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.
Tuesday, March 31 2015
 There are many snake lovers all over the world who love pythons and boas, and since I've been writing for kingsnake.com, many of them have contacted me to ask that I write about Indian pythons and boas. So this post is for my python and boa-loving readers!
In India, you can find all kinds of snakes, from the smallest 20 cm worm snake to the largest reticulated pythons, from sea snakes to flying snakes.
India is home to three species of sand boa, and the common sand boa, Gongylophis conicus, is one I frequently encounter on rescue calls. The other two are the red sand boa (Eryx johnii) and the Whitaker’s sand boa (Eryx whitakeri), which is named after the renowned Indian herpetologist Romulus Whitaker.
The common sand boa is also called the rough-scaled sand boa because of its rough, scaled body. If you’re a touching a common sand boa’s tail you can get a feeling of rubbing a crocodile's back.
A common sand boa’s body is thick and fat. It has small, keeled scales on head, and the tail is short, blunt and rough. Eyes are small with vertical pupils, and nostrils are placed high on the head. Ventral scales are narrower than the width of the body. It is sand coloured or brown with darker brown blotches. The old time rescuers who did not have a book or Internet to refer to used to mistake it for a young Indian rock python or Russell’s viper.
Found in sandy areas, it prefers to live in crevices and burrows. A short-tempered snake, it coils and hides its head under its body when disturbed, and when provoked strikes with a jerky movement. Otherwise, it's a slow moving snake. 100 cm is the maximum length. Sand boas are viviparous by nature.
Once I had rescued a female adult sand boa snake and was carrying it in a snake sack to the releasing area . When I opened the sack to release this snake, I see to my surprise she had given birth to eight young ones! They were so cute and fat, as if they were working out in their mom’s womb. It was really a new and unforgettable experience.
One of the turtle species that Ron and I encountered on the Colima trip was a semi-aquatic creature of primarily terrestrial habits. Known as the Mexican spotted wood turtle, the subspecies we happened across was Rhinoclemmys rubida perixantha, the more northerly of the 2 known forms.
We encountered 3 of this (as we later learned) uncommon little chelonian. All of these little brown turtles seen were active at night in a flooded field just east of the city of Colima.
The most conspicuous things about these turtles were the intricate and busy head patterns of broad, dark edged, yellow bars and spots. Although the yellow head patterns precluded R. rubida being mistaken for R. pulcherrima, at 6 to 8 inches in length the former were also of smaller size.
Very little is yet known about the diet of the Mexican spotted wood turtle. It is thought that like others in the genus the species eats a good amount of vegetable matter and is an opportunist feeder on invertebrates. It is known that captives relish worms, caterpillars, and land dwelling molluscs.
Hopefully, as the Behler Center works with their group we will learn more about this beautiful and delightful turtle.
Continue reading "Bright spot: beautiful Mexican wood turtles"
Monday, March 30 2015
 The saw-scaled viper, Echis carinatus, is a venomous snake found in India and the smallest member of the Indian "Big Four" deadly snakes of India.
This pygmy snake is one of the fastest-striking snakes in the world, and definitely the fastest striking one in India. The thing I like best about this tiny creature is that when the saw-scaled viper is disturbed, it coils and rubs its saw-like scales together to make a noise like a wood-saw.
They are hemotoxic by nature as they are from viper family.
Another species of saw-scaled viper found in India is the Sochurek’s saw-scaled viper, Echis carinatus Sochureki, which is found in some western and central parts of India.
The saw-scaled viper's body is pale brown with a white-bordered zig zag pattern. The body is white underneath with tiny brown spots. Small scales are present on head, and a white or pale brown spear mark on top.
The eyes are large golden with vertical black pupils, and the body is rounded and has scales with saw-like keels. The tail is short.
Saw-scaled vipers are commonly seen in coastal areas and they are found under boulders and thorny bushes. Though nocturnal, they may be seen basking in the morning. They feed on scorpions, centipedes, and geckos. Viviparous by nature, they give birth to 4-8 young ones.
Usually there are few saw-scaled vipers in my area, but whenever I find one while herping, I am eager to hear the wood-saw noise. I find these tiny creatures very beautiful and attractive, but I always avoid bare-hand handling them.
