"It's a heartbreaking thing when you see them come here, tears in their eyes, and you try to comfort them," said Daniel Marchand, curator at the Phoenix Herpetological Society, a private sanctuary which takes in surrendered reptiles.

But PHS can no longer take in tortoises due to the scope of the current problem.

Releasing them in the wild is not the answer, because one tame tortoise with a virus can kill an entire neighborhood of wild Sonoran Desert tortoises.

Then there's the issue with people finding tortoises in the wild and turning them in to Game and Fish.

"We don't want people turning in baby tortoises," said Burnett. "They're probably wild tortoises, so we want them to leave them in the wild. Obviously, if they're in the middle of the road, move them to the side of the road, but please don't turn in baby tortoises. Let them be in the wild so they don't have to be in captivity."

Mr Britton said fatal attacks had very gradually increased since crocodiles were protected in the 1970s, to an average of one every two years.

"You can get three or four attacks within a short space of time, it doesn't necessarily mean there's suddenly been a dramatic increase in the number of crocodile attacks," he said.

"It just means there's been a dramatic increase in the number of people taking unnecessary risks, or putting themselves in a position that they don't think is necessarily safe, and it's tragic when it happens."

A speed test for the northern pine snake (Pituophis melanoleucus) shows that it takes the snakes 2 minutes to cross a two-lane concrete road. During that time, about 70 cars may pass over a well-used highway to the New Jersey coast. On sand, a trip the same distance would last only 45 seconds, said Dane Ward, a doctoral student in environmental science at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

When a snake moves across a sandy area, it creates sandbanks that it uses to propel itself forward. Concrete does not have enough debris or grip to help with this forward motion, Ward said. "It seems that the snake is having difficulty generating enough lateral thrust to move itself farther," he told Live Science.

To compensate, snakes on concrete roads slither in an "S" motion, which isn't typical for northern pine snakes, Ward said.

A police spokesman said: "It is a highly unusual case but it appears to be just an accident. He prepared the snake himself and was just unlucky.

"There was nothing that could be done to save the man. Only the anti-venom could have helped but this was not given in time. It was just a tragic accident."

The snake was being diced up to be made into snake soup, which is a delicacy in the area and a much sought after dish in high-end restaurants. China has seen a rising demand for snake products, not only in restaurants but also for use in traditional medicine.

U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service officials say they have to curb the backyard breeding of desert tortoises because the growing population of unwanted pet tortoises diverts resources from efforts to preserve the species in the wild.

Mike Senn, assistant field supervisor for the Fish &Wildlife Service in Nevada, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that it can be “a really difficult issue” to explain to people. He said simply breeding more tortoises won’t save the species if not enough is done to improve and protect natural habitat and address threats in the wild.

Captive tortoises threaten native populations because they can carry diseases with them when they escape or are released illegally in the desert.

The first 1,400 Olive Ridley turtles arrived to nest Thursday at the Chacocente Wildlife Refuge on the Central American country's southern coast, regional military commander Jose Larios told the Nuevo Diario newspaper.

They were followed by hundreds more on Friday and Saturday, said Larios, whose troops are guarding a 1,500-meter (one-mile) stretch of beach where the turtles lay their eggs.

The scientists search the area after dark, using torchlight to find the natterjacks.

The toads are then measured and photographed.

James Silvey of RSPB Scotland said: "The beautiful thing about natterjacks is they each come with their own individual fingerprint, and that's in the form of the big warts and the yellow stripe on their backs.

"Each of the toads we photograph today could potentially live for 10 or 15 years and if we photograph it again we'll know that individual was found here at Mersehead in 2014.

Boophis ankarafensis, as the scientists have dubbed the amphibian, is bright green with red speckles red on its head and back. It was found on the Sahamalaza Peninsula in the Ankarafa forest, from whence its name comes.

The frog’s call—a series of high-pitched trills, followed by three clicks—differs slightly from related frog species, which stop at a pair of clicks. Its body size and coloration are also slightly different; genetic analysis proved that it is indeed a separate species, according to a study describing the animal published today in the journal ZooKeys.

Although the Sahamalaza-Iles Radama National Park, where the frog is found, remains protected in name, deforestation is rampant in the surrounding forests, the researchers wrote.

While rodents have flown on space shuttle flights in the past, those missions have only lasted a week or two. This new rats in space mission, however, could range between 30 and 90 days, depending on the availability of spacecraft like SpaceX's Dragon capsule to ferry them on the roundtrip.

This means there will need to be changes to animal husbandry to keep the rats happy and healthy, said Julie Robinson, NASA's chief scientist for the space station, in a recent press conference.

"This will allow animals to be studied for longer period of time on space station missions," she said, adding that of the 35 or so studies where rats have gone into space, few of them have gone for more than two weeks.