Photo: StevenDavidJohnson.com and Wild Virginia

A Virginia pipeline may need to change it’s route to avoid potential impact on two special of Salamanders, the Cheat Mountain salamander and the Cow Knob salamander.

It recommends changing the route of the pipeline to avoid as much of the salamanders’ habitats as possible, possibly going south of South Sister Knob and Chestnut Ridge or north of Romney, West Virginia.
Another proposal would have the pipeline construction crews bore through Shenandoah Mountain, but that would not eliminate impacts on the habitats of the two species.

To read more visit Newsplex.com. …read more
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By Herp News

The latest weird effect from climate change [Washington Post] Climate change is affecting wildlife in a lot of serious, and sometimes even weird, ways. Scientists have revealed another weird effect: climate change may be disrupting the sex ratio among baby sea turtles. Is this planned killing of 18,000 necessary? [Mongabay] The government believes that bats have become a “pest,” and a culling event to reduce bat population by 20 percent is scheduled to start mid-October. Conservationists say this decision to cull is not backed by scientific evidence, may drive the species to Endangered status, and is “unacceptable.” The list no one wants to be on, and how it works [Smithsonian.com] It wasn’t that long ago when the concept of an endangered species didn’t even exist. Today, both the ESA and the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources’ Red List define endangered species and identify extinct ones. A Female Fiji Iguana. Fiji is one of the Pacific island nations requesting future help for climate change consequences. Photo by Rhett Butler. These nations are already pleading for help in preparation of climate change [The Guardian] Pacific island nations have started begging wealthy countries to help their people migrate and find work if they are forced to flee their homelands because of the effects of climate change. Why this country is losing their birds in shocking numbers [Mongabay] New research in Ghana’s highly-biodiverse Upper Guinean rainforests has found that logging has taken a tremendous toll on wildlife.…

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The government of Mauritius has announced its plans of culling 20 percent of the endemic and vulnerable Mauritius fruit bat (Pteropus niger) population on the island. The government hopes that fewer bats will help reduce damages to fruits like mangoes and litchis in orchards and boost revenue for fruit farmers. The culling will start mid-October and will go on for three weeks until the “target is attained,” Mahen Kumar Seeruttun, Minister of Agro-Industry and Food Security, said at the sixth National Assembly of the Mauritian Parliament held on October 6. But conservationists are calling this decision “unacceptable” and “disgraceful.” “Culling is the most insensible, unscientific action that can be taken at this stage, as it will, at a cost, harm both the fruit producers and the native threatened biodiversity of the country,” Vincent Florens, Associate Professor of Ecology at the University of Mauritius, told Mongabay. The cull could be disastrous for the native bat species, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) added in a statement. “The implementation of a cull will very likely result in an up-listing of the species from Vulnerable to Endangered or Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List, which will damage the reputation of Mauritius as a world leader on conservation,” the statement notes. Mauritian government plans to cull fruit bats to “reduce damage to mango and litchi fruits in orchards.” Photo by Jacques de Speville. Is the cull based on scientific evidence? In 2013, the National Parks and Conservation Service (NPCS)…

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Happy Rattlesnake Friday! All venomous snakes need our support! This Cottonmouth is screaming it from the field in our herp photo of the day uploaded by kingsnake.com user BowieKnife357 ! Be sure to tell them you liked it here!

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Photo: Fox News
Despite their best attempts to track global venomous snake bites, many Asian countries are unable to properly count the number of people envenomated annually. Due to the lack of available health care in some regions as well as the inability to pay for it leads many bites to not be counted.

Citing new evidence from a study in India and Bangladesh, the experts said around 46,000 people died annually of snake bites in India, plus another 6,000 in Bangladesh. The WHO estimates the annual death toll in India from snake bites is 10,000.
“Snake bite … is almost completely ignored and grossly underestimated,” said Alan Harvey, head of the International Society of Toxinology, who led the meeting.
“WHO and governments need to … rank snake bite where it belongs — as a very real public health and medical concern which needs funding, training and focus.”