Thursday, March 26 2015
In his little Austin Healey Sprite, Ron and I zipped across the border in Brownsville, Texas heading into Mexico's interior. We had no idea where we were going or where we would stop. We were young, had enough time and hoped we had sufficient dinero to get us to wherever and back home again. We did. Barely.
As it turned out we encountered torrential rains in the Pacific Coast state of Colima, and with the rains there were herps--herps of kinds we had never seen before in the wild, and many that neither of us had seen anywhere.
The rain flooded low lying fields and now treefrogs of a half dozen species were vocalizing. Mexican wood turtles walked the wet roadsides and swam across larger flooded areas. Lyre snakes, parrot snakes, and our hands down favorite - brown vine snakes - were crossing or sitting quietly on the highway. We were surprised that the latter were active as they are considered diurnal species with poor night vision but it seemed probable that the heavy rains prompted divergence from the norm.
Although Ron and I were known for unplanned trips, this one was by far the longest yet (a longer trip, it too, unplanned, to southern Chiapas was to come later). This multi-thousand mile trip for 2 adults in a 2-seat Sprite from Tampa to coastal southern Colima was more than just a bit crowded. But now, 50 years later, I still look back on with fond memories.
Continue reading "Somewhere and back again"
Wednesday, March 25 2015
 The common krait, Bungarus caeruleus, is a venomous snake found in India -- one of the four deadliest snakes of India known as "The Indian Big Four."
The krait is also included in the top five deadliest of the world, in part because of its silent killing ability. When a person is bitten by a krait, he or she won't feel pain because of the small-sized fangs; the bite pain is like a mosquito bite.
The common krait is a nocturnal snake; the kraits I rescued have all been rescued after 8 PM. It's difficult to find a snake during daytime rescue calls.
India is home to six or seven species of krait, and they're and also common in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and many other Asian countries. The bite rate for the common krait is lower in India as compared to cobras and Russells vipers because kraits are very shy by nature and usually do not bite. That is the reason I love them.
Kraits have smooth bodies and glossy scales; they are blue or black in color and sometimes dark brown. There are single or paired thin white bands on the shiny black body, which makes them more beautiful and is the reason I use the 'Black Beauty' to describe a common krait.
The ventral part is white and sometimes yellowish. They feed on snakes mostly and sometimes even other kraits. Occasionally they eat mice, frogs, and lizards. The average length of krait is 100-120 cms and the maximum length is 175 cms.
There are many controversies related to krait bite deaths in India. Often when people are bitten by a krait, it's night time and they don't realize it. And the symptoms of krait bite are not at all predictable. The symptoms might take 6 hours or even 48 hours to start. The symptoms have seven or eight stages leading up to death. The deadliest symptom is paralysis; the bite victim is not even able to move his or her fingertips. There have been cases where the victims were declared dead by doctors in the paralyzed condition.
Keeping the deadly part apart, I always loved kraits because they attacked me very rarely on rescue calls and always make my rescuing task easy.
Tuesday, March 24 2015
We spent only a few minutes flipping fallen palm fronds that lay on a grassy slope between a busy highway and a saltmarsh before we found the first of the several hatchling-sized ornate diamond-backed terrapins, Malaclemys terrapin macrospilota, we were to find that day.
After seeing several of the turtle babies while he searched the area for kingsnakes, Billy pointed out this tract of roadside habitat to us and, sure enough, the turtles were here. All were beneath the fallen fronds and all were at least partially dug into the sandy substrate.
Although it had probably been several weeks since they had hatched, all that we found during our search were still of hatchling size, and all but 1 or 2 were quietly tucked in, legs and neck withdrawn, eyes tightly closed. Since we still had weeks of warm weather ahead of us, it seemed strange that so many babies were this quiescent.
But compared to Mother Nature, what do we know?
The ornate is the subspecies of diamond-backed terrapin that is found along most of Florida's Gulf Coast. It ranges from the northern Keys to Okaloosa County on the panhandle. Of the many subspecies, the ornate is most consistently the prettiest having a black flecked light gray head and usually an orange center to each carapacial scute. Hatchlings are particularly pretty and usually have very prominent vertebral tubercles.
Do not expect to see diamond-backs in freshwater habitats. They are restricted to salt and brackish waters.
Continue reading "Letting sleeping terrapins lie"
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