By Herp News

A federal judge has granted Comptroller Susan Combs the day in court she hoped for to address conservation of endangered species in Texas.

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By Herp News

A dolphin swimming through the world’s oceans after fish, and a bat flying through the air with its membranous wings to catch insects or eat fruit: at first glance, it looks like no two creatures could be more different. But it turns out they share a superpower – they hunt prey by emitting high-pitched sounds and listening for a returning echo. A recent study published in the journal Nature Letters has shown that the regions of the genome responsible for this ability are strikingly similar between these very different mammals.

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Tenants in a Georgia apartment complex are suing over what they call an invasion of snakes on the property — indoors and out.

From WSB TV:

Shawn Davis told Channel 2’s Tom Regan she spotted one slithering down her hallway and another in a fruit bowl.

“The first was a baby copperhead; the second was a rat snake. My husband said since the last two snakes, he found two more. But he didn’t want to tell me about it, cause I’m a nervous wreck,” Davis said.

Residents first contacted Channel 2 Action News about the problem in September. They reported sightings of a half-dozen snakes, including a six-foot-long copperhead that was trapped in an apartment breezeway and killed.

Davis and her husband, Paul Patterson, said they repeatedly reported their concerns to management and requested moving into another building but were told that was not possible.

Earlier this week, they filed a lawsuit accusing apartment management of negligence in failing to control the population of venomous snakes. The suit seeks unspecified damages.

Read the full story here.

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Seven days until Frankie’s Big Move.

If you’ve been counting you’ll notice it’s seven days and not three days due to one little word not appearing on one piece of paper of many, many, many papers to close our new house in Mobile. That’s right. The closing of our house was cancelled at the last minute because Greg’s name didn’t appear on an insurance paper that had NOTHING to do with ownership of a house.

Yes, I am in House Closing Purgatory.

Poor Frankie was the primary victim of one little word. Once we closed on the planned Friday date we would promptly run to Lowe’s and buy fence posts and cement and for an entire weekend put up Frankie’s new privacy fence. The completion of said fence would take the entire week but those all important fence posts needed the attention and dedication of four persons. Once posts are up the pickets could be completed during the week after everyone got off work.

In the mean time I would be back in Birmingham packing and preparing Frankie for the big move.

That everything would work like the Boulder, Colorado’s Atomic Clock is denying the very real existence of HouseClosingPurgatory. Closing was postponed to Monday.

So Frankie’s Fence was not going to get done in time. Four adults of which only one is a Frankie Expert try to decide on a solution.

My favorite is the one where Frankie will live in our friends’s screened porch for five to seven days.

If that idea didn’t cause you to drop to the floor and laugh your arse off then you don’t currently own or have ever owned a 100 pound sulcata tortoise.

Another idea involved putting up a temporary metal fence.

Really?<span style='font-family: Times New …read more
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By Herp News

BADEN, Germany, Nov. 7 (UPI) — Veterinarians in Germany said a tortoise that lost a front leg is successfully moving around with the help of a Lego wheel.

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By Herp News

Mating-behavior studies of lizards in three southern US states have revealed which females male lizards find to be the sexiest. The research provides insight into the evolution of male-female differences.

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By Herp News

Even ten years ago it would have been impossible to imagine: clear-as-day footage of a jaguar plodding through the impenetrable Amazon, or a bicolored-spined porcupine balancing on a branch, or a troop of spider monkeys feeding at a clay lick, or a band of little coatis racing one-by-one from the dense foliage. These are things that even researchers who have spent a lifetime in the Amazon may never see. Now anyone can: scientists at the Tiputini Biodiversity Station in Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park have recently begun using camera trap videos to take movies of animals few will ever view in their lifetimes. The videos—following years of photo camera trapping—provide an intimate view of a world increasingly threatened by the oil industry.

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By Herp News

TUCSON – The community came together to help Quail Run Elementary adopt a desert tortoise.

