Trevor has been developing dark spots on his shell and they do not seem to be coming in any patterns. Anyone?
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By Herp News

What was that lizard on the side of the Humble City Cafe? Or how about that turtle in Bear Branch? Or that snake in the median on Kingwood Dr? Want to find out? Of course you do.

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By Herp News

In a 2010 episode of his Animal Planet series “Wild Recon,” self-proclaimed reptile expert Donald Schultz told viewers that he planned to track down an Iranian desert monitor lizard — an endangered species he described as the Holy Grail of monitors, offered the same level of protection as pandas.

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By Herp News

A turtle rehab center in Florida turned to an unlikely substance to repair a sea turtle’s fractured shell: denture glue. Bette Zirkelbach, manager of the Turtle Hospital in Marathon, Fla., was initially stumped when someone brought in a 40-pound sea turtle suffering from a fractured…        

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By Herp News

What was that lizard on the side of the Humble City Cafe? Or how about that turtle in Bear Branch? Or that snake in the median on Kingwood Dr? Want to find out? Of course you do.

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In what has to be the dreamiest, most romantic reptile-related news story, ever, scientists report that Amazonian butterlifes drink the tears of turtles.

From LiveScience.com:

The sight of butterflies flocking onto the heads of yellow-spotted river turtles in the western Amazon rain forest is not uncommon, at least if one is able to sneak up on the skittish reptiles. But the reason why butterflies congregate onto the turtles may be stranger than you think: to drink their tears.

The butterflies are likely attracted to the turtles’ tears because the liquid drops contain salt, specifically sodium, an important mineral that is scant in the western Amazon, said Phil Torres, a scientist who does much of his research at the Tambopata Research Center in Peru and is associated with Rice University.

Unlike butterflies, turtles get plenty of sodium through their largely carnivorous diet.

Read the rest here.

Photo: Jeff Cremer / Perunature.com …read more
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By Herp News

A 650-pound female leatherback sea turtle was found stranded in a marsh by Sandy Neck Beach in Barnstable Wednesday morning, and, after a medical checkup, was ushered back out into the ocean.        

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By Herp News

LEDYARD, Conn. (AP) — A monitor lizard that repeatedly startled residents of this rural Connecticut town before it was killed by police last month was apparently a pet that escaped from its owner's property, police said Thursday.        

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By Herp News

Dentist uses denture repair adhesive to help fix endangered sea turtle's shell in Florida Keys        

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By Herp News

A Ledyard man illegally owned a monitor lizard that had roamed the eastern part of town and was shot by police last month, police said.

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By Herp News

An 800-pound female leatherback sea turtle was found stranded in a marsh by Sandy Neck Beach in Barnstable Wednesday morning, and, after a medical checkup, was ushered back out into the ocean.        

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By Herp News

LEDYARD, Conn. (AP) — Ledyard police say they have tracked down the owner of a large reptile that was shot and killed in town last month.        

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By Herp News

LEDYARD — Police have charged a local man with illegal possession of a reptile after determining it was his 4-foot-long Nile Monitor Lizard that was helping itself to the residents of a chicken coop on Aug. 25.        

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By Herp News

A recent study of forest in East Kalimantan, Borneo has found that orangutans travel on the ground far more often than expected. The study, published in the American Journal of Primatology, was carried out in Wehea Forest involving the use of 78 camera traps across 38 square kilometres of forest.

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By Herp News

Africa’s elephant poaching crisis doesn’t just threaten a species, but imperils one of humanity’s most important links to the natural world and even our collective sanity, according to acclaimed photographers and film-makers, Cyril Christo and Marie Wilkinson. Authors of the book Walking Thunder – In the Footsteps of the African Elephant, Christo and Wilkinson have been documenting Africa’s titans in photos and film for several years. In 2011, the pair released a film Lysander’s Song (named after their son an avid fan of elephants) which depicts the millennial-old relationship between humans and elephants.

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By Herp News

The sight of butterflies flocking onto the heads of yellow-spotted river turtles in the western Amazon rain forest is not uncommon, at least if one is able to sneak up on the skittish reptiles. But the reason why butterflies congregate onto the turtles may be stranger than you think: to drink their tears.

Go to Source

…read more
Read more here: herpetofauna.com

Is the Prairie rattlesnake (Crotalus Viridis) losing his rattle?

Terry Phillip, a naturalist at Reptile Gardens in Rapid City, thinks so. Check out this audio clip and transcript of an NPR story and tell us if you agree.

Photo by kingsnake.com user DKT. …read more
Read more here: King Snake

By Herp News

Mayor Adam Forgie said that in order to fix the problems in the borough of 6,400 people, he needs to see them.

