By Herp News

Twenty-three days before a major earthquake in 2011 animals began disappearing from part of Yanachaga National Park in Peru. By 24 hours before the quake they had completely vacated the area. A recent study documenting the animals’ retreat with camera-trap data suggests that animals may have an uncanny ability to sense and flee from irritating portents of seismic activity. Historically, scientists have dismissed accounts of animals acting strangely before earthquakes, mostly due to the anecdotal nature of the accounts and a lack of reliable sources. “[T]he infrequency and unpredictability of earthquakes means that most relevant pre-earthquake studies suffer, of necessity, from small sample sizes and from difficulties with reproducibility under comparable conditions,” states the recent study, published in the journal Physics and Chemistry of the Earth. However, a few credible observations of odd animal behavior do exist. For instance, before a magnitude 6.3 earthquake in L’Aquila, Italy, in 2009, researchers detected unusual toad behavior in areas where they also detected atmospheric disturbances that typically occur before earthquakes. Paca rodent (Cuniculus-paca). Photo courtesy of the TEAM Network. The present study relied on images from motion-capture cameras set up in Yanachaga National Park by the Virginia-based conservation group Tropical Ecology and Assessment and Monitoring Network. For 30 days leading up to the earthquake — and one day after — the cameras operated round the clock in nine separate locations throughout the park, capturing animal movements. Zoologist Rachel Grant of Hartpury College in Gloucester, England, and her colleagues geophysicist…

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By Herp News

A family of vicuñas at Apolobamba, Bolivia. Photo by Daniel Maydana [dropcap]C[/dropcap]orsino Huallata Ibarra was helping his parents round up their herd of llamas at their home in the Bolivian countryside when the sound of gunshots made him jump. Scanning the horizon, distant movement caught his eye. He could just make out the forms of several vicuñas — alpaca-like animals whose wool is some of the finest and most expensive in the world — seemingly fleeing from something. Ibarra, a veterinary professor at the Public University of El Alto in La Paz, knew well what the gunfire likely meant. Across their range in the high Andean plateau, vicuñas — a protected species — are increasingly targeted by poachers who leave behind a trail of dead animals stripped from the neck down of their valuable hides. “Every shot that occurs in the highlands are vicuñas being hunted,” Ibarra says. Poachers also do not hesitate to turn their guns on any human who tries to interfere. Last January, two Chilean police officers were killed at the Peruvian border when they stopped vicuña traffickers. And that same month, Ephraim Mamani Arevillca, a state conservationist and friend of Ibarra’s, was found murdered. “In Bolivia, he was the only governmental employee fighting on the frontlines against vicuña-related crooks,” Ibarra says. Poachers are presumably to blame for Arevillca’s death, although no arrests have been made. Vicuñas are herded and captured in the community of Villazón. Photo by Daniel…

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By Herp News

Among the 5,000 existing species of mammals, more than 100 have their genome sequenced, whereas the genomes of only 9 species of reptiles (among 10,000 species) are available to the scientific community. This is the reason why a team of researchers has produced a large database including, among others, the newly-sequenced genome of the corn snake, a species increasingly used to understand the evolution of reptiles. Within the same laboratory, the researchers have discovered the exact mutation that causes albinism in that species.

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Such a common find for most of us, but a welcome one come spring! What a great Painted Turtle field shot for our Herp Photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user PATMAN ! Be sure to tell them you liked it here!

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By Herp News

A crested serpent eagle was saved from being trafficked on Sunday by residents of Melung, a village on the slopes of the volcanic Mount Slamet in Indonesia’s Central Java province. Upon hearing a man identified as A arranging to sell the Spilornis cheela bido by phone, villagers intervened to try to talk him down. They explained that trafficking protected species is prohibited by Indonesian law and punishable by five years imprisonment and a 100 million rupiah ($7,300) fine. But A remained determined to sell the eagle, even turning violent and emotional, at one point attacking the others with a block of wood. Dozens of villagers surrounded A and ultimately threatened that if he didn’t back down, they would bring him to the police station. “Our explanation about the law didn’t even enter his mind. He wasn’t afraid of criminal threats,” Margino, one of those who intervened, told Mongabay. “We had to use force to intimidate him. Finally he handed over the eagle and went home empty-handed.” This crested serpent eagle was saved from being trafficked on Sunday by villagers in Java. Photo courtesy of the Biodiversity Society The villagers released the eagle into the wild near the Melung forest. Although it initially appeared to have difficulty flying, after a few minutes it was able to soar into the air. This isn’t the first time Melung residents have acted in support of conservation laws. Once, they expelled a pellet gun enthusiast who had come to practice in…

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The entire head of some red-cheeked mud turtles is suffused with red.
Whether you consider the red-cheek a full species (Kinosternon cruentatum) or a subspecies of the scorpion mud turtle (K. scorpioides cruentatum), there can be little argument that some examples are one of, if not the, prettiest of the genus.

