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;

• Amphibians of Western North America (UC Press, 1951)
  
• Amphibians and Reptiles of Western North America (McGraw-Hill Press, 1954)
  
• Reptiles and Amphibians of the San Francisco Bay Region (UC Press, 1960)
  
• A Field Guide to Western Reptiles and Amphibians (Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1966)
  
• Amphibians and Reptiles of California (UC Press, 1972)
  
• A Field Guide to Western Reptiles and Amphibians, 2nd edition (Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1985)
  
• A Field Guide to Western Reptiles and Amphibians, 3rd edition (Houghton-Mifflin Co., 2003)
  
• Field Guide to Amphibians and Reptiles of California, revised edition (w/ Samuel M. McGinnis; UC Press, 2012)

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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Two wildlife rangers have been killed by poachers in Thailand, reports the Wildlife Conservation Society.

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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.

Photo: kingsnake.com user mattroconnor …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

A Washington County landowner and developer had a vision for a residential development. He's now bankrupt.

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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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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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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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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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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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Mark Summer is a serious musician but he knows how to have fun.

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Slow Poke the turtle disappeared Thursday from Tina Haley's backyard.

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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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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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Sir David Attenborough has joked that he wishes more people would realise he has a reptile named after him.

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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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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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South Africa has experienced an uptick in rhino poaching since Environmental Minister Edna Molewa called for legalizing the rhino trade, reveals analysis by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA).

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Following the description of the world’s smallest frogs, biologists now offer three more species of tiny amphibians from the region of Papua New Guinea. Despite their minute size, around 20 mm, the three new frog species are still substantially larger than the prize holders, described in 2011. The new species represent a small part and attest for the remarkable anuran biodiversity of the Papuan region.

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It’s not often a veterinarian who writes about pets for a mainstream newspaper devotes an entire column not just to a pet snake, but a species that’s not kept as a pet all that often. But Modesto, Calif., veterinarian Dr. Jeff Kahler did just that in a recent piece in the Modesto Bee, where he recounted the story of a wart snake brought to his practice because his eyes had clouded over.

From the article:

Bando is a 3-year-old, 6 1/2-foot snake – and not just any kind of snake. He is a wart snake or sometimes called elephant trunk snake. Bando’s caretaker, Randy, has had Bando for two years, having purchased him from a California reptile dealer.

He is housed in an aquarium that is temperature-controlled and aquatic. Bando spends almost all of his time in the water, including feeding time. His diet consists of goldfish and he is feed once a week. Randy reports that Bando has had no problems in the past two years but recently appears to have developed an issue with his eyes.

Over the past few weeks, Bando’s eyes have become more and more opaque. They are now to the point where Randy suspects Bando cannot see.

Initially Randy thought Bando’s eyes were clouding over as they normally do right before he sheds his skin but even after a shed occurred, the opacity in Bando’s eyes remained. Randy has yet to find a veterinarian to examine Bando so he took to the internet and eventually got me involved.

To understand what might be going on with Bando’s eyes, it helps to understand a bit about the natural history of his species. For you aficionados, wart snakes belong to the genus Acrochordus, which includes three species of snakes. I suspect Bando is a Java wart snake because of his large size.

These snakes are native to parts of southeast Asia and spend most of their time in water. Their diet consists of aquatic life — especially fish — and they have a rough scale pattern, which aids in gripping fish as they coil around them when eating. In my clinical experience, these are very rare snakes in captivity. I personally have only worked with them in zoo collections.

There are many possibilities that could cause Bando’s eye issues. But it is my suspicion that Bando’s eye problem is directly related to his captive environment and, more specifically, the water he is kept in.

Click here to find out what’s wrong with Bando!

Photo: Smacdonald at en.wikipedia, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. …read more
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By Herp News

A frightening disease has been ravaging amphibians across the planet. At least 350 species have been infected, two hundred of which have suffered massive population reductions or extinctions, some even occurring within the space of weeks. In 1999, a single fungal species called Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), commonly known as the chytrid fungus, was identified as the causative agent for these rapid die-offs.

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CARLTON, Ga., Sept. 19 (UPI) — A Georgia couple whose 17-year-old tortoise vanished from their yard said they believe their pet left in search of a mate.

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While researchers expected that the pond turtle’s eyes would operate like other animals with eyes on the side of their heads, this particular species of turtle appears to have characteristics of both front and side-eyed animals.

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Four new species of legless lizards have been added to the one previously known member of the group Anniella, reports the journal Breviora.

From the LA Times:

Anniella are pretty small animals, about as thick as a pencil and rarely more than 8 inches long. They spend their lives wiggling beneath loose, sandy soil, snacking on bugs and larvae.

