Even a hint of Inclusion Body Disease (IBD) makes the skin of any boid keeper crawl. It is a certain death for not only the diagnosed snake but the rest of the animals in your home, because of the inability to properly diagnose and treat the condition. But thanks to Larry, a boa constrictor, that may change.

When a California woman named Taryn Hook brought Larry — all 7 feet (2 meters) of him — to the vet a few years ago, she never imagined that the trip would one day lead to such a remarkable discovery, which was announced today (Aug. 14) in the journal mBio.

IBD afflicts pythons and boa constrictors, causing a host of strange symptoms. The snakes tie themselves in knots, they projectile vomit and engage in an eerie behavior called stargazing; the snakes raise their heads over and over, stare into thin air, and sway drunkenly from side to side.

Biopsies from animals with the disease show their cells filled up with globules of proteins called inclusions, which may be responsible for the odd behaviors.

There's no cure for the disease. It moves swiftly in pythons, and can progress slowly in boa constrictors, but it is always fatal. And it's infectious, moving from snake to snake, though the mechanism of transmission isn't entirely clear. If one animal in a collection gets IBD, typically all the animals are euthanized.

Blood tests had suggested Larry, a Dumeril's boa constrictor, might have IBD. Wanting to know what could be done to save the beloved snake, Hook contacted Joseph DeRisi at the University of California, San Francisco, a virologist known for his work deciphering another mysterious virus, this one affecting macaws and parrots.

Her plea for help led DeRisi's lab to take on IBD. The scientists put out a call for samples of diseased and nondiseased snakes. Perhaps luckily, the Steinhart Aquarium at the California Academy of Sciences, just a few miles away, had a sudden outbreak of IBD.

To read the full article, click here.

The question of where exactly snakes evolved has been debated for years. Was it land? Was it sea? Scientists recently determined that snakes did, in fact, evolve on a plane plain.

The new study, published in Wednesday’s online edition of Nature, focuses on remains of the snake species Coniophis precedens, which lived roughly 70 million years ago during the late cretaceous period. While the snake had been described in the scientific literature and remains had previously been collected, those studies had only looked at vertebrae.

In the new report, researchers from Yale and Harvard analyzed the upper and lower jawbones of the snake as well as its vertebrae, and came to the conclusion that the snake was transitional because its head was more similar to a lizard’s than a snake. In particular, this snake lacks the ability to open its jaw wide and swallow prey whole, one of the hallmarks of modern snakes. The ancient snake likely ate small vertebrate animals.

Because the snake’s fossils are from the plains of Montana, the scientists argue that the remains provide strong evidence that modern snakes evolved on land. They suggest that the lizard-like head and long body indicate that early snakes evolved as burrowers.

To read the full article, click here.

Despite being dubbed the "rarest snake in the world," the recently re-discovered St. Lucia Racer doesn'thave extinction currently in its plans.

In antiquity snakes were revered for their ability to rejuvenate themselves by shedding their skin. One serpent seems to have done just that and returned from extinction on a tiny island near Saint Lucia in the Caribbean.

The Saint Lucia racer was declared extinct in 1936 but was sighted again in 1973. Non-native mongoose, introduced to the Santa Lucia islands by humans, were believed to have driven the snake back into oblivion after that.

The harmless snake recently slithered back from the abyss of extinction when a team of conservationists identified 11 individuals on a small mongoose-free island near the main island of Saint Lucia, reported Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and Miami Herald.

To read the full article, click here.

Humans who feed wild alligators are courting disaster. That's something airboat tour guide Wallace Weatherholt has learned the hard way:

In June Captain Wallace Weatherholt, 63, who works at Captain Doug's Small Airport Tours, was out with six tourists when the attack occurred.

The Indiana family onboard said that Weatherholt held a fish out above the water's surface just before a gator leapt up and bit off his hand.

Weatherholt was able to drive himself back to the docks. Meanwhile wildlife officers tracked down the gator and killed it before retrieving the captain's hand from its stomach.

However doctors were unable to reattach Weatherholt's lost limb.

Feeding gators is a second-degree misdemeanor in Florida. Weatherholt was held in Collier County Jail on $1,000 bond but has since posted out.

Israel DuPont of http://www.crocodopolis.net offers some safety tips for folks encountering alligators in the wild, but the reality of the matter is, leave the wild animals alone!

Smuggle an iguana, go to jail? That's a lesson being learned behind bars by Dirk Bender, who attempted to steal four protected Galapagos iguanas. From Fox news Latino:

Ecuadoran authorities arrested a German man on Sunday for allegedly attempting to pilfer four land-dwelling iguanas from the Galapagos Islands, according to the director of park services.

A judge sent Dirk Bender to jail to prevent him from leaving the country while he awaits trial, EFE reports. If convicted of “environmental crime,” Bender could face a prison sentence of up to three years.

Bender was arrested in the airport on the island of Baltra when guards detected something unusual in his luggage after passing it through an X-ray machine. When they opened it, they found two iguanas wrapped in cloth.

Last year, Bender attempted to steal the very protected Fiji Crested iguanas.

In other news, 150 animals originally smuggled from the Philippines have now been returned from Hong Kong after confiscation in June. From 7thspace:

The reptiles were illegally imported to Hong Kong and intercepted at the arrival hall at the Hong Kong International Airport on June 14, 2012. They were found in a passenger's luggage. A 22-year-old man was prosecuted by the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD) and sentenced to imprisonment for six weeks.

All the seized species are listed in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which protects endangered species from over-exploitation through international trade restrictions.

At present, 175 countries are parties to CITES.

The Philippine pond turtles and the Mindanao water monitor lizards are endemic species that can only be found in the Philippines.

Numerous reptiles were also recently stolen from the Moorten Botanical Garden.

The thieves struck sometime between 6 p.m. Saturday and 7 a.m. Sunday, taking 14 tortoises and one turtle, Moorten Botanical Garden owner Clark Moorten told the Desert Sun.

"I came out and looked at the little water pond and wow, there were no turtles in there," Moorten told the newspaper. "It's sad, maddening and disappointing."

The list of missing reptiles includes four babies and a 10-year-old, 35-pound African sulcata, Moorten said. The oldest tortoise taken is 40 years old; the largest measures about 16 inches in diameter.

Two baby tortoises were likely in burrows when the thieves struck and were overlooked, Moorten said.

To read the full article, click here.

It looks like troubles at the Grand Cayman Blue Iguana project at Queen Elizabeth Botanical Gardens aren't over.

Several years ago, the organization suffered a major loss of their founder stock after an attack that appeared to be the result of both humans and dogs, leaving six adult breeding animals dead.

Samantha Hicks, one of the distraught volunteers at the Blue Iguana Recovery Program (BIRP), spoke with Cayman Net News about the incident. “We’ve never seen anything like this before, it was a sustained and brutal attack,” she said, adding: “We are heartbroken and devastated; just absolutely furious.”

The six killed ranged from 18 to 23 years old and were among the friendliest iguanas at the facility, making them easy targets, Mrs Hicks said, but added that they would not have gone down without a fight.
“The big ones would have fought back with every ounce invested in them; the people who did this are more than likely covered with very deep scratches,” she said.

Mrs Hicks, who assists BIRP Director Fred Burton on a volunteer basis, said that police have launched a forensic investigation into the slaughter, recovering evidence that might lead them to the perpetrators.

Now, despite increased security measures, they are looking at another small setback as what appears to be dogs have destroyed a release nesting box on the facility grounds.

A group of recently released Blue Iguanas are missing and presumed dead after an attack by a pack of stray dogs.
The reptiles were placed in special wooded boxes and left out in the eastern side of the reserve to integrate into the wild. However when workers at the recovery program returned they discovered the boxes shattered and covered with bite marks.

To see the full video story from Cayman 27, click here.

Inset photo by John Binns, take from www.blueiguana.ky

A new virus, dubbed "the sunshine virus," has emerged as the probable cause of a disease outbreak in Australian snakes. From Phys.org:

The quest to identify the new virus started as an investigation of the cause of a 2008 disease outbreak in a privately owned Australian collection of 70 pythons. As more and more animals became sick, showing signs of pneumonia, depression, lethargy and abnormal behavior such as “star gazing” — staring up at things — they were all eventually euthanized. The researchers had great difficulty detecting the elusive virus and struggled to identify the category in which it belonged. “We screened more than 450 samples, including swabs, tissues and blood for snake viruses,” said lead author Timothy Hyndman, a lecturer and graduate student at Murdoch University in Australia. “It was very frustrating. After two and a half years, we finally isolated something. A year later, we figured out what it was.”

[...]

“This virus was invisible to prior technologies,” said Eric Delwart, director of molecular virology at the Blood Systems Research Institute and an adjunct professor of laboratory medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the study. “Besides providing assays to help track and control outbreaks of this new snake virus, the study highlights the enhanced ability of scientists to rapidly identify novel pathogens.”

While it is not totally conclusive that this was the outbreak in the private collection, all signs point towards that direction. To read the full article, click here.

The 35th Annual International Herpetological Symposium kicked off in a big way, with a behind-the-scenes tour of the Smithsonian National Zoo!

Let me just warn those of you who have never ever been here, but plan to come one day: Traffic sucks. It took two hours to drive a mere 30 miles. Quite traumatizing. The zoo is huge, roads leading in and out and parking lots located at specific exhibits. For even the short time we were there, it was quite impressive!