Long (and with good reason) a hobbyist favorite, the amount of red on the face of this 4 to 6 inch long aquatic turtle, can vary from little more than a facial smudge (and even this may dull with advancing age) to a long-lasting brilliant suffusion encompassing the entire head.

This small and easily kept turtle is native to the Yucatan Peninsula region (southeastern Mexico and Belize). Wild collected adult examples are still occasionally available and a fair number of hatchlings are produced in captivity.

Although these (and other kinosternids) can be kept in aquaria with shallow clean water, and although they seldom bask even when it is easy for them to do so, I do offer a shelf (or smooth flat rock, where they can rest an inch or two below the water’s surface. The turtles usually thrive on a diet of high quality pelleted food but will appreciate a periodic offering of a nightcrawler or a freshly killed minnow. Hardy and easily kept, be prepared to have your red-cheeks for decades.

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By Herp News

The climate zones boreal forests evolved in are moving north, and trees can’t keep up. Key species in North America’s boreal forests, like black spruce, are disappearing from areas where they once thrived. According to Dennis Murray, a professor of ecology at Trent University in Ontario, the impacts of this tree loss are being felt across the entire ecosystem. “You lose spruce and you lose everything that lives in spruce and that is basically everything in the boreal forest,” Murray recently told Yale 360. “We’re seeing the same phenomena that we’ve seen with moose with lynx and snowshoe hares. And caribou are going belly up very, very fast. Their ranges are receding northward rapidly.” To be sure, the boreal, also known as taiga, is a sprawling and complex ecosystem, and while it may be retreating in some places, it is thriving, or at least surviving, in others. Still, the overall trend is so alarming that scientists are making increasingly dire projections about the boreal’s future as global temperatures continue to rise. A team of forest experts from the Austria-based International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Natural Resources Canada and the University of Helsinki in Finland published an article in August in the journal Science that found most boreal forests have so far proven capable of coping with current disturbances, but they face a variety of unprecedented threats to their health due to climate change. “Boreal forests have the potential to hit a tipping point this century,” IIASA researcher Anatoly…

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By Herp News

Brazilian Hyacinth Macaws. Photo by Alexander Yates licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. [dropcap]W[/dropcap]ildlife trafficking casts a toxic net of negative impacts across the entire landscape it exhausts. The nightmarish media imagery emerging from the poaching battlefield of Africa has set the horrific tone for public understanding of Earth’s accelerating Sixth Extinction Event: an obliterating trifecta of climate change, habitat loss, and poaching for foreign and domestic consumption and the pet trade. Now Latin America — home to the world’s last uncontacted peoples, the planet’s carbon-trapping Amazonian lungs, and a breathtaking diversity of species — is emerging as another epicenter for criminal trafficking networks feeding the global black market in exotic animals. Latin America’s trafficking woes have largely gone unnoticed so far, maybe due to its other pressing environmental concerns: rapid deforestation, dam building, oil extraction, mining and illegal incursions into protected areas. But the destruction of the region’s wildlife is ongoing and accelerating. The trafficking onslaught in Latin America is following the same pervasive patterns seen in Africa: it is partly driven by Chinese money, Chinese extractive industries, and the unappeasable Chinese market for “traditional medicines,” dietary delicacies and other wildlife uses. It is also facilitated by endemically corrupt Latin American officials; weak, loophole-rife laws; and indifferent enforcement. A vigorous, and largely publically condoned, domestic wildlife trade adds to the devastation. The countless shipping containers arriving at US ports everyday overwhelm the 130 inspectors of the USFWS seeking…

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By Herp News

Scientists are warning of the risks that seismic surveys may pose to sea turtles. Widely used in marine oil and gas exploration, seismic surveys use airguns to produce sound waves that penetrate the sea floor to map oil and gas reserves.

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Pygmy Freshwater Crocodile – Photo: Adam Britton
Long time friend of kingsnake.com and famed crocodillian researcher Adam Britton is attempting to save the Pygmy Freshwater Crocodiles in Australia. Although they are considered the same species as the Freshwater Crocodiles (Crocodylus johnstoni), researchers are looking into genetic variations that may lead to their listing as a brand new species.