To read the full article, visit Fox News. …read more
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By Herp News

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hen Dale McGinnity rushed to the Nashville Zoo at 3 a.m. one morning in 2011, it was to witness the culmination of a six-year effort. One of the zoo’s eastern hellbenders (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis alleganiensis) was finally laying eggs. These giant salamanders, along with the other hellbender subspecies, the Ozark hellbender (C. a. bishopi), can grow to over two feet long, making them North America’s largest salamander species by far. But both subspecies are rapidly disappearing from the wild, and scientists were scrambling to figure out how to breed the animals in captivity as a way to replenish wild populations. McGinnity and his colleagues immediately got to work, artificially fertilizing the eggs with sperm from male hellbenders. The scientists knew what to thank for these small, slimy bundles of joy: four days earlier, McGinnity had injected the zoo’s female hellbenders with a new compound, essentially a love potion for amphibians that causes them to mate or to release their eggs or sperm. It was designed specifically for species that were reluctant to breed in captivity. Just call it “Cupid’s syringe.” The elixir in question, called Amphiplex, was concocted by Vance Trudeau at the University of Ottawa. Originally a fish endocrinologist, Trudeau felt compelled to redirect his expertise in the early 2000s when reports of startling drops in amphibian populations started to roll in from around the world. “I’m an endocrinologist, I know a lot about spawning,” he said to himself at the time. “Why don’t I try to do something?” [caption…

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Because sea turtles don’t have an X or Y chromosome, their sex is defined during development by the incubation environment. Warmer conditions produce females and cooler conditions produce males. The shift in climate is shifting turtles as well, because as the temperature of their nests change so do their reproduction patterns.

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Hope you enjoy a little something out of the wild with this Mud Snake in our herp photo of the day uploaded by kingsnake.com user Godfrey every once in a while! Be sure to tell them you liked it here!

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Photo: Don Lyman
Despite being listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List, the Blanding’s Turtle is not federally protected in the US, although some states have regulations in place. Biologist Jared Green of Assabet River National in Hudson, Massachusetts, however wants to help increase their numbers in his state. The program hit a major milestone this spring releasing their One-thousandth turtle.

Biologists hope that building a strong population of Blanding’s turtles at Assabet River will help offset population losses being experienced by the turtles elsewhere.
Although there are some big Blanding’s turtle populations in the Midwest, most populations in the Northeast are less than 50 turtles, Butler says. The only large population is at Oxbow NWR, where an estimated several hundred Blanding’s turtles make their home. “That’s virtually unheard of east of the Mississippi,” explains Butler.

Read more at Earth Island Journal. …read more
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Beautiful in any setting, this Inyo Mountains slender salamander seemed especially so against the desert background.
“Next right” Gary said. “It’s just a mile or two up the road.”

”OK. Whoops you mean here?”

“Yes. I guess we’ll have to roll the boulders.”

So we huffed, puffed, strained, and somehow moved the huge rocks just enough to allow the car to sneak carefully through.

Ahead of us was a rocky trail that seemed to go a few hundred feet into the desert, up a rise, and then peter out entirely.

With Gary directing we got to the end of the trail. Then carefully avoiding rocks we managed to go a few hundred feet farther.

“We walk from here.”

And walk we did. Over the rise, then down to an orchid laden desert spring, along a marsh, and following the run, to a desert wonderland, a willow surrounded waterhole thickly edged with flat fist-sized rocks.

“Go to it” Gary said, “but be sure to replace the rocks as close to the original position as possible.”
So I did and I did, and within minutes I had uncovered, photographed, and returned to its hiding place one of the most beautiful salamanders I have yet seen, a light phase Batrachoseps campi, Inyo Mountain salamander. These deserts are just alive with amphibian surprises. Thanks again, Gary.
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A black Kite flies over burned forest in Ghana. Photo by Nicole Arcilla. Thousands of studies have measured the impact of logging on tropical biodiversity, but few have looked at illegal logging. This, despite the fact that illegal logging represents anywhere from 50 to 90 percent of total timber harvesting in tropical countries, according to the United Nations Environment Program. But new research in Ghana’s highly-biodiverse Upper Guinean rainforests has found that a combination of illegal and legal logging has taken a tremendous toll on birds. The researchers, headed by Nicole Arcilla, a postdoctorate researcher with Drexel’s College of Arts and Sciences, found understory bird abundance fell by more than half in just 15 years. “The numbers don’t lie and they don’t have a political agenda. These numbers are shocking,” said Arcilla, whose paper was published in Biological Conservation. Understory birds are species that live primarily between the canopy and the forest floor, largely feeding on insects. The team collected data on these birds from 2008 to 2010 in forest heavily impacted by illegal logging, comparing them to previous data collected from 1993 to 1995. They found that during the fifteen-year gap, logging – both legal and illegal – increased by 600 percent, decimating the understory birds. “Whereas analysis based on data collected in 1993–1995 estimated a partial post-logging recovery of the understory bird community at that time, data from 2008–2010 showed no indication of post-logging recovery, likely due to ongoing illegal logging following intensive legal…

