Keep up with news and features of interest to the reptile and amphibian community on the kingsnake.com blog. We cover breaking stories from the mainstream and scientific media, user-submitted photos and videos, and feature articles and photos by Jeff Barringer, Richard Bartlett, and other herpetologists and herpetoculturists.
In a move that will shock no one, the first what we can assume will be many laws relating to the Leibowitz/Taipan bite case has happened. Florence, S.C. has released new proposed exotics laws that impact more than reptile owners. From the USARK Action alert the proposed banned reptile portion is:
Crocodilians twelve (12) inches or larger;
Large, dangerous, or potentially invasive constricting snakes including reticulated pythons, python reticulatus;
urmese/Indian rock pythons, python molurus; rock pythons, python sebae, and anacondas, eunectes murinus (green anacondas);
Venomous/poisonous reptiles, amphibians, or serpents;
You can read the full action alert on USARK's page here.
Now one thing of note is the snake law is somewhat vague and can be easily adjusted to include any larger snake unfortunately. Simply using the wording large, dangerous OR rather than AND is hugely problematic from someone who has worked in animal control and seen how people will twist those words, but that is just my opinion and experience. I would expect to see far more of these laws popup in South Carolina over the next year. The damage one person can do to our hobby is immense.
Tadpoles and adults of the extinct frog species Notobatrachus degiustoi (illustrated) lived in temporary ponds in what is the Patagonia region of Argentina today.
Illustration by Gabriel Lío
While searching for dinosaurs in the sediment and soft ash, Palentoligist Federico Agnolín and his colleagues kept stumbling across frogs at their site at Estancia La Matilde in the Santa Cruz province of Argentina. They were finding all adult Notobatrachus degiustoi, which is an extinct species. They believed that the frogs at the time did not have a tadpole stage, but they were about to learn otherwise in a very exciting discovery!
The researchers who described the fossil in Nature today estimate it to be between 161 to 168 million years old, beating the previous record holder by around 30 million years. The find provides solid evidence frogs have had a tadpole stage for at least that long. “It’s a beautiful confirmation of what many experts had suspected,” says herpetologist Alexander Haas of the Leibniz Institute in Bonn, Germany. Reconstructing tadpole evolution based on their diversity today, Haas and others previously predicted that tadpoles would have existed this early on.
The tadpole was surprisingly similar to modern tadpoles! To read the full story, visit National Geographic here!
Photo of Lil Crusher and I in August at an educational event. He is well on his way to being healthy here.
When I got the text about the alligator that was found by Lake Michigan in November I never realized how attached to him I would become, but ya know, I should have. When the grizzled shelter manager tells me I need to come in because he is worried about the alligator, I should have figured that I would fall head over heels for an animal that I never would live with. He is named Lil Crusher, after Reginald "The Crusher" Lisowski a famous wrestler from our area and if you know me it makes even more sense that this guy is one of my special ones.
On that cold November day, 3 South Milwaukee police officers made waves in our local media when they found an American Alligator in a park in Milwaukee WI on the shores of Lake Michigan, the local media went RAMPANT with stories. We had just had the flamingos blown off course by a hurricane, did the alligator come that way too! Did it maybe swim up here? The stories were simply ridiculous.
Have you heard of Project RattleCam? It is a livestream of a Prairie Rattlesnake Rookery in Colorado at an undisclosed location and it runs 24/7 from May to October. You can watch and share interesting obeservations with the team directly through their contacts or just spend your time watching rattlesnakes be rattlesnakes! What a better way to celebrate Rattlesnake Friday! Check it out!
Over the weekend Vans dropped their new ad featuring their new Cult X Diamonback BMX shoes with a very emaciated ball python. The Reptile Community was outraged and rightfully so. The animal was in poor condition. By Tuesday however, I had a very hard time locating the advertisement anywhere other than social media sites. Rather than adding to the millions of shares, I instead reached out to Vans to inquire if they pulled it and if so to thank them. I also offered to arrange for them to get a photo shoot with an actual diamondback. Today when I clicked the link via email and anywhere else I could find that would directly link it to Vans and the original ad, this is what I saw.
They heard us loud and clear. While I don't expect Vans to know what a healthy snake looks like, I would expect their photographer and ad agency to know and to do better. I sincerely hope they hire a different team in the future and never use this one again. They heard us loud and clear. I'm quite sure it will be a few days before I hear back if ever, I am quite sure they have been inundated with messages from our community. I would love to see a statement from them. Hello Vans? Ya Got one?
In a huge win for conservation, the first ever nesting behavior has been observed by reintroduced female Siamese crocodile that resulted in two hatchlings! The hatchlings are now being headstarted by the Wildlife Conservation Society.
The authors note: “While collecting eggs for incubation in May 2022, we were able to identify a unique series of notched tail scutes on a female C. siamensis as she aggressively defended a nest.
“From these markings we determined the female was hatched on 11 August 2012 (age = 9.75 years) and released in March 2014. A camera-trap placed at the nest on 11 May 2022 and recovered on 5 July 2022 recorded 1724 images.
“These images indicated the female remained in attendance at the nest throughout the monitoring period. Camera-trap imagery captured eight nest repair events and two nest defense events; during the later the female defended the nest from village dogs.”
They have managed to reduce the mortality with their headstart program by an amazing 90%! To read the paper and full story, click here.
USGS biologist holds an endangered yellow-legged frog recovered from a fire-ravaged stretch of Little Rock Creek, just off Angeles Crest Highway 2 near Wrightwood in the San Gabriel Mountains. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
For over 500 species of frogs, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis or more easily BD has been devastating. It has decimated populations worldwide and lead to extinctions of of 90 possible species threatening more world-wide. Scientists have been struggling to come up with a cure of any sort and have started to look at the possibility of infecting the fungus with a virus.