The biggest threat to the Pygmy Freshwater Crocodiles is sadly the invasive Cane Toad (Rhinella marina). The crocs appear to be very susceptible to the toxins from the toads. Working in a partnership with local landowners, the project has passed it’s first hurdle. Now it needs our support.

Read more about the Pygmy Freshwater Crocodiles and watch the video at Tiny Toothies. …read more
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Photo: Adam Britton
Friend of kingsnake.com and famed croc researcher Adam Britton is attempting to save the Pygmy Freshwater Crocodiles in Australia. Although they are considered the same species as the Freshwater Crocodiles, there are genetic variations that may lead to a brand new species. The biggest threat to the group is sadly the invasive Cane Toad. The crocs appear to be very susceptible to the toxins from the toads. Working in a partnership with local landowners, the project has passed it’s first hurdle. Now it needs our suport.
Read more and see the video at Tiny Toothies. …read more
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By Herp News

Six months ago, 80 arboreal camera traps and 40 more cameras on the ground were deployed by scientists in the Manu Biosphere Reserve in Peru, one of the world’s most biodiverse conservation areas. The researchers took the cameras down just a few weeks ago, and they provided Mongabay with a sneak peek at the results, which include footage of numerous threatened and endangered species that often go undetected by traditional survey methods. Species caught on camera in the reserve include the endangered Peruvian woolly monkey, the endangered black-faced spider monkey, a near-threatened, tree-dwelling cat commonly known as the margay, and one of the largest birds of prey in the world, the near-threatened harpy eagle. Jhon Florez, the head of Manu National Park, which was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987, said in a statement that “The videos of the harpy eagle are simply spectacular. To capture footage of different individuals, across different sites, of such an emblematic bird is special for Manu, and is a great attraction to people who wish to visit Manu and witness its unbelievable wildlife first hand.” Harpy eagles (Harpia harpyja) can be a full meter tall (3.3 feet) with a wingspan twice that — they’re so big they prey on mammals like monkeys and sloths. Here’s footage to prove it: https://youtu.be/0n9F3sfzLu8 Three different individuals were filmed, two adults and one not yet fully mature, all recorded in a native community where hunting still occurs. “Although these sites are hunted and appear to have…

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Amphibians occupy almost every ecological niche, from the highest tropical trees to the most fetid pools of desert water. Brightly colored and cryptically camouflaged, they have evolved an astounding array of defenses – about half of all amphibians are poisonous. But despite their adaptability, these animals are in serious trouble, all over the world. And now, it seems, their best defense may be their biggest weakness. According to a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, poisonous amphibians may be more likely to go extinct than their benign counterparts. These results surprised study authors Kevin Arbuckle and Michael Speed of the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom. They designed their study to test a hypothesis in evolution, called escape-and-radiate. Scientists first used this to describe competition between poisonous plants and the caterpillars that eat them. It holds that natural selection favors adaptations that help prey escape predators, because those traits will be passed down to future generations. At the same time, any traits that help predators catch their prey will be passed down, too. “It’s been described as an evolutionary arms race, and rightly so,” Arbuckle told Mongabay. The toxic Panamanian Golden Frog has gone extinct in the wild. Photo by Rhett A. Butler According to Arbuckle, few studies had actually tested this hypothesis in animals. Amphibians, with their diverse defenses against predators and their well-studied fossil record, seemed to be the perfect natural laboratory. “Plus,” Arbuckle added, “they’re exceptionally cool.”…

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By Herp News

Photos captured by camera traps could seal the fate of an alleged tiger poacher in Thailand, WCS announced last Wednesday. Thailand police have confiscated tiger skin and body parts at a police checkpoint in Mae Sot District in Western Thailand. Since poaching of tigers in Thailand is illegal, proving the geographic origin of tiger parts is crucial to prosecute the accused. Fortunately, camera traps set up across Thailand’s Western Forest Complex by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) have come to the rescue. A tiger’s stripe pattern is unique and comparable. By comparing stripe pattern of the confiscated tiger skin with those wild tigers photographed by hundreds of camera traps, WCS experts have identified the dead tiger: a female last photographed alive in Huai Kha Khaend (HKK) Wildlife Sanctuary this year. The tigress had also been photographed with cubs in some photos earlier this year. The fate of the cubs, estimated to be two years old now, remains unknown, according to the statement by WCS. Experts compared the confiscated tiger skin with camera trap photos and found that it matched a tigress last photographed alive by a remote camera in Huai Kha Khaend Wildlife Sanctuary with cubs. Photos courtesy of WCS. Thailand police have arrested the alleged poacher, who now awaits trial. Since, the camera trap photos confirm that the tigress was last seen inside a protected area in Thailand, WCS remains optimistic about a conviction. “The Wildlife Conservation Society commends the government of Thailand for arresting an alleged tiger poacher for possessing a…

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A shout out to the little guys! Loving this Vinales Anole in our Herp Photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user macraei ! Be sure to tell them you liked it here!