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This cultivar is a Super Genetic Banded Paradox Albino Ball Python (Python regius). I had the honor of hatching the first example of this new morph earlier in 2015. People who know me and follow my posts here, on my site, and on social media are aware that I have been hatching a whole lot of Paradox Ball Pythons, especially Paradox Albinos. Friends joke that I must be putting something in my water, but the fact is that after many years and much effort I have hopefully made an advance in how to produce Paradox Ball Pythons.

The Paradox Gene is not fully understood and I am not trying to claim that I fully understand it. What I am saying is that results speak for themselves and that it took more than luck for me to produce Paradox Albinos and other Paradox Ball Python Morphs every year for the past 5! I expect to hatch more in 2016 barring thermostat or incubator malfunctions! …read more
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In a major wildlife trafficking crackdown, the Beijing Forest Police have confiscated around 1,773 pounds of ivory, 24 pounds of rhino horn and 35 bear paws, worth about $4 million, according to a statement by TRAFFIC. They have also arrested 16 suspected members of the involved wildlife smuggling ring. Beijing Forest Police confiscated around 1,700 pounds of ivory. Photo courtesy of TRAFFIC. This is the biggest seizure so far in terms of the scale of the smuggling operations behind it, Beijing Forest Police told reporters at a press conference on October 12, according to TRAFFIC. “The Beijing Forest Police operation is a clear demonstration of the Chinese Government’s commitment to crack down on illegal wildlife trade and support international efforts to protect endangered species. As a Chinese proverb aptly says: ‘Action is far more powerful than words,” Zhou Fei, Head of TRAFFIC’s China Programme, said in the statement. The police crackdown, which lasted three months, uncovered that ivory was being smuggled from Japan to mainland China via HongKong. The gang used antique shops in places like Beijing and Guangdong as cover for their operations, according to TRAFFIC, and used online illegal trading and couriers for distribution of the smuggled goods. “It is possible all the wildlife products in the case originated in Japan, where the popularity of legally owned items such as ivory and rhino horns from the 1980s and earlier has plummeted and people have been selling family heirlooms and other goods into the marketplace,” TRAFFIC…

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What a great shot of this clutch of subocs in our herp photo of the day uploaded by kingsnake.com user pecoskid ! Be sure to tell them you liked it here!

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A leafcutter bee, one of the species benefiting from wildlife-friendly farming. Photo by Brigit Strawbridge. Commercial farms can benefit from creating exclusive spaces for wildlife on field edges, a new study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B has found. “It is possible to achieve BOTH wildlife conservation and maintain — and in some cases increase — food production on a modern, commercial farm,” Richard Pywell from the Natural Environment Research Council’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Wallingford, UK, told Mongabay in an email. Instead of looking at the role of preexisting semi-natural habitats within crop fields as many past studies have done, Pywell and his colleagues investigated the value of actually creating wildlife-friendly habitat on low-yielding edges of fields that have been removed from food production. For six years, between 2005 and 2011, the team studied yields of wheat, oilseed rape, and beans on 56 fields in central England. Creation of wildflower habitats on small areas of less productive land at the field edge to attract crop pollinators. Photo by Heather Lowther, CEH. They removed three to eight percent of usable cropping land from the edges of some of these fields, and instead grew native plants and wildflowers there to attract wildlife like bees, beetles, and birds. Then they compared crop yields from these fields with yield from other fields lacking such wildlife-friendly habitats. The team found that in fields without wildlife-habitat margins, crop yields were much lower at…

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Photo: A photo obtained from the Christian-Albrechts-Universitat of Kiel shows a South-American horned frog (genus Ceratophrys), waiting for its prey

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-06-super-sticky-frog-scientists-tongue-tied.html#jCp
It was previously thought that a frog’s tongue got it’s stickiness from the saliva, but recent research suggests something completely different.