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By Herp News

LOS ANGELES — More than 70 million years ago, a baby shark may have bitten off more than it could digest. A fossilized hunk of poop from an ancient baby shark has revealed the tiny predator's last meal: a baby turtle. “It's a case where a newborn shark ate a newborn turtle and died,” said study co-author David Schwimmer, a paleontologist at Columbus State University in Georgia.

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In a world where “rattlesnake round-ups” are considered good family fun, the arrest of a Florida man who tortured and killed a rattler comes as a refreshing change.

From Tallahassee.com:

According to the weekly Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission law enforcement report for Oct. 25, in mid-September, Ward Lee Waff “taunted the pygmy rattlesnake continuously … kicked the snake into the roadway, attempting to get a car to run over the snake,” and then shot it repeatedly with a .22 caliber rifle, sending it flying off the roadway.

In the video, Waff, 45, asks the snake if it would “bite one of my dogs. Would you bite one of my children?” before capturing it and holding it before a number of braying dogs in the back of a truck. He can be heard laughing as he torments the reptile.

[…]

In the report, Waff is described as having a criminal history with FWC and is “currently on probation for fish and wildlife violations that were committed in the past.”

Read the rest of the story here.

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By Herp News

The Wildlife Conservation Society’s Central Park Zoo is debuting a pair of snow leopard cubs that were born this past summer.

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By Herp News

A reptile attack was the last straw for a Phnom Penh family locked in a land dispute who sought legal intervention yesterday.

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By Herp News

VANCOUVER, B.C. — ANGKOR GOLD CORP. (“ANGKOR”) has completed preliminary exploration on the Blue Lizard Prospect, South Oyadao Exploration Lease, Ratanakiri Province, Cambodia. The prospect …

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By Herp News

VALHALLA, N.Y., Nov. 5, 2013 /PRNewswire/ – Turtle Beach, the leading audio brand in the games industry, today announces the iSeries line of high-end media headsets. The iSeries headsets are packed with innovations that Turtle Beach first introduced to gaming headsets but are new for mobile users, including features that improve chat and voice call quality and provide an unmatched level of …

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Scientists from the Philadelphia Zoo are working to save the frogs of Haiti.

From Scientific American:

As much as 99 percent of Haiti has been deforested over the past few decades, as the country’s desperate people have cut down trees to make way for agriculture or charcoal production. This massive habitat loss has put the entire nation’s biodiversity at risk. Only a few untouched habitats remain.

The La Hotte land frog’s habitat is one of those areas. “It’s a very beautiful forest,” (Carlos) Martinez (Rivera, amphibian conservation biologist with the Philadelphia Zoo,) says. “There are a lot of tree ferns, pines and magnolia trees. It feels like going to any other tropical rainforest. But it’s a very tiny patch of forest.” The trees are still being cut down to produce charcoal or to clear land for cash crops such as parsley, celery, broccoli and carrots.

With so much of the country already deforested and more trees likely to be lost in the coming years, the Philadelphia Zoo in 2010 set out to save some of Haiti’s endemic frogs that live in those fading forests. They captured 154 frogs from nine species and brought them back to Philadelphia to establish a captive breeding program. “You can protect wildlife like frogs in a small space,” says the zoo’s chief operating officer, Andy Baker. “Trying to keep a genetically viable population of tigers takes the entire global zoo community, whereas in a relatively small room you can hold a genetically and demographically viable population of an entire species of frog. Our return on investment on species protection for animals like reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates can be very high.”

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Photo: Carlos C. Martínez Rivera, the Philadelphia Zoo …read more
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By Herp News

The bay cat is arguably the world’s least-known member of the cat family (Felidae). Although first described by scientists in 1874, no photo existed of a living specimen until 1998 and a wild cat in its rainforest habitat wasn’t photographed until five years later. Given this, scientists with Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and Imperial College London were taken aback when their remote camera traps captured numerous photos of these elusive cats hanging out in a commercial logging concession in Sabah, a state in Malaysian Borneo.

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By Herp News

Parametric Sound Corporation , a leading innovator of audio products and solutions, and Turtle Beach, the market leader in video game audio, today announced that preliminary proxy materials have been filed …

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By Herp News

Based on a single tooth from Australia, scientists believe they have discovered a giant, meter-long (3.3 feet) duck-billed platypus that likely fed on fish, frogs, and even turtles, according to a new study in Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. At least twice the size of a modern duckbilled platypus, the scientists say the extinct giant likely lived between 15 and 5 million years ago.

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By Herp News

A breeding population of a critically endangered harlequin toad thought to be extinct in Costa Rica has been discovered in a tract of highland forest in the Central American country, reports a paper published in Amphibia-Reptilia. Atelopus varius, an orange-and-black harlequin toad, was once relatively common from central Costa Rica to western Panama. But beginning in the 1980′s the species experienced a rapid population collapse across most of its range.

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By Herp News

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

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By Herp News

THE fifth annual Scales and Tails Reptile Festival on Saturday at North Ipswich Reserve promises to be entertaining and educational.

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By Herp News

The wisdom of linking oddball songwriter Nellie McKay with the jazzy string quartet Turtle Island wasn't immediately clear but, at The American Theatre on Friday, the pairing was often magical.        

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By Herp News

Carrying an alligator bag on an airline flight is fine, but live alligators are banned from boarding. That might explain why a toothy reptile was slithering around Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on Friday.

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By Herp News

Do you scream when you see a lizard? Read on to find out why lizards are important to us. Text and pictures J. Subramanean

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Check out this video “Snake Whisperer,” submitted by kingsnake.com user smetlogik.
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

(CNN) — Carrying an alligator bag on an airline flight is fine, but live alligators are banned from boarding. That…

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By Herp News

The alligator will eventually find a new life in a reptile park — after getting a few months of treatment for stunted growth.

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By Herp News

Carrying an alligator bag on an airline flight is fine, but live alligators are banned from boarding. That might explain why a toothy reptile was slithering around Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on Friday.

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By Herp News

Carrying an alligator bag on an airline flight is fine, but live alligators are banned from boarding. That might explain why a toothy reptile was slithering around Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on Friday.

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By Herp News

He has counted sea-turtle nests in the Key West National Wildlife Refuge for nearly a quarter-century but federal biologist Tom Wilmers never saw a year like this. “It's a year beyond my wildest dreams,” Wilmers said. “It's phenomenal … fabulous.”

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By Herp News

Edgar Ortega is a reptile guy.

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By Herp News

Tortoise Energy Capital Corp. today announced that as of Oct. 31, 2013, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $1.1 billion and its unaudited net asset

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By Herp News

Tortoise North American Energy Corp. today announced that as of Oct. 31, 2013, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $264.8 million and its unaudited

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By Herp News

Tortoise Energy Independence Fund, Inc. today announced that as of Oct. 31, 2013, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $459.4 million and its unaudit

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By Herp News

Tortoise Energy Infrastructure Corp. today announced that as of Oct. 31, 2013, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $2.2 billion and its unaudited ne

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By Herp News

Tortoise Pipeline & Energy Fund, Inc. today announced that as of Oct. 31, 2013, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $399.0 million and its unaud

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By Herp News

Tortoise Power and Energy Infrastructure Fund, Inc. today announced that as of Oct. 31, 2013, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $233.2 million and

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By Herp News

Tortoise MLP Fund, Inc. today announced that as of Oct. 31, 2013, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $2.0 billion and its unaudited net asset value

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By Herp News

Researchers returning from an expedition to a cloud forest in Colombia have released photos of the world’s most recently-discovered carnivore, the olinguito.

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By Herp News

Researchers returning from an expedition to a cloud forest in Colombia have released photos of the world’s most recently-discovered carnivore, the olinguito.

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