You don't normally think Burmese pythons when you hear about therapy animals helping kids, but that's just what they're doing at Nova’s Ark in Brooklin, Ont.



Read about it here.

Photo: MSN Canada

Now, see, this is what we mean when we say "decent media reporting about snakes where the reporter actually takes a few minutes to do his or her job," which is something we don't get to say much.

Sadly.

So thank you, Brian Hicks, of the Post and Courier, for pointing out that the media frenzy over the Gaboon viper threatening a small South Carolina town is probably based on... absolutely nothing.

Read it here.

Photo: Wikicommons, released to public domain

Check out this video "Boa on a stroll," submitted by kingsnake.com user Minuet.
Submit your own reptile & amphibian videos at http://www.kingsnake.com/video/ and you could see them featured here or check out all the videos submitted by other users!

Nothing must ever happen in South Carolina, given the insane levels of hype over a supposed stray Gaboon viper roaming its streets. So with all that free time and dearth of current events to report on, you'd think the media could, you know... investigate? Or maybe just hit Wikipedia? Anything other than what they've been doing.

From the Charleston Post Courier:

Michelle Reid, of Animal Rescue and Relief, removed the traps and gear Monday after learning that the nearest any antivenin can be found is Africa, and the antivenin can't be brought to the United States until the Federal Food and Drug Administration approves it. She is trying to get that approval.

We thought this seemed implausible, so we checked with Jim Harrison over at the Kentucky Reptile Zoo. This is what he had to say:

Unfortunately, the media did no research on the subject. At the very least, two facilities carry South Africa polyvalent antivenin . They are Riverbanks Zoo and Alligator Adventure. We at Kentucky Reptile Zoo have over 30 vials at the moment of the antivenin. Further more, their experts are lacking as well with their information on trapping as well as the natural history of the Gaboon. It appears they may have spent their time watching Animal Planet rather than researching the real husbandry of the the species.

There's a few facts for you, South Carolina media. You're welcome.

Photo: Wikicommons, released to public domain

Venom from Australian snakes is helping save human lives. Seriously ill patients are benefiting from shorter turnaround time on critical blood tests, thanks to the coastal taipan (Oxyuranus scutellatus) and the Eastern brown snake (Pseudonaja textilis).

From ABC Australia:

The bites of eastern brown snakes and coastal taipans are dangerous because their venom causes a victim's blood to coagulate.

Researchers at the University of Queensland have pioneered a way to use snake venom to speed up the processing of blood tests of patients who have been given anti-coagulants.

Dr Goce Dimeski says tubes infused with snake venom are producing faster and more accurate results.

"From a clinical perspective, results will be available in a shorter time," he said.

"There's a potential to decrease the length of stay for patients, increase patient throughput and in the end could lead to saving lives."

Read more...

Photo: Denise Chan/Used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

A fire in a Savannah Reptiles Planet warehouse in France killed between 20,000 and 30,000 reptiles and another animals.



From Prensa Latina:

The flames destroyed around 4,000 square meters of the facility and killed a large number of snakes, iguanas, chameleons, lizards, amphibians, rabbits, rats, and insects.

Only eight turtles, between 60 and 100 kilograms, were saved, when rescuers poured water on their shells.

Read more...

Image: France TV

There's a pretty flipping cool photo spread of crocs in nature in the UK's Metro. See it here.



You're welcome.

Check out this video "Bearded Dragon VS Superworms," submitted by kingsnake.com user Minuet.
Submit your own reptile & amphibian videos at http://www.kingsnake.com/video/ and you could see them featured here or check out all the videos submitted by other users!

We've heard of snow days... but snake days?

A high school in Kyrgyzstan was closed down after they found at least 30 snakes in the building every day this spring. No ID was made of the types of snake, but media speculation has ranged all over the place, including the Caspian cobra, Naja oxiana.



Read more...

Photo: Omid Mozaffari, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

What if there was a disease that killed or crippled hundreds of thousands of people every year, but no one seemed to care?

It's not a disease, but as Dr. Matthew Lewin wrote in the New York Times Sunday Review last weekend, snakebites kill 94,000 people and cripple 400,000, mostly in impoverished parts of the world.



So where are the telethons, the philanthropic dollars? Where are new developments other than costly, mostly unavailable anitvenin? How about drugs, or a snakebite EpiPen?

Find out...

Photo: Naja annulifera by kingsnake.com user Neverscared

Did you hear the one about the man who got out of his car to get a closer look at an alligator... and got bitten by a water moccasin?



No, it's not a joke. It's a true story from WTSP in Tampa. Read it here.

Some people in a Mississippi town might have had turtle soup on their minds when they rescued a huge snapping turtle from a storm drain, but they quickly changed their minds and decided to save him, instead.



Read the story at KPTV.com.

Are poachers stealing and selling the golden lancehead pit viper (Bothrops insularis) from an island off the coast of Brazil?



That was the topic of last night's Nightline Prime:

One poisonous bite from the Golden Lancehead pit viper is enough to kill a grown man within a few hours. It’s fast-acting venom will burn through flesh and cause its victim to bleed to death.

Rogerio Zacariotti, a researcher with the Cruzeiro Do Sul University in Brazil, travels to “Snake Island” regularly to monitor the Gloden Lancehead population. He is convinced poachers are stealing the snakes from the island and selling them on the black market.

Zacariotti allowed "Nightline Prime" to accompany him and his team on one of his research trips to "Snake Island," where ABC’s Dan Harris had some too-close encounters with the deadly snakes.

Read more and watch the video...

Check out this video "Elvis the croaking frog," submitted by kingsnake.com user Minuet.
Submit your own reptile & amphibian videos at http://www.kingsnake.com/video/ and you could see them featured here or check out all the videos submitted by other users!

Will the 'family fun' that is the Sweetwater Rattlesnake Round-Up in Sweetwater, Texas, ever be stopped?

From CNN:

The Jaycees, short for the U.S. Junior Chamber, bills itself as a group that gives young people "the tools they need to build the bridges of success." The Sweetwater branch has been holding what it calls "The World's Largest Rattlesnake Round-Up" for 56 years on the first weekend in March, and the tool for success that it teaches young people is that it's fun to kill and torture animals.

For weeks or even months, rattlesnakes are stored in crowded barrels until it's roundup time. The snakes that have not suffocated under their kin arrive hungry, dehydrated, and sick from gasoline that was sprayed into their burrows to flush them out.

After a tour of the roundup, Michael Smith wrote an article for "Cross Timbers Herpetologist" in which he recalls noticing "...an unusual smell ... like bad cologne and also like something gone bad." Throughout the tour the smell keeps coming back to him, he writes, until he realizes what it is: "...the musk, feces, and blood of a thousand terrified snakes, half-covered with sprays of deodorant from Jaycees working the pits."

Read more...