Meet BdDV-1, a viral fragment discovered by scientists whose paper was recently published by the journal Current Biology. The researchers found it in much the same way that one disentangles a knot, by pulling on individual threads to see where they lead. While examining the BD fungus to learn about weaknesses, they discovered a single-stranded DNA virus trapped within the genome of the fungus. Although this only applied to certain strains, when infected they produced fewer spores than the uninfected fungi. Now the next step is to see if researchers can clone and engineer this virus so that it kills BD and saves the frogs.
That will not be the easiest task to accomplish, however, for a big reason: Currently the virus makes the fungus more deadly to the frogs, rather than less so.
Now the question remains if they can reenginer the virus to change how it impacts the virus. To read more about the process, visit Salon here.
This is me, in all my Tinley Glory. If you need me, just grab me. I will always be there for you.
The best part about reptile shows is we can be ourselves. We are with our tribe. People who love the same things we do and it should be a fun and safe environment for all of us. The hard reality is that there are bad people everywhere in this world, no matter where you look.
This is going to be a very different post Tinley wrap and bear with me, it is going to probably be long but I promise reptile pictures from the show to lighten the mood that are not ball pythons or crested geckos at the end. Something happened that I felt needed to be addressed and shared even as vague as I intend on sharing. Let's just say, someone was naughty.
Photo of female reticulated Gila from our photo gallery by user Kevin_Hunt and not animal in question
The autopsy report for the man who died after being bitten by his pet Gila Monster has been released and it lists three factors that resulted in his death. The report lists complications from envenomation of the Gila Monster, basically listed as an injury, but also listed an enlarged heart and a fatty liver as "significant contributing factors" in his death.
Around 11:45 p.m. Feb. 12, someone called 911 to report an animal bite, according to Lakewood Police. It was later determined to be a Gila monster bite.
The victim was taken to the hospital and died four days later. According to the autopsy report, the man suffered a "four-minute venomous Gila monster bite to the right hand."
He sought treatment about 2 hours after the bite. For more on the story, click here. The last known death from a Gila bite was in 1930 and the person may have had liver damage due to cirrhosis.
Caecilians are amphibians that look superficially like very large earthworms. New research suggests that at least one species of caecilian also produces "milk" for its hatchlings.Photo by Carlos Jared
Most people look at caecilians and think EWW. They are worm-like amphibians and although they have very adorable faces they are a more secretive animal and are often overlooked. Marta Antoniazzi, a biologist at the Instituto Butantan, in Sao Paulo, Brazil has been working with Siphonops annulatus for quite some time now. They noticed that while the babies fed on the mothers shed skin weekly, they were too active for that to be their sole source of nutrition. So they did what anyone would do. Set up a camera and waited.
"The babies prefer to go to the tail of the mother," he says.
And that's when they saw it. A secretion coming from the tail: "A kind of substance, like milk."
Upon further study, the team found that the milk contained lipids and sugars similar to mammalian milk. It was essentially providing the same function.
"It's a very unusual form of nutrition" for an egg-laying animal, says Mailho-Fontana.
Is it really milk? Well, that is up in the air for now, but it is a nutrition source for the babies provided by mom. For the full story as well as a link to the study, click here!
Some people have all the luck, really they do! It took me 3 trips to Texas to see my first rattlesnake. When Milan Watt came out of work and met her boyfriend at her car and they went to get in, he saw a tongue and that's when they saw it. That was also when they got out of the car and said NOPE!
Watt’s boyfriend came to meet up with her when he noticed something moving in her car.
“He turns around and he sees a tongue,” Watt said.
After they both got out of the car, Watt called 911.
“They told me they could not help because it was not a life-threatening emergency,” Watt told Arizona’s Family.
There are however many 24 hour services available that will come out to help and it is disappointing that the emergency services did not mention these. An encounter with a diamondback by someone unfamiliar is definitely a life-threatening emergency, especially when it is a diamondback trapped in a car! For us herpers however, that is just easy pickings! To see the video and full story, click here!
Botflies perch on the head of a northern green anaconda in Yasuni National Park in Ecuador. A recent study revealed that the green anaconda is two distinct species, more genetically diverse than humans and chimpanzees. (Karine Aigner/Naturepl.com)
Thanks to Will Smith, we now have two different Green Anacondas. Researchers used genetic data to determine that the Green Anaconda not one but two very distinct species, a southern and northern type. They were in the Amazon filming Smith's show "Pole to Pole with Will Smith" with Dr. Bryan G. Fry, an old friend of kingsnake.com as well a biologist at University of Queensland in Australia, when the differences were notice. Research ensued!
The Northern and Southern species show a 5.5% genetic difference from each other, which is huge considering humans only differ from chimpanzees by 2% difference.
The Amazon is made up of two separate basins — the large southern Amazon basin and the "much smaller" northern Orinoco basin.
"The southern green anaconda (Eunectes murinus) is found across a vast range spanning Brazil, Bolivia, Perú and parts of French Guiana," he said.
"By contrast, our newly described northern green anaconda (Eunectes akayima) is restricted to Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad, Venezuela and parts of French Guiana."
I am quite sure when they wrote this article it really was not a tourism guide, but they also are not people like us, you know, herpers. World Atlas gave us a perfect guide for field herping however, listing the lakes and species you might find there. I was somewhat impressed with the article because despite the fact that the word "infested" is a constant in the article giving a negative feel, they talk about what brings the snakes there and how most of the species are harmless and important. They also have fairly decent identification photos. At the end of the article they even include this little part about safety:
Water snakes and semi-aquatic snakes enjoy the lakes in Arkansas. In particular, Greers Ferry Lake, