Over the past six months, scientists have collected 12 snakes and milked them of their venom. The snakes have been stored in a fluid preservative.

The snakes belong to the tiger snake lineage of species, with variants including two species of copperhead snake, a white-lipped snake and a small-eyed snake.

The venom library will progressively add other species, such as blue-ringed octopus, spiders, scorpions, platypus – which has a venomous spur - and other snakes. It will be the first facility in Australia to have a dedicated storage of venom along with full tissue samples of the animal the poison has been extracted from.

School officials say a boa constrictor disappeared from its cage at the Jeffords Center over the weekend. Students had a snow day Monday. On Tuesday, the professor who owns the snake discovered it was gone.

"I didn't know there was a snake on campus before now, it's kind of scary," said Justin Goulet, a sophomore.

The Castleton Community received an email this week alerting them that the 4-foot long rainbow boa was "thought to [have been] stolen from a lab."

"Based on what we've seen so far we tend to think it's been taken based on the snake's usual habits," said Dikeman. "It tended to be shy and timid, and doesn't like to be outside of a warm tropical environment."

Sunshine Coast snake catcher Stuart McKenzie said while carpet pythons are common across the north coast he’s never come across one dining out.

Mr McKenzie said the python was as big as they come.

“This is one of the bigger ones I’ve come across as a snake catcher,” he said.

“A lot of the time as snake catchers we’ll get to the property and the chicken or the guinea pig will already be in its belly, so it’s pretty awesome to see it halfway through.”

Given that all of these animals died within a tail's length of one another, it's likely that the adult was caring for the young, they said.

"Although it is possible that the individuals were all swept together during or soon after the event that killed them, it is [felt] that this specimen more likely represents an instance of postnatal parental care," the researchers wrote in the study.

Parental care is seen in other animals, including crocodiles and birds, which lived during the time of the dinosaurs. For instance, crocodiles defend their young from predators, and birds protect and feed their young, the researchers said.

"The armor actually protected me and stopped the bite," Loxley said in a video posted online.

"I could feel the teeth on the plastic, scraping, but the armor actually stopped something," he said.

"So all those people that rag on the old stormtroopers, you know, 'the armor doesn't do this it, doesn't do that', it stopped a snake bite and probably saved my life today," he added.

The former soldier is walking around Australia dressed as a stormtrooper to raise $80,000 for the Monash Children's Hospital in his home city of Melbourne.

Frank Lundberg, a herpetologist, testified in support of the bill and was disappointed after it failed.

"It is a mistake to ever overestimate the ignorance of the Idaho Legislature," he said.

Idaho fourth grade classes study state symbols as part of Idaho history, and a fourth-grade teacher backed the bill as well.

But Rep. Ken Andrus, R-Lava Hot Springs, voted against the salamander after recalling being repulsed by them as a young boy.

"They were ugly, they were slimy, and they were creepy," he said. "And I've not gotten over that. So to elevate them to the status of being the state amphibian, I'm not there yet."

The snake can jump five metres and disappear in a trice, says wildlife biologist Bubesh Guptha who has spotted it near the temple town of Tirumala in the state of Andhra Pradesh.

Around three feet long and sporting big eyes and skin patterned in ash and olive green, he has spotted the same species twice in and around the same hills.

The mildly venomous tropical snake Chrysopelea taprobanica eats bats, lizards, geckos, smaller snake species, skirls and birds, reports Nature Asia.

Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife conservation biologist Susan Barnes called the failure to spot a single individual at 15 sites “moderately alarming.”

“It’s clear that there are not a lot of turtles out there, but it will take more years of data to understand what’s happening with local western pond turtles and why,” said Barnes, who oversaw the survey.

Pond turtle populations have declined throughout their West Coast range for a number of reasons, including destruction of their wetland habitat, conflict with invasive species and a recently discovered shell disease.