I am mother to a teenage sulcata tortoise.

I brought out a carrot for Frankie and called to him, “Treat! Wanna carrot?! Carrot. Treat! Treat! Frankie, do you want a carrot? I got a carrot. Come get your carrot.”

I got no response.

Frankie’s been living outside now for a couple of weeks. His yard is full of fresh new green grass and dandelions and summer weeds. He is getting hours of sun. Temperatures hover in the 70’s. After a full hour basking in the sun Frankie can take a leisurely walk all the way around his very big yard, some of which he hasn’t seen since last year.

I got a carrot (his favorite treat) and I am standing in plain sight of Frankie. I’m waving the carrot around to catch his eye.

“Look, Frankie, I got a carrot! Carrot. Carrot. Come get your carrot! Come on, Frankie.”

Frankie is giving no indication that he has seen me or heard me. He is about fifteen feet from where I stand and he is grazing away. When he looks up so he can swallow (sometimes it’s frightening when he chews and shallows for three minutes straight and never breath) he seems to just ignore me.

Maybe he is blind in that eye.

I walk over so I am six feet directly in front of Frankie. “Look, Frankie, a carrot! You want a carrot? Carrot. Carrot. Treat! Treat!”

He just grazes.

Fine!

I get down on my knees in front of Frankie and start waving the carrot eight inches from his nose so one of his two eyes will have to see the carrot.

Frankie looks up. He chews on his grass. He stares past the carrot like its air. “Sup.”

Sup!? I get a sup?! I just wanna know if you want a carrot.

He finely sees the carrot. It may as well be air. Calmly he reaches out to bite it. He misses the carrot and gets nothing.

And just like a teenager who is just told “pick up all your dirty clothes off the floor, NOW,” Frankie just walks past me, and the carrot, and heads out to do something else.

My relationship with the teen Frankie has been whittled down to “sup.”

Walks around the block, Halloween costumes, parades, birthday cakes and Frankie-songs. Mom’s favorite activities may become tragic victims of a moody teenage tortoise.

I’m gonna have to get used to it.

Sup. …read more

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By Herp News

The Turtle Tidal Wave, yet another good-natured fundraiser sponsored by the Vacaville Rotary Club, washed over Vacaville on Saturday.

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One of Turtle Bay Exploration Park’s featured animals will get nationwide exposure this month when he appears on the Fox comedy “New Girl.”

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Thanks to the power of kids, the endangered Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle is now the top turtle in the great state of Texas.

From The Houston Chronicle:

The Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle, an endangered species that nests between South Padre Island and Chambers County, was approved as the state’s official sea turtle by the Texas Senate Thursday. The resolution had already garnered approval by the Texas House.

Students at Galveston’s Oppe Elementary School, a coastal studies magnet campus, brought the bill to Sen. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, after studying the animal, which is the smallest sea turtle in the world.

“They were told that the best way they could help is by simply making the public aware of how important the sea turtle is,” Taylor said.

kingsnake.com is also headquartered in Texas, so it’s official, Kemp’s Ridley Turtle: We salute you!

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Photo: Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle (Courtesy: NOAA)
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By Herp News

Ricardo Valdez, left, and Brian W. Seibert in “Turtle Hill, Brooklyn.” During a party near the end of “Turtle Hill, Brooklyn,” a bunch of buddies soaking in a pool wonder what the name of the titular neighborhood means. No one is quite sure; then they laugh; then the subject changes.

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In “Turtle Hill, Brooklyn,” a gay couple are unsettled emotionally, as are many of their party guests, for varied reasons.        

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The Greater Mekong region of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand and Vietnam will lose a third of its remaining forest cover by 2030 unless regional governments improve management of natural resources and transition toward a greener growth model, warns a new report issued by WWF.

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By Herp News

The most popular movies among NYTimes.com readers. $Buy Tickets by clicking on a linked showtime. Enter your ZIP code or city to view tickets and showtimes in your area.