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By Herp News

A unique new fossil discovered in Jordan has given researchers fresh insight about a prehistoric sea lizard called prognathodon, as it is the first fossil to show the shape of the lizard's tale, suggesting that it swam like a shark. … Continue reading →

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By Herp News

It was a lizard with a shark-like fin. That’s what Swedish researchers have discovered about the fearsome mosasaur Prognathodon, which lived in the seas of the Cretaceous Period about 70 million years ago. The discovery was based on a fossil found in Jordan in 2008. Researcher Johan Lindgren, of Lund University in Sweden, travelled to Jordan in 2011 and discovered that imprints of soft tissue …

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By Herp News

CANCÚN, Mexico — As our flight crossed over the Yucatán shoreline to approach the Cancún airport, we hardly could have known that we would have a rendezvous later that day with an inhabitant of the sea we had just flown over. Unlike people, sea turtles never wonder who they are or what their role in the universe is. The flash can blind the turtles' sensitive eyes at the crucial time as they …

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By Herp News

When one thinks of bird migrations, it’s usually a north-south route that follows seasonal climates. But researchers in the Amazon have tracked, for the first time, a largely-unknown long-distance migration going east-west that sticks entirely to the Amazon Basin. Using satellite telemetry, scientists tracked a male Orinoco goose (Neochen jubata) from the Western Amazon in Brazil to Llanos de Moxos, a vast savanna and Amazonian watershed in Bolivia. The research has shown that the Orinoco geese—which breeds in both Peru and Brazil—depends on wetlands in the Llanos de Moxos for much of the year.

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By Herp News

As the illegal poaching of African elephants and rhinos reaches epidemic levels, other species are also suffering catastrophic losses as a direct result of poachers’ behavior. A recent incident in July, where a poisoned elephant carcass led to the death of 600 vultures near Namibia’s Bwabwata National Park, has highlighted how poachers’ use of poison is now one of the primary threats to vulture populations.

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Congratulations to the Houston Zoo for their third clutch of Madagascar big-headed turtle babies to hatch — another landmark in the first time this species has reproduced in an institution accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

Check out more photos of the babies on the Houston Zoo’s blog! …read more
Read more here: King Snake

By Herp News

It is hard to reconcile visions of a sharp-toothed, scaly, and ferocious crocodile with anything other than a completely carnivorous diet. We have been bombarded with gory kill scenes in which crocodiles take down everything from impala to buffalo, but new evidence suggests we need to rethink crocodilians altogether.

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By Herp News

On October 8th, the Obama administration will publicly destroy its ivory stockpile, totaling some six tons, according to a White House forum yesterday on the illegal wildlife trade. The destruction of the stockpile—via crushing—is meant to send a message that the U.S. is taking a tougher stand on illegal the wildlife trade, which is decimating elephants across Africa and imperiling other animals worldwide. The U.S. remains one of the biggest destinations for ivory and other illegal animal part aside from East Asia.

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By Herp News

The Serengeti, the Congo, the Okavango Delta: many of Africa’s great wildernesses are household names, however on a continent that never fails to surprise remain vast wild lands practically unknown to the global public. One of these is the Ruaha landscape: covering 51,800 square kilometers (20,000 square miles) of southern Tanzania’s woodlands and savannah, Ruaha contains the largest population of elephants in East Africa, over 500 bird species, and a wealth of iconic top predators, including cheetah, hyena, wild dogs, leopard, and—the jewel in its crown—10 percent of the world’s lions. But that’s not all, one of Africa’s least-known and secretive tribal groups, the Barabaig, also calls Ruaha home.

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Frankie, come here. I wanna talk to you. (Frankie walks over)
What?
You wanna go live somewhere else?
Petco!
No
Petsmart!
No.
Greta’s!
No, Frankie! Listen to me. We are moving.
We’re going on a walk!(Frankie heads to the gate)
Frankie! No. Now listen to me. Dad got a new job and we are moving away from here. (Frankie looks around the yard.)
But I like my yard.
Well, yes but you complain about Birmingham’s weather. What if we are going to a place where the winters are warmer?
That’s good.What else?
Well, you’ll have a new yard with grass and trees.There are rabbits.

What about chipmunks? I like watching chipmunks.
Probably chipmunks.
What else they got there?
Carrots. Cuttlebone. Petsmart.
What about Petco? I like the floors at Petco.
They have a Petco.
Okay. Is this were Rosie lives?
No, Rosie lives in Colorado.
Can we move there?
No, we can’t. We are moving South.
Can she move with us?
Sorry, no.
Are we breaking up?!
No, Frankie. She can’t move with us but she is still your girlfriend.
Fiancee.
Fiancee. Right.
Main squeeze.
Fine! Let’s get back to the move. It will be a five hour drive to our new home.
Have fun. How am I getting there?
We will drive you there.
Good luck with that! I’m gonna poop and pee all over the car.
We’ll be prepared. We’ll stop and clean it all up.
I am gonna poop and pee all the way down there.
I’ll wear a mask.
We driving with the cat?
Yes.
Will the cat meow all the way down there?
<span style='font-family: …read more
Read more here: Turtle Times

No matter how much you love snakes, this homeowner’s plight might be too much for you.