“The experimental data shows that frog tongues can be best compared to pressure-sensitive adhesives that are of common technical use as adhesive tapes or labels,” according to the study published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Read more on this study at Phys.org. …read more
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By Herp News

Warning: Some images below may contain graphic content. At best numbering roughly 2,800 individuals, the Sumatran elephant (Elephas maximus sumatranus) is critically endangered. Yet population data has been notoriously difficult to gather due to the rarity of sightings and the small size and isolation of the areas in which the elephants live, complicating conservation efforts. A new study based on an unusual technique of analyzing DNA in elephant dung provides an assessment of the largest known elephant population in central Sumatra, Indonesia, that of the Bukit Tigapuluh landscape. The new study, published in mongabay.com’s journal Tropical Conservation Science, is part of an island-wide effort to establish basic elephant population data to help with conservation planning. Most previous Sumatran elephant population estimates for Bukit Tigapuluh are outdated or unreliable, underscoring the need for a new assessment, the authors write. A group of Sumatran elephants searches for food in a pulpwood concession in the RiauJambi survey area of Bukit Tigapuluh. Photo by Frankfurt Zoological Society / Alexander Moßbrucker & Albert Tetanus. “Certainly, information alone cannot save elephants from extinction, but national and local conservation strategies based on incomplete and/or outdated data would likely fail as scarce conservation resources would not be adequately allocated and important conservation needs and opportunities may be overlooked,” the study states. The researchers gathered fresh elephant dung from sampling blocks established in two 900-square-kilometer survey areas that they believe all the area’s elephants pass through. By analyzing DNA from the dung samples “using methods…

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We hunt for food, and we hunt for fun. But we are unlike other natural predators, according to a study recently published in Science.  We are “super-predators”, researchers say. Cape Buffalo Trophy. Photo by Lord Mountbatten, Wikimedia Commons. Most natural predators on land — like lions, bears and tigers — prefer to hunt juvenile prey animals for food. But on analyzing a global database of over 300 studies, researchers found that humans kill 14 times more adult prey than other predators. Humans also hunt carnivores at nine-times the rate of other predators, they found. “We kill those carnivores not for food, but for trophies and — sometimes — to eliminate them as competitors,” Chris Darimont, lead author of the study from the University of Victoria, told Science news. “Because they naturally don’t face much predation, they have not evolved ways to successfully avoid humans or reproduce fast enough to make up for human-induced losses.” Moreover, the formerly dangerous act of searching for, pursuing and capturing large-sized prey is now easier due to advanced killing technology, authors write in the paper. “Hunters ‘capture’ mammals with bullets, and fishes with hooks and nets. They assume minimal risk compared with non-human predators, especially terrestrial carnivores, which are often injured while living what amounts to a dangerous lifestyle,” Darimont told reporters, according to the BBC. Killing of Cecil, the lion, by a trophy hunter on July 1 generated widespread public outrage. Photo from Wikimedia Commons. Humans hunt a…

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Everyone feels just like this little chameleon does here in our herp photo of the day uploaded by kingsnake.com user 1Sun every once in a while! Be sure to tell them you liked it here!

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Photo: The News-Press
University of Queensland has decided turtles look good in clothes. They have altered the design of rash vest to fit both hatchling and adult sea turtles to learn a bit more about the dietary needs of Loggerheads by collecting a full fecal sample.

Mr Coffee said the information could be used to identify and protect habitats.
“The idea is that I’ll be sampling nesting females as well,” he said.
“So I’ll be taking blood and skin from nesting females over the summer period at Mon Repos and Heron Island and be hoping to use … analysis on those and figure out where they were foraging before they came to nest.