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By Herp News

A wildlife trafficker who was caught trying to sell three baby orangutans on Facebook was sentenced to two years imprisonment and fined 50 million rupiah ($3,653) in Indonesia’s Aceh province last week. The man, a 29-year-old university student named Rahmadani, was arrested in a sting on August 1. Besides the Sumatran orangutans (Pongo abelii), authorities found him with two red-backed sea eagles (Haliastur indus); a great argus (Argusianus argus), which is a type of pheasant; and a taxidermied Sunda clouded leopard (Neofelis diardi). “Hopefully the conviction serves as a deterrent for would-be perpetrators of environmental crimes, including traffickers of protected plants and animals,” said Genman Hasibuan, head of the Aceh branch of the Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA), which assisted in the sting. “This verdict is the first such conviction in Aceh,” said Panut Hadisiswoyo, director of the Orangutan Information Center, which also helped track the man. “It is an important milestone for law enforcement efforts in regard to environmental crimes in Aceh.” One of the baby orangutans that was confiscated from a trafficker in Aceh in August. Photo by Junaidi Hanafiah However, Panut said the man should have received a stronger sentence. The maximum penalty for wildlife trafficking under the 1990 Conservation Law is five years imprisonment and a 100 million rupiah fine. He noted that in neighboring North Sumatra province in July, a man who was caught trying to sell just one baby orangutan was sentenced to two years behind bars and a 10…

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Visitors to the tropics remember the bright colors. Take the blue-and-yellow macaw with its egg-yolk breast and turquoise back – “the usual gaudy colouring of the intertropical productions,” as Charles Darwin put it. But recent research in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography contests the idea that wildlife and flowers in the tropics are more colorful than those in temperate climes. They may, in fact, be blander. People, including scientists, have a bias for “thinking that tropical regions are filled with really vibrant and exuberantly colorful things,” said lead author Rhiannon Dalrymple, who completed the study at the University of New South Wales in Australia. “But there’s never been any strong test of the idea.” To assess how colors change from one place to the next, researchers have relied on evaluating the hues of specimens by eye. But for the first time, Rhiannon and colleagues applied an objective lens: measuring color with instruments. The approach also allowed them to capture wavelengths of light, such as ultraviolet, that are invisible to people but apparent to bees, birds, and other animals. The researchers amassed species and subspecies of a wider breadth of flora and fauna than in any previous study about color: museum specimens of 424 kinds of butterflies and 570 kinds of birds, as well as 339 kinds of freshly collected flowers. Spanning 34.5 degrees of latitude in eastern Australia, the samples hailed from tropical rainforest to heathland. The researchers looked at how the average of different properties – like color…

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A recent report, published by the Biological Society of Washington, details the discovery of a new rat species, Batomys uragon, on the mountainous island of Luzon in the Philippines.A member of the research team, Lawrence Heaney of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, responded to Mongabay’s request for an interview on the significance of the discovery and B. uragon’s conservation future.Mongabay: What is so unique about the discovery of the new Batomys species?Lawrence Heaney: This new species, Batomys uragon, is a member of a group of mammals called “cloud rats” that live only in the Philippines — a branch on the tree of life that occurs nowhere else. This discovery brings the number of cloud rat species to eighteen, twelve of which occur on Luzon Island, the largest island in the Philippines.These animals form an adaptive radiation, [in a] habitat restricted to the [islands of the] Philippines, much the same as lemurs are restricted to Madagascar. Cloud rats feed on plant material in the canopy of rainforest that grows on mountains above 1,000 meters [3,280 feet] in elevation. They’re rodents, distantly related to familiar pests like rats and mice, and in appearance quite similar to squirrels or chinchillas. A shot of thickly forested Mt. Isarog in 2005. Photo by Danny Balete.Mongabay: Where, when, and how was the discovery made?Lawrence Heaney: Members of our research team first encountered this species in 1988, on Mt. Isarog, a dormant volcano in southern Luzon designated as a national park. We were conducting…