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Hobbyists have always had an interest in locality-specific corn snakes, Pantherophis guttatus guttatus. References to Miami phase, Okeetee phases, Florida Key phases, and others are commonplace in the hobby. But there are in Florida alone several other locales in which corn snakes, although variable to a degree, are of characteristic colors and patterns. One such is Levy County, a rather sparsely populated area located on Florida’s Gulf Coast west, and a bit south of Gainesville.

The corn snakes of that area are typically rather small, being adult at 30 to 40 inches in length. But what they may lack in size they make up for with beauty.

On these pretty corn snakes, the dorsal and lateral ground color is usually a cinnamon-buff. The rich orange-red dorsal saddles are well spaced, edged anteriorly and posteriorly with black markings about a half a scale wide, and are usually about as wide as the areas of ground color that separates them. The orange-red lateral spots are small and usually edged with only one to four half black scales. The spearpoint atop the head is bright orange-red and may or may not be partially edged with black. The belly is white and checkered with pale orange, hazy black, or both.

If you think this description sounds pretty in print, you should see one of these corn snakes in the long red rays of the setting sun as it moves across an open patch of sandy soil or is surprised on a dirt or tarmac road. Such a sighting is nearly unforgettable.

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Read more here: King Snake

By Herp News

Bears do it, bats do it, and now we know lemurs do it too: hibernate, that is. Since 2005, scientists have known that the western fat-tailed dwarf lemur hibernates, but a new study in Scientific Reports finds that hibernation is more widespread among lemurs than expected. At least two additional lemur species—Crossley’s dwarf lemur and Sibree’s dwarf lemur—have been discovered hibernating. So far lemurs, which are only found on the island of Madagascar, are the only primates known to undergo hibernation, raising curious questions about the relationship between lemur hibernation and more well-known deep sleepers.

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By Herp News

Bears do it, bats do it, and now we know lemurs do it too: hibernate, that is. Since 2005, scientists have known that the western fat-tailed dwarf lemur hibernates, but a new study in Scientific Reports finds that hibernation is more widespread among lemurs than expected. At least two additional lemur species—Crossley’s dwarf lemur and Sibree’s dwarf lemur—have been discovered hibernating. So far lemurs, which are only found on the island of Madagascar, are the only primates known to undergo hibernation, raising curious questions about the relationship between lemur hibernation and more well-known deep sleepers.

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By Herp News

Rest easy, everyone. Texas now has an official state sea turtle.Thanks to a unanimous vote Thursday by the Texas Senate, the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle — a most-endangered native species that ranges from South Padre Island to Chambers County near Beaumont — will join a list of official state animals.

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By Herp News

What happens to animals when their forest is cut down? If they can, they migrate to different forests. But in an age when forests are falling far and fast, many species may have to shift to entirely different environments. A new paper in Folia Primatologica theorizes that some 60 primate species and 20 wild cat species in Asia and Africa may be moving from rainforests to less-impacted environments such as swamp forests, mangroves, and peat forests.

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By Herp News

What happens to animals when their forest is cut down? If they can, they migrate to different forests. But in an age when forests are falling far and fast, many species may have to shift to entirely different environments. A new paper in Folia Primatologica theorizes that some 60 primate species and 20 wild cat species in Asia and Africa may be moving from rainforests to less-impacted environments such as swamp forests, mangroves, and peat forests.

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By Herp News

Illegal trafficking of two critically endangered tortoise species from Madagascar has reached epidemic proportions.

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Equatorial Guinea is not a country that stands very large in the American consciousness. In fact most Americans think you mean Papua New Guinea when you mention it or are simply baffled. When I left for Bioko Island in Equatorial Guinea, I also knew almost nothing about the island, the nation, or the Bioko drills (Mandrillus leucophaeus poensis). The subspecies of drill is unique to Bioko Island and encountering them was an equally unique experience. I initially went to Bioko as a turtle research assistant but ended up falling in love with the entire ecosystem, especially the Bioko drills as I tagged along with drill researchers.

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A snake slithered into a Florida wedding ceremony, then curled into the shape of a heart in an apparent blessing on the couple’s nuptials.

From First Coast News:

A snake slid its way into the wedding ceremony at a Jacksonville Beach hotel, twice. The first time it slithered its way to the flower girl’s feet.

