Scientific American has the top ten weird animal stories of 2013, including this amphibious tale:

For Emei moustache toads, a top-quality moustache is an essential, and violent, weapon … During the breeding season, each male grows 10 to 16 spines. "They are as sharp as a pencil lead" says Cameron Hudson of the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, adding that the frogs "do try to stab you a bit when you pick them up".

The males fought underwater, head-butting each other in the belly to drive their spines into the other toad's flesh. "I've never seen any of them kill each other," says Hudson. "But they get a lot of puncture wounds."

Watch the video below, then see the rest of the top ten here.

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Birds do it. Crocodiles do it. Dinosaurs did it. And now it looks like monitor lizards are in the one-way, flow-through breathing club, too. That's the word from researcher Emma Schachner in a recently-published article in the prestigious journal Nature.



From the awesome Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week blog:

After 1972, biologists had almost four decades to get used to the idea that birds had this amazing miraculous lung thingy that was unique in the animal kingdom. Then in 2010, Colleen Farmer and Kent Sanders of the University of Utah blew our collective minds by demonstrating that alligators have unidirectional flow-through lungs, too. That means that far from being a birds-only thing, unidirectional flow-through lung ventilation was probably primitive for Archosauria, and was therefore the default state for non-avian dinosaurs, pterosaurs, the other ornithodirans and the hordes of croc-line archosaurs.

The birdy-ness of crocodilian lungs was further cemented earlier this year when Schachner et al. described the lung morphology and airflow patterns in Nile crocs, which have lungs that are if anything even more birdlike than those of gators. I got to review that paper and blogged about it here.

Now…well, you read the headline. Monitor lizards have unidirectional airflow through their lungs, too. This falls at about the halfway point between "whatisthisIdonteven"–I mean, dude, unidirectional airflow in friggin’ lizards!–and “yeah, that makes a weird sort of sense”. Because to sum up a lot of science unscientifically, monitors just kick a little more ass than other squamates. They have crazy high aerobic capacities for animals that aren’t birds or mammals, they’re ecologically versatile and geographically widespread, they get waaay bigger than any other extant lizards (Komodo dragons) and until recently got even bigger than that (Megalania). Is it going too far to link the success of varanids with their totally pimpin’ flow-through lungs? Maybe, maybe not. But it seems like fertile ground for further study.

Read the full story here.

Photo: Emma Schachner

From Scientific American, an amazing overview of how male veiled chameleons display aggression, including turning their bodies into billboards and, of course, changing colors.



Check out the video below, and then read about all the latest research into how color changes look to chameleon eyes here.



Photo: Russell Ligon/Scientific American

Thirteen-year-old Jackston Stone was born without feet, and suffered years of painful surgeries. Now he's walking on snake-like prosthetic legs, thanks to the Shriners of Salt Lake City.



From ABC News 4 Utah:

That new choice meant wearing two prosthetics legs, and Jackson wanted his to look like snakes.

"They're like me," Jackson Stone said.

"How's that?" Reporter Brian Carlson asked.

"I have no feet, they have no feet," he said.

Snakes are part family business. A tattoo artist created the design for Jackson's dream legs, but prosthetic maker couldn't do it.

"So they brought me the art work and it was on canvas which was too heavy for me to apply the prosthesis," said Eric Green, Prosthetist.

That's when Shriners stepped in.

"So I said ya know, I might be able to help," said William "Mr. Bill" Voorhies, Shriners of Salt Lake City.

William Voorhies contacted fellow Shriner Bob Shupe who runs a printing company. He put the design on surface that worked.

"Fortunately our company was able to take that need and develop it," said Bob Shupe, Past Potentate.

The prosthetic maker turned Jackson's snake legs into reality. He loves them, and his friends do too.

"They think it's really cool because a tattoo artist designed it and none of them can get tattoos," said Jackson Stone.

Read the rest here.

We all may love Bahamanian rock iguanas, but their digest tracts don't love how we show that affection.

From Scientific American:

Hop on over to the photo-sharing site Flickr and you’ll find dozens of photos and videos of people eagerly feeding grapes to hungry iguanas on the beaches of the Bahamas. It looks like great fun and the iguanas obviously go crazy for the fruit, which is usually fed to the lizards on the ends of long sticks. There’s just one problem with this activity: the food is making the iguanas sick. Health conditions arising from the grapes and other foods that iguanas do not normally eat in the wild include diarrhea, high blood sugar and cholesterol as well as lowered levels of potassium and a high level of parasitic infections. All of these problems “could have deleterious effects on long-term fitness and population stability,” according to Charles Knapp, director of conservation and research at Chicago’s John G. Shedd Aquarium and the lead author of a new study of the iguanas published last week in Conservation Physiology.

Read the rest here.

Photo: Chris Dixon. Used under Creative Commons license.

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Venom from the Southeast Asia pit viper (Deinagkistrodon acutus) may help stop human heart attacks and strokes.

