds but not others allow the fungus to persist by acting as alternative hosts or reservoirs.
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By Herp News
The attention paid to charismatic popular primates—such as gorillas, chimps, orangutans, lion tamarins, and even some lemurs—could make one suppose that conservationists have the protection of our closest relatives well in hand; the astounding fact that no primate species is known to have gone extinct in the last hundred years (despite large-scale destruction of their habitats) seems to confirm this statement. However, looking more closely at the data, one finds that not only are many of the world’s primates slipping toward extinction, but a number of them have received little conservation attention. According to the IUCN Red List, a staggering 48 percent of the world’s primates are threatened with extinction: that’s a worse percentage than amphibians which have been ravaged by a global epidemic. And although a handful of the world’s 600-plus primates have garnered conservation adoration, many remain obscure.
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We’re always happy to see the media grasping that “venomous” and “poisonous” don’t mean the same thing. For your Friday viewing pleasure, stop by io9.com and check out some of the world’s coolest venomous crittters!
Photo from the kingsnake.com photo gallery: BakerReptiles …read more
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By Herp News
During a routine Amur tiger survey with remote camera traps in December 2011, a few photos gave biologists a shock when they revealed
the stunning sight of a golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) launching itself on the back of a 7-month old sika deer (Cervus nippon) and bringing down prey that outweighed it by at least seven times. Photographed in remote Far East Russia, the photos show an incredibly-rare instance of an eagle preying on a deer.
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By Herp News
As tropical forests worldwide are increasingly cut into smaller and smaller fragments, mammal extinctions may not be far behind, according to a new study in Science. Tracking native smalls mammals in Chiew Larn Reservoir, Thailand for over 25 years, scientists found a stunning and rapid decline in mammal populations, until most forests were almost completely emptied of native mammals.
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Before the age of the dinosaurs, a mass extinction event occurred that destroyed 70 percent of all terrestrial vertebrate species and almost all aquatic species. It took as long as 10 million years for life on earth to recover from what is now known as the end-Permian extinction event.
After that recovery but before the rise of the dinosaurs, the ancestors of modern lizards and snakes emerged.
From the University College London:
Two new fossil jaws discovered in Vellberg, Germany provide the first direct evidence that the ancestors of lizards, snakes and tuatara (known collectively as lepidosaurs), were alive during the Middle Triassic period – around 240 million years ago.
The new fossil finds predate all other lepidosaur records by 12 million years. The findings are published in BMC Evolutionary Biology.
The international team of scientists who dated the fossil jaws have provided evidence that lepidosaurs first appeared after the end-Permian mass extinction event, a period when fauna began to recover and thrive in the more humid climate.
Lead author Dr Marc Jones, who conducted the research at UCL, explained: “The Middle Triassic represents a time when the world has recovered from the Permian mass extinction but is not yet dominated by dinosaurs. This is also when familiar groups, such as frogs and lizards, may have first appeared.”
The small teeth and lightly built jaws suggest that the extinct animal preyed on small insects. The new fossils are most closely related to the tuatara, a lizard-like reptile.
[…]
The new fossil jaws can improve molecular dating estimates of when reptiles began to diversify into snakes, lizard and tuatara, and when the first modern lizards inhabited the earth. Previous estimates have varied over a range of 64 million years and the team are keen to help narrow this down.
“Some previous estimates based on molecular data suggested that lizards first evolved 290 million years ago,” said second author Cajsa Lisa Anderson, University of Gothenburg. “To a palaeontologist this seems way too old and our revised molecular analysis agrees with the fossils.”
Revised molecular dating in light of this new fossil find now suggests lizards began to diversify into most of the modern groups we recognise today, such as geckos and skinks, less than 150 million years ago in the Cretaceous period, following continental fragmentation.
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By Herp News
The fossilized remains of a reptile closely related to lizards are the oldest yet to be discovered. Two new fossil jaws discovered in Vellberg, Germany provide the first direct evidence that the ancestors of lizards, snakes and tuatara (known collectively as lepidosaurs) were alive during the Middle Triassic period — around 240 million years ago.
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By Herp News
He was last seen on Manchester Road near Highway OO in July. When it gets cold, he won't survive long.
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By Herp News
The fossilized remains of a reptile closely related to lizards are the oldest yet to be discovered. Two new fossil jaws discovered in Vellberg, Germany provide the first direct evidence that the ancestors of lizards, snakes and tuatara (known collectively as lepidosaurs), were alive during the Middle Triassic period — around 240 million years ago.
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Noted California herpetologist and author of many popular reptile and amphibian field guides used by amateur and professional herpetologists alike, Robert C. Stebbins passed away yesterday at the age of 98.
Born on March 31, 1915, in Chico, California, the first of seven children, his work with reptiles and amphibans on the west coast has been described as “what the Oxford English Dictionary is to lexicographers” and includes such noted works as;
To read more about Robert Stebbins and his work, click here for more from the (bio)accumulation web site . …read more
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By Herp News
Story by Lauren Hills / CBS 12 News JUNO BEACH, Fla. — It was the catch of the day for Aaron Pederson, but not one he ever expected while fishing with his family at the Juno beach pier on Sunday. “We were just snook fishing and I got a bite and felt like I was hooked to a rock,” said Aaron. …
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By Herp News
Two wildlife rangers have been killed by poachers in Thailand, reports the Wildlife Conservation Society.
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By Herp News
Two wildlife rangers have been killed by poachers in Thailand, reports the Wildlife Conservation Society.
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Some programs to help troubled young people have seen improvement in school and interpersonal relationships after the children and teens have worked with dogs or horses. Now snakes and other “misunderstood animals” can be added to that list.
From Trails Carolina:
Studies have shown that animal assisted therapy and relationships with animal companions in general provide an improvement in physical, emotional and psychological well-being. Trails advanced this research by building a curriculum where students interact and engage with misunderstood animals and parallel this experience to their own.
“We learned as children to hate snakes, turtles, possums and the like and we’ve been taught that they’re bad,” says Steve O’Neil, Trails’ Ecology Expert. “Most of our students come in with a lot of fear and within minutes they’re holding a snake. Overcoming their fear and misconceptions about these animals also helps our students see themselves in a different light.”
Similar to these animals, the troubled youth of Trails are facing their own misunderstandings of the world and how people perceive them. By gaining a better understanding of the ecological value of these misunderstood animals students gain a better understanding of their own value and how their behaviors and actions are often misunderstood. This curriculum helps students build confidence in themselves and better understand how to communicate with others.
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A teeny tiny little Mandarin rat snake grounded a Qantas Boeing 747 in Sydney last weekend.
From ABC News:
Staff found the 20-centimeter (8-inch) Mandarin Rat Snake in the passenger cabin near the door late Sunday before passengers were due to board the flight bound for Tokyo from Sydney International Airport, Qantas said in a statement.
Australia’s flagship airline said passengers were given hotel rooms overnight and left Sydney on a replacement plane Monday morning. Qantas said the original jet would be fumigated before returning to service in case there were other snakes on board.
The snake was taken by quarantine officials for analysis.
The Agriculture Department said the snake, a species that grows to an average 1.2 meters (4 feet), had been euthanized, “as exotic reptiles of this kind can harbor pests and diseases not present in Australia.”
Read the full story here.
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By Herp News
Story by Lauren Hills / CBS 12 News JUNO BEACH, Fla. — It was the catch of the day for Aaron Pederson, but not one he ever expected while fishing with his family at the Juno beach pier on Sunday. “We were just snook fishing and I got a bite and felt like I was hooked to a rock,” said Aaron. …
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By Herp News
A Washington County landowner and developer had a vision for a residential development. He's now bankrupt.
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By Herp News
Located in the southwestern corner of India, the state of Karnataka is celebrated for its stunning biodiversity. In order to honor the natural beauty of the region, wildlife photographer and filmmaker Amoghavarsha and Bangalore based musician Ricky Kej have teamed up to create a music video highlighting Karnataka’s unique species and wild places.
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By Herp News
On Friday R&B singer, Rihanna, posed in Thailand with a slow loris, an endangered primate that is often illegally touted on the streets of Southeast Asia by pet dealers. The picture, which the celebrity shared on instagram, went viral, and over the weekend Thai police arrested two men—one 20 and one 16—who allegedly provided the slow loris to the Rihanna for the impromptu photo.
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By Herp News
The Marsican brown bear is on the brink of extinction. Despite authorities spending millions of Euros on its conservation, high human-caused mortality is menacing the survival of this distinct subspecies. The Marsican brown bear (Ursus arctos marsicanus) is only found in the Italy’s Central Apennines, less than 200 kilometers from Rome. The last reliable research carried out in 2011 by the University La Sapienza in Rome estimated a population of around 49 bears. Not surprisingly, the Marsican bear is at extremely high risk of extinction and is considered Critically Endangered on the Red List of the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature).
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By Herp News
Yu, the 25-year-old loggerhead turtle lives in the Suma Aqualife Park near Kobe in Japan and wears a specially-designed black vest with rubber fins attached.
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Check out this video “Anoles in My Garden,” submitted by kingsnake.com user clintg.
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
Four new legless lizard species are found, near Los Angeles International Airport and in Bakersfield, in the Mojave and near Taft. Scientists have discovered four new species of legless lizards in California, including one species that lives beneath the sand dunes near Los Angeles International Airport.
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By Herp News
Mark Summer is a serious musician but he knows how to have fun.
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By Herp News
Slow Poke the turtle disappeared Thursday from Tina Haley's backyard.
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By Herp News
The Calgary Reptile Expo is underway Saturday and Sunday, giving lovers of the less cuddly animals an opportunity to learn and explore.
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By Herp News
Two Stomp readers reported the sighting of a monitor lizard moving about around the lift lobby of a Housing Board block in Yishun Ring Road on Saturday morning (Sep 21). According to one passerby, the lizard was later taken away with help from the police and Acres (Animal Concerns Research & Education Society). In an email to citizen journalism site, Stomp, the reader, hugelizard, wrote: “Huge …
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By Herp News
Sir David Attenborough has joked that he wishes more people would realise he has a reptile named after him.
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By Herp News
The city is asking to exempt a core area of the beachfront from the ordinance to “facilitate developer interest and investment …”
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By Herp News
Last Monday, the police officer on morning duty at Isla Colón International Airport, Panama noticed some foreigners loading crates with what appeared to be animals on a private jet. Finding this suspicious, he alerted his supervisor. Within minutes the local police chief, the mayor of Bocas, the director of the regional office of the National Environmental Authority (ANAM), community leaders and heads of local conservation organizations were informed about the incident. Little by little, a crowd of concerned citizens from Bocas town gathered around what turned out to be eight pygmy sloths – some of the rarest mammals on Earth
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