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Is the Wild West using the most up-to-date technology for managing wildlife and researching conservation issues? Kyran Kunkel, Lead Scientist at American Prairie Reserve and Affiliate Professor in the Wildlife Biology Program at the University of Montana, wants to ensure that it is. He spoke with WildTech about technologies he relies on for his work on the Reserve and those he has used previously in carnivore research, as well as new technologies he hopes to see for wildlife management and restoration of North America’s grassland ecosystems in the near future. American Prairie Reserve – North America’s “Serengeti”. Photo credit: American Prairie Reserve Throughout his career, Kunkel has investigated the movement and foraging patterns of a suite of carnivores, including grizzly bears, wolves, and mountain lions, in the American West. In the late 1990s, he began shifting his attention to helping create and restore American Prairie Reserve – North America’s most expansive wildlife reserve and restoration project, protecting native bison, swift foxes, and pronghorn, among its more iconic mammals. In helping to initiate the reintroduction of bison back onto the Reserve, located in northeastern Montana, Kunkel is ensuring the species is returned to a portion of its historic native range. We spoke to him about how his team has used technology to better understand the use of the prairie ecosystem by bison and other wildlife. WildTech: Which technologies have you used for reintroducing bison to the Reserve? Kyran Kunkel: We have GPS collars on bison. The collars…

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Happy Rattlesnake Friday! Here’s lookin’ at you kid! Gotta love a field find like this rattlesnake in our herp photo of the day uploaded by kingsnake.com user sluggo781 . Be sure to tell them you liked it here!

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photo by Grant Adams
Grant Adams will always have a little something extra to remember his time in the Peace Corp. Adams, a recent graduate in biology from Denison University was just hoping to find some scientific task to keep his resume up to date. He sent an e-mail to a mailing list for ecologists, offering to collect data for them during his two-year stint in the Andes. He heard back from Tiffany Doan, a biologist from the University of Central Florida who asked him to collect lizards instead.

“I had no interest in lizards or snakes at all, but it sounded like something fun I could do,” “It’s going to be one of those lifelong stories, discovering a species,” “I’ll always carry that with me.” – Grant Adams

It wasn’t long before they had their lizard, a species Doan had never seen before, and it quickly became obvious that the lizard had never been formally described. Doan’s studies formalized the lizard in the literature as Euspondylus paxcorpus.

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By Herp News

Invasive species are great hitchhikers. They float in the ballast of ships, lurk in luggage, stick to unwashed sports gear, and cling to the soles of hiking boots. Scientists focus on stopping them from spreading because, once a new species gets rooted, it is expensive to manage and nearly impossible to remove. Shipping and industry are the major pathways for invasive species, but studies have also shown that tourists can spread them into protected wilderness. Most tourism studies have focused on local cases. Now, new research in the journal PLOS ONE has explored the global ties between tourists and invasive species for the first time. The analysis showed that non-native species are significantly more common and more diverse in high-tourism areas worldwide, said Dr. Lucy G. Anderson, who led the study as a PhD researcher at the University of Leeds in West Yorkshire, U.K. “We know that cargo ships [and other] commercial pathways are really an important vector for invasive species,” Anderson told Mongabay. “People have said ‘and tourism,’ but when you look back through the references and studies no one’s really tried to quantify that.” She and a team of colleagues dug through the literature, compiling almost 5,000 studies that linked tourism to non-native species. They hoped to “take lots of experimental examples and see if there’s a pattern across the board,” Anderson explained. This map shows the locations of the 32 studies of invasive species included in Anderson’s worldwide analysis. Green dots represent research…

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Juan Santamaría International Airport. Photo by Freestylerob [dropcap]E[/dropcap]ach year millions of travelers stream through the gates of Costa Rica’s Juan Santamaría airport in route to one of the country’s many natural wonders. But often when tourists leave, a piece of the country’s biodiversity goes with them. Turtle shell bracelets, reptile-skin wallets, bird feathers and even live animals have all been snuck out of Costa Rica through the airport as souvenirs. But the uneducated tourist is just the tip of the illegal wildlife trafficking iceberg. Professional smugglers slip unknown amounts of wildlife out in passenger planes at Costa Rica’s main airport, and exporters are known to sneak illegal wildlife into legitimate commercial shipments. Wildlife traffickers of either type are rarely caught, and when a seizure is made, penalties are low. Security at the San José airport relies on x-ray machines and body searches to uncover whatever wildlife may be secreted away in suitcases, while customs officials are saddled with the enormous tasks of distinguishing souvenirs from contraband, and legal wildlife exports from fraudulent ones. In both cases, there is plenty of room for illegally transported wildlife to slip through the cracks. “Customs officials aren’t experts in particular species of animals,” explained Benito Coghi, the director of Costa Rican customs. “We know things slip through, we just don’t know the full extent.” The smugglers who get caught Last September, German tourist Maciej Oskroba headed for the check out counter at Juan Santamaría Airport carrying a bag full of dirty t-shirts, swim trunks…