“And she looked down and she yelled ‘snake’ and threw her hands in the air and before you know it everyone was running around,” said Gubbini.

Gubbini says the snake disappeared and then came back right after the rings were exchanged, but not to object, the newlyweds think it had a message.

“It was circling around us into a little circle…as it was doing that somebody was taking a snapshot and it made a heart,” added Gubbini.

The snake looks like it shaped itself into a heart, an unforgettable wedding day, just like the day Gubbini says he proposed.

Read the full story, and watch the video, here. …read more
Read more here: King Snake

By Herp News

Tortoise Energy Independence Fund, Inc. today announced that as of April 30, 2013, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $409.9 million and its unaudi

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Tortoise MLP Fund, Inc. today announced that as of April 30, 2013, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $1.9 billion and its unaudited net asset valu

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By Herp News

Tortoise Pipeline & Energy Fund, Inc. today announced that as of April 30, 2013, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $387.9 million and its unau

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Tortoise North American Energy Corp. today announced that as of April 30, 2013, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $259.7 million and its unaudited

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By Herp News

Tortoise Power and Energy Infrastructure Fund, Inc. today announced that as of April 30, 2013, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $237.2 million an

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By Herp News

Tortoise Energy Capital Corp. today announced that as of April 30, 2013, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $1.0 billion and its unaudited net asse

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By Herp News

Tortoise Energy Infrastructure Corp. today announced that as of April 30, 2013, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $2.0 billion and its unaudited n

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By Herp News

Turtle nesting season has begun in Florida and there are some things you'll need to know to avoid inadvertently harming the animals.

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After 13 years of searching for the Formosan clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa brachyura), once hopeful scientists say they believe the cat is likely extinct. For more than a decade scientists set up over 1,500 camera traps and scent traps in the mountains of Taiwan where they believed the cat may still be hiding out, only to find nothing.

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After a final sighting in 1991, the Madagascar pochard was thought to have vanished for good. But this diving duck was rediscovered in 2006 when a flock of 22 individuals was found on Lake Matsaborimena in northern Madagascar by conservationists during an expedition. Soon after Madagascar pochard eggs were taken and incubated in a joint captive breeding program by Durrell, the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT), the Peregrine Fund, Asity Madagascar, and Madagascar government, which recently announced that the population—both captive and wild—has nearly quadrupled.

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As if the intense pressure on amphibian populations from climate change, habitat destruction, and disease wasn’t enough. Now a demand for frogs’ legs to satisfy the appetites of gourmets is being blamed for a spike in mosquito population, harm to frog numbers in the wild, and animal cruelty.

From FOX News:

The European passion for frogs’ legs is driving an international massacre of the reptiles which is endangering species and harming natural environments across south-east Asia. […]

The “Frogmageddon” has prompted questions from the European Parliament about what the European Commission is doing about the problem, and about the cruel way in which the reptiles are parted from their limbs.

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By Herp News

Night zoo features reptile month

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This notice provides stockholders of Tortoise Power and Energy Infrastructure Fund, Inc. with information regarding the distribution paid on April 30, 2013 and cumulati

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Conservationists and officials meeting last month at a rhino crisis summit in Singapore agreed to a radical plan to loan Sumatran rhinos between nations if it means saving the critically endangered species from extinction. The proposal, which could still be thwarted by red tape and political opposition, could lead Malaysia to send some of its Sumatran rhinos to semi-captive breeding facilities in Indonesia.

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By Herp News

The Turtle Ridge Wildlife Center is having its first New Beginnings benefit for the center.

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Although many amphibians have been reported to live or spend part of their life underground, the Mediterranean frog Rana iberica, has never been reported dwelling in subterranean habitats until now. A new study marks the first record of all life stages of the species from a drainage gallery of Serra da Estrela Natural Park in Portugal.

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In January of 2013, Patti and I were in Amazonian Peru with about 15 other herpers. We had spent five days on Project Amazon’s Madre Selva Biological Preserve on the Rio Orosa, and had just moved back upriver to their Santa Cruz Forest Preserve.

