Reptile & Amphibian News Blog
Keep up with news and features of interest to the reptile and amphibian community on the kingsnake.com blog. We cover breaking stories from the mainstream and scientific media, user-submitted photos and videos, and feature articles and photos by Jeff Barringer, Richard Bartlett, and other herpetologists and herpetoculturists.
Wednesday, September 22 2010
 The Portland Opera house has a new star: an Albino Boa Constrictor.
From Oregon Live:
It's a beautiful spectacle, graceful and calm. Not that (dancer Pamela) James really has any choice in the matter. She says she quickly noticed that Sunshine, the snake, gets nervous when the dancer moves up and down too quickly. Not thinking it a terribly good idea to make a boa constrictor nervous, James decided to pattern her dance on the snake's twisting movements.
"We're partners: she leads, I follow," says James, describing the relationship with the 20 pounds of muscle wrapped around her neck.
The scene in which she dances is written as one of the dramatic highlights of the entire work. It's a big responsibility for a young performer, one that's made both easier and harder by executing it in tandem with a predatory reptile.
It is glorious to see others appreciating the beauty we take for granted daily in our collections. Check out the opera if you are local to Portland and let us know what you think.
Tuesday, September 21 2010
 False teeth and Tuatara might seem like an odd combination, but research into the New Zealand reptile's teeth is going to benefit human denture wearers.
That's because Tuatara have teeth fixed to their jawbone rather than fixed to pockets with ligaments, like humans do. This research will give insight into how wearing dentures affects the muscles, ligaments and joints of the jaw of those who wear them. From Phsyorg.com:
The team has created a 3-D computer model of the skull of the tuatara to investigate the feedback that occurs between the jaw joints and muscles in a creature that lacks periodontal ligaments.
"Tuatara live happily for over 60 years in the wild without replacing their teeth because they have the ability to unconsciously measure the forces in their jaw joint and adjust the strength of the jaw muscle contractions accordingly", said Dr Curtis.
Although this explains why tuatara and people with false teeth manage not to break their teeth and don't end up with jaw joint disorders, it is still clear that having a periodontal ligament is very useful, in particular for fine tuning chewing movements. This may explain why it has evolved independently in the ancestors of mammals, crocodiles, dinosaurs, and even some fish.
To read the full article, click here.
Monday, September 20 2010
 The fossilized skeleton of Clarisse, a 50 million-year-old snake fossil from Wyoming, recently shared a lot with the medical community. The entire chunk of limestone that Clarisse is preserved in underwent a procedure at the United Methodist Hospital in Houston, intended to examine the evolutionary shift of eating small bites and swallowing whole prey is one of the primary interests of scientists.
aher, professor and curator of the collections of herpetology and paleontology at the Museu de Zoologia of the Universidade de São Paulo in Brazil, worked with the Museum of Natural Science in Houston to get Clarisse to Methodist for the scan. He believes Clarisse could be an evolutionary link between snakes who take a lot of small bites to eat their prey and snakes who swallow their prey whole.
....
Clarisse is the best preserved Caenozoic snake known in a U.S. scientific collection. According to preliminary analysis, this snake is believed to be closely related to Boavus indelmani, a booid snake described in the late 1930s. Zaher and the Houston museum hoped that getting a look at the underside of this unique fossil, as well as the inside of bones like the skull would shed some light on the evolutionary history of the species, and its relationship to booid snakes (like pythons and boas).
To read the full article at Science Daily, click here.
Sunday, September 19 2010
 Two rare species of iguanas get a second lease on life, one in captivity and one in the wild.
First up, a stowaway Yucatan Spiny Tail Iguana (Ctenosaura defensor) gets new digs at the Detroit Zoo. From Freep.com:
The foot-long rare reptile called a Yucatán spiny-tailed iguana was spotted scooting across a loading dock July 29 at Ford Motor's Van Dyke Transmission Plant in Sterling Heights, zoo spokeswoman Patricia Janeway said.
"This is a unique and rare rescue situation," Detroit Zoo curator of reptiles Jeff Jundt said.
The species is found only in a small area of the Yucatán Peninsula, in a section of 1,200 square miles -- about twice the size of Oakland County, Janeway said.
A notice on the Detroit Zoo website updates us that the iguana will be moving to the Black Iguana cage in fall after his quarantine process.
Continue reading "Herp Report: Second chance for two endangered iguanas"
 In a story that thankfully occurred in the correct place, the Sun Coast Titans have a rookie to thank for saving the day.
From The Sydney Morning Herald:
Training on an outside field near their home ground of Skilled Park, the snake had woken from its winter slumber and slithered through the adjacent bushland to get a closer look at training.
It had settled itself in near a walking path before the fearless Ridge picked it up by the tail and relocated it 30m down beside a nearby creek.
The Titans players gathered around as Ridge expertly handled the curious reptile, with Preston Campbell among those who appreciated his exploits with the potentially dangerous creature.
While some of the other players admitted to a phobia of snakes, they praised Ben on his bravery. Let's just hope for his luck, he plays as well as he wrangles venomous snakes.
Continue reading "Herp Report: Close encounters of the natural kind"
Friday, September 17 2010
 The reptile community hates them, but "snake sit-ins" are all the rage these days. "The Guiness Book of World Records" gave the fad the smack-down it deserves, however:
From AOL News:
Wilcox... said Guinness wants to discourage future attempts like this.
"Snakes are solitary animals, and we've been advised to not encourage Guinness World Records record attempts where they are forced to live together for long periods of time as there is a possibility of opportunistic cannibalism depending on the species," she said. "Our animal expert has also advised against exposing such animals to human presence for long periods of time."