When we finally arrived, we split up in several groups. Our guide took us first to the Japanese Giant Salamander (which was one of the two things I wanted to see here). We saw the Hellbender research lab and learned a bit about their conservation work.

When asked what else we wanted to see, Kim Foose chimed in with crocs. Off we went to see the Cubans and the Phillipine crocs and then joy of joys, we saw 3-week-old hatchling Cubans! OMG they are the cutest little babies in the world! Our last stop on the whirlwind tour was the Komodo, so very adorable and still one of my favorite animals to see anywhere.

Our tour was cut short because our car had to get back early for the IHS Ice Breaker prep. You can find my shots here, and watch for the Hellbender video coming shortly! There are a few photos posted after the bump.

As Jeff reported yesterday, Sean Bradley of Exotics By Nature is paralyzed from the waist down due to a fall. Close friend Tim Bailey is helping with Exotics By Nature and his girlfriend Rachel is holding down the family fort. Sean will undergo surgery on Friday for spinal fusion.

Like many of our members, Sean is a small business owner and does not have health insurance. He could definitely use a little help from his friends. A Chip In account has been established to help defray some of the upcoming medical costs. The family and his friends will be updating it as much as possible with information.

His fiance Rachel sent us this update:

> Sean Bradley, the owner of Exotics by Nature, had a life-changing accident on the night of July 4th. He had some temporary memory loss, he does not remember exactly what happened. The story as we have it right now is that Rachel (Sean's fiancée) was inside the house and Sean was on the back balcony (talking on the phone). We had just had a bad storm blow through and everything was very wet. Sean thinks he must have slipped on the wet boards and fell approximately 12 feet to the ground. The next thing he remembered was waking up on the ground and being in pain. He was able to crawl over to the building and beat on the wall loud enough for Rachel to hear it.

Sean was then transported to University Charity hospital in New Orleans. Once there, they determined that Sean fractured his spine twice, broke his sternum and a few ribs. There were no internal injuries. The doctors have said that Sean will be paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life. He is preparing for surgery on Friday the 13th. To have his spine fused back together. We do not know how long he will be hospitalized.

For those that don't know, this is not the first major downfall of the year. Sean and Rachel's son, Will, was born on Christmas day in 2011. Will passed away on January 4th. It has been a very tough year for Sean and Rachel, and they need all the support that we can provide. Rachel is pregnant again right now, and the baby is definitely one thing that is keeping them going right now.

Sean has many local friends, customers and employees that are helping to take care of his eggs, breeding, collection and hatchlings (Rachel has been coming home in the evenings and taking care of the cats, dogs and iguanas), so they will be able to hold the fort down until the Reptile Expert can return to his collection.

I spoke with Sean this morning and let me tell you, he is not giving up! Despite the pain he is in and the medications, he was his normal smart-arse self. He wanted to express how thankful he is for all the support that is already coming his way from the community and pass along how much it means to him. We will continue to keep you in the loop as we hear more.

Words cannot describe how cool the second grade class at Conservatory Lab Charter School is. In a project celebrating snakes, they stole a little inspiration from Lady Gaga. To quote the kids:

Don't be afraid, Give snakes a chance!

From press reports that come out of Texas and groups like the Sweetwater Jaycees, one would think that the ground is literally crawling with rattlesnakes, and the entire state is under attack from these deadly beauties.

Yeah, not so much. It took us three days to come across our very own rattlesnake, which happened to be the only thing I wanted to see. Despite the fact that I wasn't overly picky, the last one on my list to see was the Western Diamonback, with a Black Tailed Rattlesnake being my top desire. But ya know, after three days and not a single rattle for our crew I was NOT picky.

Driving down 2886 to the cuts by the radio tower at 65 miles an hour, we were passing a lot of gravel driveways leading to ranchs and farms. I was scanning the right side to see if we could catch sight of a snake off-road. First we had to stop for a white, black and red blur, except it turned out to be a big gulp cup. Drive a little further, I see a "stick" on the right. But wait, that stick looked striped. Sticks really aren't usually striped like that, are they? "Jeff, I think I saw what might be a stick, but it might not. Let's go back" After all, we did stop for the cup.

All the care I had practiced getting out of the truck went out the window. I turned into a squealing, happy little girl. Running with camera in hand and screaming behind me for someone to grab a hook, I was deliriously happy. I found something that rattled. While most were searching for the elusive grayband, I was searching for my sweet rattles. And I found it. It would have been fine with me had one of our crew found it, but the excitement at finding it myself was amazing.

The boys were kind; they congratulated me on a great catch. I had earned my stripes as a herper. I didn't care about finding anything else this trip, because I had found the one thing I wanted. Everything else was gravy. I did have the presence of mind to video the find. After the bump, me in my full snake dork mode, very happy. Yes, I am giggling and squealing. I guess I finally figured out what this field herping business is about.