The judgment is a victory for the Wildlife Equity Institute and other environmental organizations, which sued the city in 2011 for violations of the federal Endangered Species Act. The nonprofit claimed that the city was killing two protected species, the San Francisco Garter Snake and the California Red-Legged Frog, by draining the 18-hole Sharp Park Golf Course throughout the years.

U.S. District judge Susan Illston denied the city's defense that it wasn't killing the animals, noting that "as a result of construction activities and golf course maintenance operations, all Frogs, all Snakes, and 130 egg masses will be subject to incidental take." As a result, Illston ordered San Francisco to pay $386,000 that will go toward paying the institute's attorney fees.

The emerald green turtle, which arrived on June 18 and went on display Tuesday, has two noggins conjoined near the neck. Zoo officials named the Texas cooter Thelma and Louise, in tribute to the 1991 movie starring Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis about a female duo on the run. The turtle, which is actually a pair of unseparated twins, is healthy and eating with both heads.

Public Policy Polling interviewed 603 registered voters by telephone between June 11 and 13, asking them 36 questions relating to their views on pets, animal phobias, and other random creature preferences. The poll, which was not authorized or paid for by any campaign or political organization, had a margin of error of +/-4 percent.

[...]

1. Twenty-one percent rated snakes as the most terrifying animal, followed by alligators at 19 percent and sharks and bears at 18 and 14 percent, respectively.

2. Nine percent of those polled are vegan or vegetarian, while 91 percent are not.

3. Eighteen percent believe the Loch Ness Monster is real.

4. On preferences for an exotic pet, 26 percent said they would choose a tiger, 20 percent a giraffe, 18 percent a dinosaur, and 16 percent an elephant. (Read about exotic animals as pets.)

5. Ninety percent said they would not want a hippopotamus for Christmas—perhaps to the collective relief of hippos worldwide.

Dieter Zorn, 53, was in the middle of a presentation about reptiles when he was bitten several times by an Aspic viper. Due to a rare allergy, he suffered a heart attack and died shortly thereafter.

Zorn had been travelling to different villages across the region, delivering presentations that focused on educating the public about snakes and reptiles and helping them overcome their fears of the creatures. After he got bitten, he managed to get the snake back into a cage, preventing it from attacking anyone else present, the Local notes.

Emergency responders arrived at the scene and attempted to administer a blood thinner, but they weren’t able to save him.

Watt, who is also an evolutionary biologist, and his team definitely did not showcase cute and furry pandas at recent UAPS events held at the Edinburgh Science Fest and Bristol's Big Green Week. Media attention instead was paid to animals such as the appropriately named blobfish.

"Our society needs a mascot, one to rival the cute and cuddly emblems of many charities and organizations," shares Watt.

At the end of each UAPS event, the audience votes on a mascot.

One contender is the Chinese giant salamander, with a head resembling an angry block of concrete.

When the sizes of penises were compared between lakes, alligators in Lake Apopka had on average 24% smaller penises than alligators in Lake Woodruff. When the time came for these juveniles to reproduce, this significant reduction in penis size made it difficult to mate and certainly didn’t impress the lady alligators.

This study showed that male alligators in Lake Apopka, which is contaminated with endocrine disruptors, were significantly different than alligators from a lake that had relatively little pollution. In order to help determine the physiological drivers, in other words the chemical pathways in the body that shape these physical differences, behind this reduction in penis size, Dr. Guillette also looked at plasma testosterone concentrations. Plasma testosterone is responsible for the formation and development of male external genitalia. He discovered that juvenile alligators in Lake Apopka had 70% lower concentrations of plasma testosterone than those at Lake Woodruff. Abnormal hormone levels like these are associated with decreased sperm counts and reduced fertility. This can be disastrous for maintaining healthy wildlife populations. The results of this study inspired Dr. Guillette to continue to look at the physiological effects of endocrine disruptors on reproductive systems.

Earlier this week, the good folks at the Wildlife Center of Virginia rescued an Eastern box turtle discovered at a nearby campground after it fell victim to an unscrupulous ‘artist’. According to staff, the reptile’s shell had been vandalized with several types of nail polish and glitter — threatening its survival by making it an easy target for predators.

“Box turtles have this great natural camouflage that just allows them to blend into their environment,” says staffer Amanda Nicholson. “And this is really sending a message to the world of, ‘hey, look at me.’”

The wildlife center isn’t certain whether the turtle is an abandoned pet, or if someone ran across it in the wild and decided to add this gaudy graffiti, but the tagged shell does offer some clues as to who might be responsible. Along with the word “Sheldon”, taken to be the female turtle’s name, are the initials “SKR” and “BDM” — perhaps belonging to the culprits.

Castoe and Fujita were among nearly 60 co-authors of a paper published in the journal Genome Biology this spring that described the findings from the genome sequencing, only the second full genetic mapping on a reptile.

The researchers found that the painted turtle’s genes used for tolerance of extreme cold and oxygen deprivation are common to all vertebrates but that they are more active in turtles that experience the extreme conditions. One gene that humans share became 130 times more active in turtles subjected to low-oxygen environments.

Further study of the turtle genome could yield clues related to human health and well-being, particularly oxygen deprivation, hypothermia and longevity.

“It’s very hard to do research on people,” said Pamela Jansma, dean of the UTA College of Science, “but if you know that animals have a similar gene pairing, you can study how those genes trigger responses to environmental stimuli. You can map that to humans, and you can then imagine developing gene therapies to address certain diseases.”

Charles Darwin first discovered the frogs while traveling in Chile in 1834. Scientists who later studied the mouth-brooding animals found that there are actually two species, naming one Rhinoderma darwinii (Darwin's frog) and the other Rhinoderma rufum (Chile Darwin's frog).

From 2008 to 2012, a team of researchers led by zoologist Claudio Soto-Azat surveyed 223 sites in the frogs' historical range, from the coastal city of Valparaíso south to an area just beyond Chiloé Island. R. rufum has not been seen in the wild since 1980, and despite the recent extensive search effort across every recorded location of the species, no individuals were seen or heard during the four-year survey, the researchers said. R. darwinii, meanwhile, was found in 36 sites, but only in fragmented and small populations, each with likely less than 100 individuals.

The findings suggest Darwin's frogs have disappeared from, or at least rapidly declined in, many locations where they were recently abundant, the researchers wrote in a paper published online June 12 in the journal PLOS ONE. Habitat loss and fragmentation may be the culprits.