Since our last visit, a lazy creek I remember as barely flowing had been dammed and had flowed sufficiently to form a several acre pond in a low-lying clearcut before trickling over the dam to reenter the dense secondary forest. The pond, now two years old, had provided new habitat for spectacled caiman, fish, and in banana trees along the banks, for Bob; for many Bobs, in fact.

Bob, a treefrog, had been named by our gang for his call, “Bob”—not Robert, not Bobby, just plain old Bob, spoken in a guttural croak. Big, angular, with actions and reactions relatively slow, Bob and his brethren sat, usually one to a banana tree, on the leaf stems about waist to head high. Bob was forest green dorsally, grayish to buff ventrally, and laterally had a jagged line of dark rimmed light spots separating the dorsal and ventral colors.

Bob was (and is) a giant monkey frog, Phyllomedusa bicolor. Among the largest of his genus Bob was about 4 ½ inches svl (snout-vent length), had huge parotoid glands and when he moved he as often moved in a deliberate hand over hand fashion as by jumping.

Every night at dusk, Bob (all the Bobs, in fact) emerged from the axil(s) of the banana tree(s) to sit boldly on the stem(s) and call loudly into the night. That this seemingly harsh and unwaveringly repetitious call has been successful in bringing females to the various calling sites was amply displayed by the vast number of tadpoles in all stages of development that swam in the shallows of the pond.

The Bobs it seems, and the Bobettes, have found new homes. Long live them all!

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Continue reading “They Named Him Bob” …read more

Read more here: King Snake

By Herp News

When we think of conservation areas, many of us think of iconic National Parks overseen by uniformed government employees or wilderness areas purchased and run from afar by big-donor organizations like The Nature Conservancy, Wildlife Conservation Society, WWF, or Conservation International. But what happens to ecosystems and wildlife in areas where there’s a total lack of government presence and no money coming in for its protection? This is the story of one rural Peruvian community that took conservation matters into their own hands, with a little help from a dedicated pair of primate researchers, in order to protect a high biodiversity cloud forest.

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By Herp News

Time could be running out for a rare dwarf Russian tortoise stolen from a Lancashire pet shop.

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By Herp News

Byline: The Lizard RNLi lifeboat launches to aid stricken gas tanker Page Content: The Lizard Lifeboat launched into heavy seas this morning to the aid of the stricken Panamanian gas tanker Antigoni , adrift with macninery failure and struggling to anchor in a position 1.5 miles south east of Lizard Point. Upon arrival on scene, the lifeboat, under the command of Coxswain Phil Burgess, was …

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Turtles are endlessly fascinating to scientists. Their biology is unique. They were around with the dinosaurs and survived the forces that led to their extinction. And now it turns out they have more in common with birds and those extinct dinosaurs than with reptiles.

From Science World Report:

It turns out that, surprisingly, turtles are not primitive reptiles as previously thought. Instead, they are related to the group that is made up of birds and crocodilians and also includes extinct dinosaurs. It’s likely that the turtles split from this group about 250 million years ago during one of the largest extinction events on the planet.

“Turtles are interesting because they offer an exceptional case to understand the big evolutionary changes that occurred in vertebrate history,” said Naoki Irie from the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in a news release. “The work not only provides insight into how turtles evolved, but also gives hints as to how the vertebrate developmental programs can be changed to produce major evolutionary novelties.”

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By Herp News

Byline: Volunteer RNLI crew at Lizard say ‘cheers’ for the donation Page Content: The fundraising appeal for a new all-weather lifeboat at the Lizard station received a boost from money raised at a local beer festival. Thanks to the second annual beer festival held at The Witchball Restaurant during, the summer Coxswain Phil Burgess received a cheque for £3,017.38 towards the appeal for the new …

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Byline: 40th wedding anniversary supports Lizard RNLI's Tamar lifeboat appeal Page Content: Ernie and Sue Pursglove, from The Lizard, celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary in classic style at the weekend when the professional Jazz and Flamenco band ‘TG Collective’ (www.tgcollective.com) in which their son Andrew is a key musician, arrived in town for a live concert and party, staged at …

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