Jones said that Guinness told him they haven't acknowledged any previous sit-ins and have no interest in adding the category.
The only snake-related record they accept is "most snakes in a bathtub with a person." Hey, a two for one -- Guiness and the Darwin Award with one stupid stunt!
Thursday, September 16 2010
 Haitian and Dominicans are bonding together to save the highly endangered Ricord's Iguana and a youth group is leading the process.
From Dominican Today:
Institutions from both countries also participate in the effort, headed by a group Haitians of the Anse-a-Pitre Active Youngsters Organization (OJAA), whose main goal is to monitor and protect the Haitian area where the iguanas (Leza Rico in Creole) live and nest.
The group’s efforts have already bore fruit with a proposal to declare the zone "communal protected area" and managed to halt some activities such as the extraction of sand that threatened to ruin the potential reserve.
Having just spent time seeing the San Diego Zoos work with the conservation efforts, I am extremely excited. Outreach in countries can be hard and getting folks involved can be even harder. The International Reptile Conservation Foundation (IRCF), one of the charities kingsnake.com has supported for years, also has put work into saving the Ricord's. To learn more about the IRCF's efforts click here. Photo of the Ricord's taken from the IRCF page.
 There is much to be said about the high cost of California real estate, but you won't hear much complaining from the Galapagos tortoises in San Diego who just moved into new $1 million digs at the zoo.
To show off their new enclosure, the tortoises and the San Diego Zoo are hosting four days of REPTILEMANIA, a hands on experience with the cold and slithery, starting today and ending Sunday.
The Los Angeles Times has a great write up on the Zoo's tortoises on their web site today, with a lot of cool background material on the individual tortoises, their backgrounds, history, and personality traits.
Abbot (No. 25) is known for a stubborn streak, sometimes refusing to move even for a carrot or other leafy vegetable. The same is true with Madeline (No. 5), although she will sometimes fall in line when she sees other females being cooperative.
Chips (No. 9) seems the most playful and Emerson (No. 30) the most aggressive. Winston (No. 2B) sometimes blocks the door to the tortoise "bedroom" until he gets fed.
As for connubial activity, Gramma (No. 4), thought to be between 120 and 130 years old, is the most accommodating of the females. Augustus (No. 7) is considered the most lusty of the males, but given the right mood and setting, all the males will seek out a female or two.<
It would be fair to say that these tortoises have welcomed millions of visitors to the zoo over the years. I've met the zoo's tortoises three times myself, but would love to get the opportunity to check them out again.
Wednesday, September 15 2010
 It isn't every day that a reptile show will make TMZ, but when Leo is spotted, you know someone will get it there!
The article posted today on the TMZ website has an accompanying video in which Leo (that's Leonardo DiCaprio for those confused) was spotted buying an African Spur Thigh Tortoise from Prehistoric Pets Booth.
From TMZ:
Sources close to the actor tell TMZ, Leo picked up the 10-year-old Sulcata tortoise at the North American Reptile Breeders Conference and Trade Show in Anaheim, CA over the weekend -- which he attended with fellow "Inception" star Lukas Haas -- and get this ... the animal can live to be 80 years old!
Too bad I was already on a plane and headed home.
Welcome to the "new" kingsnake.com!
In 1997 when I started kingsnake.com (pictured right) , I never imagined that 13 years later we would still be here and that the site would have grown so huge. And technologies that were just dreams then, like web video, web-connected cell phones and iPads, are not only reality but commonplace today.
In 1997 we were happy to have pictures and colors, having just stepped up from HTML 1.0 which didn't allow for either.
Forums, classifieds, photo galleries, chat, video; we have added a lot to site over the years, so much in fact that the site was getting tough to navigate. Today we have relaunched kingsnake.com with an easier-to-navigate user interface.
But this is more than just a facelift, because we're also launching two huge new features.
Community Blog - You are reading this on kingsnake.com's brand new community blog. It allows any of our registered site users to start their own reptile or amphibian-oriented blog. Share your experiences, your pets, your politics and more!
Connect - kingsnake.com's Connect is a beta project being developed to let the herp community stay in touch with their friends and fellow hobbyists, keep each other up to date on legislative issues as they develop, and to build and strengthen the herp community network. Registered users of kingsnake.com can use it to share photos, links, information, alerts, updates and more.
Please bear in mind that Connect is a beta project and may need to be taken offline for updates from time to time. We have created a Connect forum to post questions, get answers, report bugs, and request features.
Our staff has worked hard over the last few months to bring these projects forward and we hope you enjoy the fruit of their efforts.
Check out some more pages from kingsnake.com's history after the jump.
Continue reading "Welcome to the 'new' kingsnake.com"
Monday, September 13 2010
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Mon, September 13 2010 at 16:57
I was flying back to Milwaukee Sunday, but kingsnake.com BFF Desiree Wong went to the show again and took another load of photos! Although she left before the Leo sighting (Leonardo Di Caprio attending the show just before close), she got some cool shots. And as always, many more photos to be found after the bump.
Saucy baby Red Foot Tortoise from Tortoise Supply:
Continue reading "NARBC: Sunday photo-palooza"
Sunday, September 12 2010
Saturday night at the shows is auction night, and NARBC 2010 is no exception.
This year's auction proceeds went to two organizations working on legislative issues, PIJAC and USARK. Brian Potter was the ringmaster as always, and made it a fun evening. If you ever attend NARBC, please be prepared: this is NOT a family auction.
Brian and Bob, NARBC masterminds, are first up:
As always more photos after the bump!
Continue reading "NARBC: The auction"
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