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Although not common, red phase brown anoles are well documented in Florida populations.
This pretty little female brown anole visited our back deck yesterday. She caught the eye of an amorous male brown anole of normal color. As far as aberrancies go, orange headed female and all orange male brown anoles are not particularly rare. And each time I see one I am reminded of the first one I ever saw. An adult male, it was in a terrarium at a reptile dealership and had just been sold to a well-known herpetoculturist for the whopping sum of several hundred dollars. Since then I have seen a dozen or so males and about 3 times that many orange-headed females in the wild. But I was recently told that a vendor at an east coast herp expo had a number of orange phase brown anoles that he was offering at exorbitant prices.

Build it and they will come. Offer it and they will buy. And then there was P.T.Barnum’s supposed statement, but I won’t go there!

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A True Giant. This Komodo Dragon takes center stage in our Herp Photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user cowboyfromhell s! Be sure to tell them you liked it here!

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Tuatara Gallery photo with the late Rico Walder
The rare New Zealand Tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus) doesn’t have a penis but it may go a long way to help scientists understand phallic evolution.

Researchers at the University of Florida in Gainesville found that the tuatara develop tiny nubbins as an embryo but the development of these nubbins stalls and they never form into a proper penis. Nubbins represent an early trace of the phallic development process. This initial growth suggests the phallus developed only once throughout the evolution of mammals and reptiles, according to the UF researchers.

Their research indicates that the tuataras lost a phallus, indicating that the basic penis evolved only once.

Check out more at Wired.CO.UK
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By Herp News

Prionopelta xerosilva, named after the dry forests in which it exclusively lives in northwestern Madagascar. During a recently concluded study conducted over the last ten years, researchers from the California Academy of Sciences (CAS) working with the Madagascar Biodiversity Center (MBC) have discovered and described six new species of ants belonging to the genus Prionopelta. Commonly, known as ‘Dracula Ants’ for their unique feeding behavior, these new members of Prionopelta have been found to be tiny, ferocious social predators living within the subterranean, microscopic ecosystem of the forest floor soils in Madagascar. For much of the last decade, members of the MBC, led by entomologists Brian Fisher and Rick Overson from CAS conducted extensive sampling across Madagascar’s diverse habitat by sifting forest floor spoils to find the tiny, colorless ants. Malagasy scientists and trainees at the MBC assisted with the research and collected ants throughout the duration of the study as part of an ongoing effort to further understand, and educate others about, Malagasy biodiversity. P. laurae the smallest of the Malagasy Prionopelta, measuring around 1.5 mm in length and 0.2mm wide, is much smaller than the commonly known fruit fly, and skinner than many single-celled amoebae. Unique Sampling Method One of the main tools the team used for sample collection is the deceptively simple ‘Winkler’ trap. Organic material is gathered from the forest floor and suspended to dry in a special bag. As the organic material dries out, the natural behavior…

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A red morph specimen of Lehmann’s poison frog. Photo courtesy of Tesoros de Colombia. Lehmann’s poison frog (Oophaga lehmanni) is one of many beautiful frog species endemic to Colombia. It is has been subject to illegal trafficking for the wildlife pet trade, and is listed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN. Considered the “holy grail” by frog enthusiasts worldwide, this species used to be so common that it littered the ground in its native habitat. However, a German-led documentary, filmed in 2013, that aimed to find a red morph of Lehmann’s poison frog could only find a single one in a remote part of its range. The dire situation faced by this and other endangered poison frogs in the country prompted Colombian animal scientist Ivan Lozano-Ortega to start an organization with the objective of ending illegal frog smuggling and simultaneously satisfying the appetite of voracious frog collectors worldwide. After many years of negotiations the group, called Tesoros de Colombia (“Treasures of Colombia”), recently obtained the required permits from CITES and the Colombian government to legally export its captive-bred Lehmann’s poison frogs for the international hobbyist market. The first Tesoros de Colombia export – the yellow-striped poison frog. Photo courtesy of Commons Free Use Rights. Lozano-Ortega recently spoke to Mongabay about Tesoros de Colombia, which he started in 2006 with a team of other conservationists to realize his dream of saving Colombian poison frogs from extinction. Offering sustainable and legally sourced frogs is…

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The first-ever successful elimination of a fatal chytrid fungus in a wild amphibian has been revealed by scientists, marking a major breakthrough in the fight against the disease responsible for devastating amphibian populations worldwide.

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What a great Indigo field shot for our Herp Photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user ACO3124 ! Be sure to tell them you liked it here!