They don’t move fast or far, and the researchers say they may spend their whole lives in an area about the size of your dining room table.

Aside from that, scientists still don’t know much about them.

“They are one of the most poorly studied reptiles in California,” [Cal State Fullerton researcher James] Parham said. “Because they live under the sand, you can’t see what they are doing, and you can’t even do a mark-and-recapture because you can’t reliably capture these things.”

Parham and his coauthor Theodore Papenfuss, a herpetologist with the UC Berkeley Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, have been scouring the state for legless lizards for 15 years. When they began their research, only one type of legless lizard was known to live in California.

One of the four newly identified species of Anniella, the Southern California legless lizard, was found under some dead leaves in dunes at the west end of Los Angeles International Airport.

The Bakersfield legless lizard was found in three vacant lots in downtown Bakersfield.

The southern Sierra legless lizard was spotted in three dry canyons on the edge of the Mojave Desert, and the Temblor legless lizard was found in the oil fields around the city of Taft, on the southwestern edge of the San Joaquin Valley.

To find these lizards, the scientists scattered 2,000 pieces of cardboard and plywood throughout the state to create moist, cool areas, which appeal to the lizards. Then they returned months later to see if any of the lizards had shown up.

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

While researchers expected that the pond turtle’s eyes would operate like other animals with eyes on the side of their heads, this particular species of turtle appears to have characteristics of both front and side-eyed animals.

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Prior to the discovery of the new species, there was only one known legless lizard species in the United States

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By Yereth Rosen ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – The fossil of a sea reptile found two years ago in Alaska may be that of a previously unknown species, a scientist who was part of a team that discovered and excavated the remains said on Wednesday. The creature, a kind of thalattosaur, swam in the ocean and crawled on land about 210 million years ago, said Pat Druckenmiller, a geologist and the …

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Four previously unknown species of snakelike creatures have been found in California — but don't call them snakes; they're legless lizards. Prior to the discovery of the new species, there was only one known legless lizard species in the United States: the California legless lizard.

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Four previously unknown species of legless lizard have been described in California, report researchers from the University of California at Berkeley and Cal State-Fullerton.

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A mysterious lizard, described by experts as “a real underdog,” has been bred in the UK for the first time. The arrival of the tiny Bell's anglehead, one of the world's rarest lizards, has left keepers at Chester Zoo “absolutely thrilled.” The finger-sized youngster will be cared for in a behind-the-scenes rearing facility Very little is actually known about the elusive creatures, except that …

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One of the richest ecosystems on the planet may not survive a hotter climate without human help, according to a sobering new paper in the open source journal PLoS ONE. Although little-studied compared to lowland rainforests, the cloud forests of the Andes are known to harbor explosions of life, including thousands of species found nowhere else. Many of these species—from airy ferns to beautiful orchids to tiny frogs—thrive in small ranges that are temperature-dependent. But what happens when the climate heats up?

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One of the world's rarest lizards has been bred in the UK for the first time.

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Primates of the World: An Illustrated Guide is stunning. There is simply no better way I can think of to gain an appreciation of the primate family than to peruse Primates of the World: An Illustrated Guide.

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Legless lizards evolved on five continents to burrow in loose soil and sand, but are rarely seen because they live underground. Hence the surprise when biologists found four new species in California, living in marginal areas like downtown Bakersfield, San Joaquin Valley oil fields and west of the runways at the airport. The discovery, which brings the number of species in the state to five, illustrates the undiscovered biodiversity around us.

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The Eastern Pacific hawksbill turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata), thought to be all but extinct, is making a comeback to Central America’s Gulf of Fonseca. How did it happen? No one knows.

From Fox News Latino:

The Eastern Pacific Hawksbill sea turtle was considered critically endangered until about seven years ago, with many scientists considering the species extinct.

Scientists have now discovered that the turtles are once again arriving in the Gulf of Fonseca, a large body of water in western Central America that is shared by Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

“We know the Eastern Pacific Hawksbill turtle is arriving in the Gulf of Fonseca, but we do not know why, nor do we know if its life cycle has changed – if a large number stay in the gulf – or if it is due to food, nesting or even why they live here,” [Honduran Natural Resources and Environment Secretariat director of biodiversity Rafael Amaro] Garcia said.

Climate change is one possible cause of the resurgence of the sea turtle population. Read more here.

Photo: An Indo-Pacific hawksbill sea turtle. …read more
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By Herp News

PHOENIX – They may be small, slow and even cute for now, but within a few weeks, the baby Nile crocodiles that fit in Russ Johnson’s hands will be downright dangerous.

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