To get the full poop on this article, visit ABC.net. …read more
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The red pygmy rattlers of Hyde County, NC are among the world’s most beautiful snakes.
It was exactly 5:45PM and the temperature was 84F when we turned from the pavement onto a secluded dirt road in Hyde County, NC. It was a sunny mid-August afternoon and the humidity was high. Moments earlier we had photographed a 4-foot long canebrake rattler lying quietly in the then traffic free oncoming lane, but it was not for canebrakes that Jake and I had made the drive. Rather, it was the hope of seeing a red phase Carolina pygmy rattlesnake, Sistrurus m. miliarius, that had drawn us northward those several hundred miles. We had allowed 2 nights for the search.

Within 15 minutes of finding the canebrake we were back in the car. Decision time was upon us. Should we remain on the sun-warmed paved road or turn onto the cooler, shaded intersecting dirt road that stretched off far into the distance. The dirt road won out and it proved to be a good decision. Within five seconds of having made the turn we found the target, a beautiful adult red phase pygmy. It lay fully stretched just inches from an acre of tall grasses. Indeed the deities of herping were smiling on us! We had found our main target on the first evening and could now concentrate on our newly stated target 2 the next night. From this, the Sandhills phase of the Carolina pygmy, we were separated by several hundred miles. But at least the destination was closer to home. Have I ever mentioned how big the Carolinas seem when driving east to west?

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By Herp News

Thanks to a thin layer of tissue that covers the heart called the epicardium, zebrafish are able to regrow damaged cardiac tissue. New research has shown that the epicardium is able to heal not only the heart, but also itself, when damaged, and it revealed the signaling molecule responsible for initiating the healing process. The discovery could eventually help researchers find ways to regrow human heart tissue, which would aid in the recovery of heart attack victims, among other cardiac patients. In 2002, Kenneth Poss, now a cell biologist at Duke University, along with two colleagues, discovered that zebrafish (Danio rerio) possess the power to regenerate damaged heart muscle. This led to an “investigation of how and why heart regeneration happens,” Poss told Mongabay. “In the past few years, our work, and those of others, [has] implicated a thin cellular covering of the heart called the epicardium as being important in repair of injured heart muscle,” Poss explained. Poss’s most recent study, published in Nature, further explored the epicardium’s role in regeneration. Poss and three colleagues illustrated the importance of the epicardium by observing the rate of heart regeneration in zebrafish in which the researchers had damaged just the heart tissue versus those in which they had also destroyed the epicardium. Male and female adult zebrafish. Photo by Tohru Murakami / Flickr As expected, fish with an injured epicardium showed delayed healing of their other heart tissues. But the researchers were surprised to find that before…

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Thanks to a thin layer of tissue that covers the heart called the epicardium, zebrafish are able to regrow damaged cardiac tissue. New research has shown that the epicardium is able to heal not only the heart, but also itself, when damaged, and it revealed the signaling molecule responsible for initiating the healing process. The discovery could eventually help researchers find ways to regrow human heart tissue, which would aid in the recovery of heart attack victims, among other cardiac patients. In 2002, Kenneth Poss, now a cell biologist at Duke University, along with two colleagues, discovered that zebrafish (Danio rerio) possess the power to regenerate damaged heart muscle. This led to an “investigation of how and why heart regeneration happens,” Poss told Mongabay. “In the past few years, our work, and those of others, [has] implicated a thin cellular covering of the heart called the epicardium as being important in repair of injured heart muscle,” Poss explained. Poss’s most recent study, published in Nature, further explored the epicardium’s role in regeneration. Poss and three colleagues illustrated the importance of the epicardium by observing the rate of heart regeneration in zebrafish in which the researchers had damaged just the heart tissue versus those in which they had also destroyed the epicardium. Male and female adult zebrafish. Photo by Tohru Murakami / Flickr As expected, fish with an injured epicardium showed delayed healing of their other heart tissues. But the researchers were surprised to find that before…