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Photographing herps takes practice
Photographing herps is an art form that takes many years to master. Even after many years of practice I can always find something wrong with the best pictures I have taken and, like all of you, I wish I could take better herp pictures. But I am still practicing and learning, and getting a little better each time.

A lot of photographers think you need to have the best this, or latest that, to capture that epic picture. I have a different approach than many herp photographers I see out there. No matter how nice your camera is, someone else has a better one. But it’s not the camera that makes the photograph, it’s just a tool. Even the cheapest digital cameras can take a killer picture if you learn how to use it properly and learn to work within its limitations. So my first two points for now are that even a cheap camera can capture a killer picture if you take time to learn how to use it, AND if you have the most expensive camera out there you will still find something wrong with the pictures you take and will be plagued with the desire to improve.

I will discuss herp photography more in future blogs, but in the meantime enjoy this shot I took of a Green Tree Frog, Hyla cinerea. And as you can see, even with this photo there is a lot of room for improvement, and it is important that you always see things that way when you review your own pictures! …read more
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It’s a sad sight no self-respecting reptile hobbyist wants to see. Three pet Boa constrictors, purposely frozen and then dumped along a rural road. Sheriff’s deputies in northern Wisconsin are investigating a reptile mistreatment case after the reptiles were found frozen in a tote box along a road near Irma.

The Lincoln County Humane Society says it appears no one wanted the snakes and chose to kill them by filling the tote with water and deliberately freezing them. Temperatures were well above freezing when the snakes were found this week.

With all the reptile rescues and education programs, as well as regular animal shelters, there is no need to euthanize healthy snakes in this manner. If you have a reptile you can no longer care for please make an effort to place them with a rescue organization. If you have to euthanize a sick or injured reptile, please do so humanely, and please dispose of the remains properly.

To read more, please visit Fox6Now.com

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By Herp News

Road construction crews in southeastern Nigeria have begun work on a six-lane, 260-kilometer “superhighway” in Cross River State, which Governor Ben Ayade argues will be an economic booster shot for the region. Opponents, however, worry about the effects it may have on the nearby Cross River National Park. The Oban division of Cross River National Park holds some 3,000 square kilometers of lowland rainforest. It’s a proposed UNESCO World Heritage Site and recognized as a biodiversity hotspot because of the many unique species there facing pressure from humans. Its slopes are home to important watersheds, and they hold rare and endangered animals such as forest elephants, leopards, and primates like drills and Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees. Cross River National Park is also contiguous with Korup National Park across the border in Cameroon. The rarely seen and critically endangered Cross River gorilla (Gorilla gorilla diehli), numbering perhaps 300, inhabits a separate section of the park. The Cross River gorilla is the world’s rarest gorilla subspecies. It is found only in the forests along the Cameroon-Nigeria border. Photo in the Public Domain. The superhighway’s path is slated to cut through the park’s buffer zone. This will likely encourage communities to pick up and move there in search of greater economic opportunities, says Odey Oyama, executive director of the Rainforest Resource and Development Centre based in Cross River State. Construction of the road could have a devastating impact on that section of the forest, Oyama told mongabay.com. “If that happens, you…

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By Herp News

With its furry face and adorable antics, the giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) attracts an equally giant wave of financial support. Zoos pay the Chinese government up to $1 million each year to host pairs of pandas, and conservation groups pour millions of dollars into protecting the species. Some see this effort to save the panda from extinction as a waste of precious money that could conservationists could use to help other species. But a study published recently in Conservation Biology suggests that shielding the giant panda’s habitat also benefits many other species found only in China. “What the Chinese government has done, over the last decade or so, is to very deliberately increase the area it has set aside for nature reserves,” said Stuart Pimm, a conservation biologist at Duke University and coauthor of the paper. “I think we were very pleasantly surprised by how effective the conservation was.” A giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) climbs a tree at the Bifengxia Giant Panda Breeding and Conservation Center in Sichuan, China. Photo by Binbin Li, Duke University Pimm and his colleague Binbin Li, also at Duke University, examined maps published by the IUCN showing the rough distributions of endemic mammals, birds, and amphibians – species found only in China. Such maps can be misleading, Pimm said, because they don’t always account for limiting factors like elevation or actual availability of habitat. So he and Li trimmed the ranges of the species appropriately to create updated maps. Then they…

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By Herp News

Researchers have identified the fungal culprit behind an often deadly skin infection in snakes in the eastern US. The research shows that Ophidiomyces ophiodiicola is the definitive cause of snake fungal disease, which will help researchers pinpoint why it is emerging as a threat to snake populations and how its impacts can be mitigated.