From the Carroll County News:

Sometime after July 23, property owner Jess Christensen started noticing a lot of snake activity in the evening around his house, located on County Road 717 just north of Metalton.

“Really what really hit me was how close they were to the house,” Christensen said. “I just looked at the statistics and knew that one day I will be bitten if I don’t do anything, so I thought to get a professional opinion about it.”

So he called Dale Ertel, who runs the educational exhibit Snake World and helps people remove dangerous snakes from their property. Ertel has been collecting snakes for over 50 years, he said. He got his first venomous snake when he was 15 and has been bitten by nonpoisonous snakes countless times. He has been bitten only once by a venomous snake, a diamond back that he still owns.

“The first time he called, he said he’d seen over a dozen in his yard,” Ertel said. “So a friend of mine and I went out there the following night and we found over 12 that first night, and we have been back several times since, and it seems like every time we have gone back we are finding at least 12 [copperheads].”

Ertel’s friend counted more than 118 snakes collected from Christensen’s property.

Read the full story here.

Photo by kingsnake.com user cochran. …read more
Read more here: King Snake

By Herp News

Chewy the bluetongue lizard has returned home after a seven-month nap – only to find his spot has been filled by another family pet. read more

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By Herp News

Kookaburras, koalas and kangaroos—Australia is well known for its charismatic animals and vast, seemingly untamable, wild spaces. But throughout the country, the national parks and reserves that protect these unique animals and ecosystems have come under increasing threat. New rules and relaxed regulations, which bolster immediate economic growth, are putting pressure on Australia’s already-threatened biodiversity.

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By Herp News

On 9/11/13, Tortoise Energy Capital Fund's 3.95% Series C Mandatory Redeemable Preferred Shares (NYSE: TYY.PRC) will trade ex-dividend, for its monthly dividend of $0.0329, payable on 10/1/13. As a percentage of TYY.PRC's recent share price of $10.15, this dividend works out to approximately 0.32%. On an annualized basis, the current yield is approximately 3.86%, which compares to an average …

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By Herp News

On June 24th of last year, MaiMai Simba rebels, led by an elephant poacher known as Morgan, launched a devastating attack on the headquarters of the Okapi Wildlife Reserve in Epulu, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The attack, which was reportedly in response to a crack down on poaching and illegal mining in the park, left buildings burned, equipment destroyed, and six people dead including two rangers. The militia also left with 28 women hostages, many of them minors. As if to add insult to injury, the militia didn’t leave until they shot dead all 14 captive okapis at the headquarters, which were used as wildlife ambassadors for the local community.

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By Herp News

A rehabilitation center for retired dancing bears sounds like a typo. Yet this is exactly what the animal rights NGOs Four Paws and Foundation Brigitte Bardot created 13 years ago in Belitsa, Bulgaria. For many Bulgarians the first childhood contact with a forest animal is seeing a ‘dancing bear’ on the street in their city. These chained brown bears (Ursus arctos) would stand on their back feet waving their front paws on hearing their gypsy master play the gadulka (a local musical string instrument). Children used to admire the dancing bears; little did they know of the tragic fate of these animals.

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By Herp News

Parametric Sound Corporation , a leading innovator of audio products and solutions, announced that on September 5, 2013 the U.S. Federal Trade Commission granted early termination of the statutory waiting …

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Check out this video “African tortoises,” submitted by kingsnake.com user pedroig_87.
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
Read more here: King Snake

By Herp News

For nearly 15 years, biologists around the world have been watching as millions of frogs succumb to an infectious fungus called chytrid. Now a group of students has discovered evidence of the deadly chytrid fungus in the Wichita area. This is the first report of chytrid in Kansas.

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By Herp News

The Suffolk County SPCA held the Reptile Amnesty Day where illegal alligators or other reptiles could be turned in, no questions asked.

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By Herp News

McDonald's proved it hadn't served up any leaping lizards, after preliminary lab tests laid to rest the reptile ruckus that erupted when a customer claimed to have found a baby lizard in her chicken sausage McMuffin.

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By Herp News

McDonald's Singapore hasn't served up any leaping lizards, the burger maker said, with preliminary lab tests laying to rest the reptile ruckus that erupted after a customer claimed to have received a Sausage McMuffin containing a baby lizard.

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