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What’s the best way to save life on Earth? Should we set aside huge blocks of wilderness and intensively farm the rest or should we create a mosaic ecosystem – i.e., a quilt-like mix of farms, forests and everything in-between? Conservationists, ecologists and farmers have been passionately debating this dichotomy – what they call either “land sparing” or “land sharing” – for decades. It’s not an ivory tower argument: with seven billion human mouths to feed (and rising daily) and a global extinction crisis on our hands, the answer has massive real-world applications. Last month, a new study in Current Biology took a novel view of the debate by asking not what was best for birds in general, but what was best for preserving the full-breadth and depth of bird evolution, something scientists call “phylogenetic diversity.” Land Sparing for Phylogenetic Diversity The study, headed by David Edwards with the University of Sheffield and James Gilroy with the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, found that land sparing (i.e., big parks coupled with intensive agriculture) was the best way forward for preserving birds’ great evolutionary heritage – at least in Colombia’s avian-rich Chocó-Andes ecosystem. “The Chocó-Andes are a hotspot of endemism and have been widely impacted by low-intensity farming, making this one of the most threatened faunas on Earth,” Edwards said in a press release. “It is vital to consider how best to farm here, but also to use this region as a model for how best to farm in other locations.”…

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Northern muriqui monkeys from the wild population in RPPN Feliciano Miguel Abdala, previously known as the Estação Biológica de Caratinga. This privately owned ranch is the site of the longest-running large mammal research project in Brazil, led by University of Wisconsin-Madison anthropologist Karen Strier for 33 years. Photo courtesy of Carla B. Possamai/Universidade Federal de Espirito Santo [dropcap]M[/dropcap]uriquis often start their day by hugging one another. The Brazilian monkeys can become so entwined in lanky arms and prehensile tails, around tree limbs and each other, that it’s hard to tell them apart. Their sociability doesn’t end there. These primates don’t fight over food, sex or sleeping arrangements — an easygoing lifestyle that earned them the moniker “hippie monkeys.” However, such peaceful ways belie the muriqui’s fight for survival. Tucked up in the trees of the Atlantic forest — a once-green corridor stretching along the east coast of Brazil, now largely deforested — the northern muriqui (Brachyteles hypoxanthus) has clung to the IUCN’s Critically Endangered list for more than 25 years. Just this year, the southern muriqui (Brachyteles arachnoides) joined them on that list. Like many endangered species, the combined pressures of deforestation, fragmented habitats and hunting have steadily driven populations downward. By best estimates, less than 2,000 of both muriqui species remain. A sooty-faced Southern muriqui (Brachyteles arachnoides). These monkeys are found south of Rio de Janeiro to Paraná, with 90 percent of the population in São Paulo State. Facial pigment is…

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Isn’t this Jungle Carpet Python crazy looking?! It is one of a kind and a Super Form from what the Ball Python Crowd refers to as a, “Dinker Project.”

I noticed that the mother of this snake looked just a bit odd when it was a baby. I bought her, bred her, and then bred one of her male offspring back into her to get a super form of the co-dominant gene that she carried. I know a lot of kingsnake.com users attend Reptile Shows so I will share my story about buying the mother of this snake.

All morning long I was busy at this show vending at my table and I was unable to make a round until around lunch time. When I arrived at one of the better Carpet Python vendor tables there was a crowd standing around looking at a baby JCP in a deli cup marked $350.00. They were all commenting under their breath about the little snake, but for me there was no discussion. I peeled off the cash, handed it to the vendor, and then picked up the cup with the snake.

All the guys said, “WHOA!! I was thinking about buying that” . The vendor looked at me and said, “That snake will turn out to look normal and so will all the babies.” I made two replies. To the crowd I responded, “You can keep thinking about buying it, but I just bought it.” To the vendor I said, loud enough for all to hear, “If this $350 female JCP turns out to be normal I will more than break even selling her normal babies.” There are lessons to be learned in all of this but don’t ask me what they are. I am just trying to have fun and I am relegated to but one of these crazy looking JCP after about 10 years of effort. …read more
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Photo: Robin Moore/ILCP
Called the “Golden Wonder” by conservationists, the Jackson’s Climbing Salamander, Bolitoglossa jacksoni, has not been seen since 1977. This field report chronicles the search for the Golden Wonder, as well as many other great and rare amphibian finds.