From the Montreal Gazette report on the Canadian study:

Using venom milked from the snake, researchers filtered out all but one protein to create a drug called Anfibatide, which in human testing prevented blood clots from forming but didn't prolong bleeding as is the case with some clot-busting drugs.

"The concept that we can harness something potentially poisonous in nature and turn it into a beneficial therapy is very exciting," said Dr. Heyu Ni, a scientist at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto involved in the drug's development.

Anfibatide is designed to target a specific receptor on the surface of platelets in the blood that is instrumental in the formation of clots.

Read the rest here.

Photo: THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO - St. Michael's Hospital

Ever heard of Siats meekerorum? Our old dino friend T. rex did, and not in a good way.

Check out this video all about Siats, and why he's been dubbed a "man-eating monster."

Dead mice pumped full of poison are being dropped from planes onto Guam to kill brown tree snakes (Boiga irregularis).

From NBC News:

They floated down from the sky Sunday — 2,000 mice, wafting on tiny cardboard parachutes over Andersen Air Force Base in the U.S. territory of Guam.

But the rodent commandos didn't know they were on a mission: to help eradicate the brown tree snake, an invasive species that has caused millions of dollars in wildlife and commercial losses since it arrived a few decades ago.

That's because they were dead. And pumped full of painkillers.

The unlikely invasion was the fourth and biggest rodent air assault so far, part of an $8 million U.S. program approved in February to eradicate the snakes and save the exotic native birds that are their snack food.

Read the full story here.

Photo: kingsnake.com user Tereza

A robotic turtle, deveoped at the Tallinn University of Technology's Centre for Biorobotics, premiered at Robot Safari at the London Science Museum. The robot is intended to be used to investigate shipwrecks, but after that will probably take over the world.



Read all about it here.

Photo: Tallinn University of Technology

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New research into the Cerataphora lizard, an endangered agamid lizard from Sri Lanka, suggests that the animal uses its horns to communicate.

From National Geographic:

Ruchira Somaweera, a zoologist at the University of Sydney and principal investigator in the yearlong field study, which is funded by the National Geographic Society, said the data is still being analyzed, but the primary hypothesis is that the horns are used in communication within specific species.

Somaweera and his team focused mainly on the critically endangered leaf-nosed lizards (C. tennentii) and found that on these and on rhino horn lizards (C. stoddartii), the males of both species can move their horns slowly at a 45-degree angle while opening their mouths in a threat display.

This may aid in communication between males, he said.

Read more here.

Photo: National Geographic

Students at Wichita State University have found chytrid, a fungus deadly to frogs, in Kansas ponds and streams.

From the Wichita Eagle:

Students working with (biologist Mary Liz) Jameson in her Wichita State University field ecology class over the last three years have confirmed the fears of anyone in Kansas who likes frogs: They found an amphibian-killing fungus called chytrid in streams and ponds of Kansas.

They found it in several streams and ponds near Wichita, and in Wichita at Chisholm Creek Park, near 32nd Street North and Oliver. WSU released a statement earlier this year outlining the basics of what Jameson and her students found, including a warning from one of her graduate students, Timothy Eberl.

Eberl said in the news release that this has implications beyond the death of frogs.

Read the full story here.

Photo: Wichita State University

Malaysian authorities are pointing fingers at each other after a documentary, The Return of the Lizard King, alleged that Anson Wong was still active in the illegal wildlife trading business after a high-profile arrest and conviction in 2010.

Wong was orginally sentenced to five years for trafficking wildlife including endangered species like snow leopards, pandas, and rare reptiles, but his sentence was reduced to 17 months.

From the Star:

(Election strategist Dr.) Ong (Kian Ming) claimed that there was an obvious question of corruption within Perhilitan (Department of Wildlife and National Parks) as public records show that Wong and his wife, Cheah Bing Shee still owned companies involving in importing and exporting wildlife.

He said there was a need to see if there was anyone who was helping them obtain the permits, despite the Government's insistence that all of Wong and Cheah's licenses had been revoked.

"This affects Malaysia's reputation. Anson Wong could just be the tip of the iceberg. If Malaysia is identified as a possible transshipment hub for illegal wildlife activities, this will give us a bad reputation, " he warned.

Read more here.

Photo: The Star

A former Animal Planet personality admitted he sold endangered lizards in a federal court last week.

From NBC Los Angeles:

Donald Schultz, 35, the former host of "Wild Recon" on Animal Planet, pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court to violating the Endangered Species Act by offering to sell, and actually selling, two live desert monitor lizards (Varanus griseus) in interstate commerce, according to the U.S. District Attorney's Office.

Schultz admitted that on July 29, 2010, he sold the lizards to an undercover agent with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who was posing as a prospective buyer, and shipped the lizards from Los Angeles to Buffalo, New York.

Schultz told NBC4 that he kept the lizards as pets, but decided to sell them because he was moving.

"Someone contacted me and asked to buy them from me," said Schultz. "In retrospect, it was a stupid thing to do. I had no idea it was against the law."

Read the full story here.

Photo: US Attorney