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This hatching Beaded Lizard in our Herp Photo of the day, uploaded by kingsnake.com user Kevin Earley will probably break the internet with it’s cuteness! Be sure to tell them you liked it here!

Upload your own reptile and amphibian photos photos at gallery.kingsnake.com, and you could see them featured here! …read more
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A common liana snake en situ, Peruvian Amazon.
We had looked for years with no success for a common liana snake, Siphlophis cervinus, on the Amazonian (Peru) preserves that Patti and I regularly visited. We looked high and low, in trailside trees, in shrubs, and of course on lianas but to no avail. After all, this was known to be an arboreal, nocturnal, species so we scoured and rescoured leafed branches, bare branches. bromeliad cups, you name it. If it saw above ground level and reachable by us, we looked. So where did we find our first liana snake? It was crawling busily along atop fallen wet leaves in mid-trail a fair distance from any arboreal highways on Madre Selva Biological Preserve. About 20” long the slender snake was even prettier than it pix had led us to believe. Its busy pattern, a mosaic of yellow shades on black, orange highlights on black, and black reticulations on and orange vertebral line, was nothing short of spectacular.

But this first found terrestrial example has proven to be the exception. Although we still don’t consider this species common, since the first find we have averaged one Liana snake per trip. On one trip we were lucky enough to find 2.

But when compared to the dozens of calico snakes and rainbow boas we have happened across, the common liana snake has still proven far from a common find.

Continue reading “Lots of Lianas but just a few Liana Snakes” …read more
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The owner of a king cobra that went AWOL for over a month in Orlando Florida is appealing a ruling that he should no longer be able to own venomous snakes.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has ordered to revoke the “sanctuary status” of the facility, which the commission said was applied in error. The escaped king cobra, Ophiophagus hannah, went missing in early September and was not found until a month later when it turned up in a neighbor’s laundry room under a dryer.

The new details came one day after the State Attorney’s Office said the owner would be charged with three counts in connection with the venomous snake’s escape. He is charged with holding wildlife in an improper manner that caused it to escape, not maintaining proper housing and failing to report the escape immediately.

For more read the full story at UPI.COM
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By Herp News

The endangered Hyacinth Macaw is highly coveted by traffickers and collectors. Photo by Juliana M Ferreira. [dropcap]W[/dropcap]ildlife trafficking transit chains in Latin America are complex, secret, and as varied as the many common and threatened animal species targeted. After poachers illegally pluck wildlife from their habitats, the animals are passed on to middlemen, who move them along clandestine routes before selling them to anonymous consumers at home or abroad. Traffickers involved in the international trade frequently smuggle contraband across poorly secured borders into neighboring countries that lack strong trafficking laws, with the animals, or animal parts, shipped overseas from there. Routes and smuggling techniques shift regularly as traffickers play a cat-and-mouse game with enforcers. When one method is discovered by customs officials — such as sewing tiny tropical parakeets into a garment worn on a plane — smugglers contrive another to move their illegal cargo — maybe using a “mule” or local person to claim a valuable monkey as a “beloved pet” as a means of moving it across a border and into the lucrative pet trade. A parrot vendor offers the camera a big smile. Many local market dealers don’t see wildlife trafficking as wrong, and local authorities seem to agree; police often stroll through markets without making any arrests of illegal traffickers. Photo by The Photographer made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication Comprehensive data on the illegal wildlife trade in Central and South America…

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The US Department of the Interior says the Delmarva Peninsula fox squirrel, one of the first species listed as endangered in the US nearly fifty years ago, is no longer at risk of going extinct. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), which worked together with states and landowners on conservation efforts to protect the species, will officially remove the squirrel from the list of Threatened and Endangered Wildlife under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) next month, according to a statement. The Delmarva fox squirrel (Sciurus niger cinereus) joins more than 30 other species that have been de-listed under the ESA after their populations recovered, including the bald eagle, American alligator and peregrine falcon. The ESA has been so successful in conserving imperiled wildlife, the FWS said, that it has prevented the loss of nearly every species that has been listed as threatened or endangered since 1973. The largest of all the tree squirrels, the Delmarva fox squirrel has silver to whitish-gray fur, an unusually fluffy tail and white belly. It is twice the size of the common gray squirrel. Mature adults can be as big as 30 inches — half of that being tail — and weigh up to 3 pounds. Delmarva Fox Squirrel. Photo by Guy Willey. Historically, the fox squirrel lived throughout the Delmarva Peninsula, formed by portions of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. Habitat loss due to logging of forests for agriculture and short-rotation timber production as well as over-hunting at the turn…

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