“When I spied that oh so familiar pose of a Long-limbed Salamander basking in the rain with feet splayed and spine bent with that beautiful long tail hanging down, I was thrilled. It really brought back much of what it had been like in ‘76; going out night after night in the rain. Finding this salamander is as rewarding as it was years ago.”

To read the full account, visit National Geographic. …read more
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This sassy lil watersnake had to stop and eat a toad in the yard before the photographer captured it for our herp photo of the day uploaded by kingsnake.com user dinahmoe ! Be sure to tell them you liked it here!

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Higher temperatures result in Swedish sand lizards laying their eggs earlier, which leads to better fitness and survival in their offspring, according to new research.

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Higher temperatures result in Swedish sand lizards laying their eggs earlier, which leads to better fitness and survival in their offspring, according to new research.

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A recent article published in the journal Biological Conservation details a research study led by University of Wisconsin physical anthropologist Dr. Stephanie Spehar which utilized game camera traps to identify and estimate the numbers of orangutans in the Wehea Forest of East Kalimantan, Borneo. The researchers believe the cameras may provide more accurate population counts to assist in future conservation efforts. The study team set up networks of game cameras within the 38,000 hectare Wehea Forest wilderness of mostly undisturbed rainforest surrounded by logging concessions. The team chose two distinct areas for camera placement — dense primary forest with a closed tree canopy, and a secondary forest last logged in 1996. The study sought to test whether camera trapping methods, so successful with other elusive species such as the clouded leopard (Neofelis diardi), could be used to count orangutans. Curious orangutans often approach the camera for a closer look. Photo by Brent Loken Prior to the study, the most reliable method for estimating orangutan population numbers was to count the number of orangutan nests in a certain area. “Orangutan nests look like large bird nests and are used for sleeping during the night and sometimes for resting during the day” describes Brent Loken, a team member and doctoral candidate at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, who spoke with mongabay.com regarding the study “They mainly build a new nest each day but sometimes return to old nests to rest. Babies typically sleep with mothers and mothers often…

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Happy Rattlesnake Friday! We are seeing red with this gorgeous shot of a Pygmy Rattlesnake our herp photo of the day uploaded by kingsnake.com user Tamers1 ! Be sure to tell them you liked it here!

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In June, a unique graduation ceremony was held in the city of Bhopal in central India. Fourteen dogs and their 28 handlers performed brief drills to display their newly acquired skills at detecting illegal wildlife products during a parade held at the 23rd Battalion of Special Armed Reserve Forces’ Dog Training Centre. The 14 newly trained wildlife protection and anti-poaching squads would soon join India’s 11 existing dog squads to sniff out wildlife contraband across the country. The ceremony was attended by representatives from seven “tiger states” home to significant populations of wild tigers (Panthera tigris), which are subject to intense poaching and international trade, including Assam, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and Uttarakhand. Sniffer dogs during training. TRAFFIC India has trained 25 sniffer dogs and their handlers since 2008, including a new batch of 14 dogs that graduated in June. Photo by Shaleen Attre/TRAFFIC. In addition to the new dog squad recruits, India has stepped up other measures to combat its significant black-market trade in wildlife, which has been poorly documented and loosely enforced. The measures include a new emphasis on training law enforcement officers to fight the illegal trade and forestry personnel to guard against poaching. While the efforts do not appear to be part of a larger initiative to combat wildlife crime, and data on the number of arrests and convictions remain scarce, experts say they indicate that the country is beefing up its wildlife-crime-fighting capacity. Sniffer…

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A Chinese national dubbed the “Queen of Ivory” has been arrested in Tanzania. Yang Feng Glan, 66, was arrested after returning from Uganda to Tanzania. She has been charged with smuggling 706 elephant tusks with a street value of $2.5 million and faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison. Tanzania has been widely criticized by conservationists and environmentalists for its failures to reign in the ivory trade, which has decimated elephant populations both inside its borders and in neighboring countries. The Elephant Action League credited Tanzania’s National and Transnational Serious Crimes Investigation Unit (NTSCIU) with her apprehension. “It’s the news that we all have been waiting for, for years,” said Andrea Crosta, co-founder of the Elephant Action League and WildLeaks, in a statement. “Hopefully she can lead us to other major traffickers and corrupt government officials. We must put an end to the time of the untouchables if we want to save the elephant.” Earlier this week the Born Free Foundation estimated that 24,000 have been killed so far this year for their ivory. African elephants in Namibia. Photo by Rhett A. Butler

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We occasionally see adult Florida rough green snakes in the cat briars along the fencelines.
I was creeping along on the riding mower a few afternoons ago when just ahead of the right front tire I notices a lengthy piece of grass make a shivery-sinuous movement. Hmmmmm. Either the grass was reacting in a frightened manner at the thought of being decapitated by the whirling blades or there was something there that needed scrutinizing. Choosing the latter of these 2 options I slammed on the brakes, crawled from the seat, moved a step ahead of the idling machine, stooped down and saw—-nothing! I stood, was just about to hop back on the mower when I happened to see a little pink tongue flickering. Once the tongue was seen the rest of the creature, all 7 inches of it (a hatching Florida rough green snake, Opheodrys aestivus carinatus wonderfully camouflaged by the grass blades) was easily seen. I was sure glad I had stopped.

Over the years I had seen several adult rough green snakes amidst tangles of cat briar, blackberry canes, and Virginia creeper along the fence line, but this was the first hatchling I had seen in the yard. I sure hope it will not be the last.

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Just days after capturing the once-missing king cobra from a local garage, Florida wildlife officials on Friday confirmed their intent to revoke the owner’s license to own the venomous snake in a revocation letter, sent a day before the king cobra was captured.

“Allowing you to continue to possess your venomous reptiles after three escapes would send a message that there will be no consequences for serious rule violations,”

The owner of the cobra has held permits to keep various exotic and potentially deadly animals for years, but records show numerous violations for not properly containing the animals including being cited in 2001 after another king cobra escaped from a house in the College Park area of Orlando, and in 2004 when an albino diamondback rattlesnake escaped and ended up in a neighbor’s yard.

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A missing King Cobra that went on walkabout over a month ago has turned up underneath a clothes dryer at a neighbors house a half mile from it’s cage. Found Wednesday night Orange County Animal Control officials and the wife of the snake’s owner confirm the snake is the one that escaped 35 days ago and it has been returned to its owners.

“Every time I put something in the dryer this hiss sound happened.” – Cynthia Mullvain

The cobra’s owner, Mike Kennedy, is facing charges for failure to immediately report the escape and has pleaded not guilty.
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Is there any thing more classic than this chameleon tongue shot in our herp photo of the day uploaded by kingsnake.com user 1Sun ! Be sure to tell them you liked it here!

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In the fight to protect the extraordinary biodiversity of Papua New Guinea’s rainforests, some conservationists are collecting a unique set of data: the sounds of the forest. Scientists with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and Princeton University are using acoustic sampling recorders in the Adelbert Mountains, a remote range on Papua New Guinea’s north coast, to help them assess how effective their local land use planning efforts have been at protecting the region’s wildlife. Subsistence agriculture is a major driver of deforestation in Papua New Guinea, so TNC has worked with communities in the Adelbert Mountains for the past decade and a half to help allocate different areas of land for development, hunting, gardening, forest use and conservation, TNC’s Justine Hausheer said in a blog post. Anecdotal evidence suggested that the system was working, Hausheer explains, but TNC scientists wanted harder evidence that the conservation areas were large enough to sustain key species like birds-of-paradise and the bandicoot. But the bioacoustic data they are collecting is not just to monitor specific species. Taken together, all of the sounds of the forest over a 24-hour period, from insects buzzing and birds chirping at sunrise to frogs croaking and mammals grunting as they go about their day, can be used to monitor overall forest health. “All of the animals we are hearing are vocalizing at slightly different frequencies or with distinct acoustic patterns,” Eddie Game, TNC’s lead scientist for the Asia Pacific Region, said in a blog post. “They all have their own…

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A sneezing monkey, a walking fish and a jewel-like snake are just some of a biological treasure trove of over 200 new species discovered in the Eastern Himalayas in recent years, according to a new report by WWF.

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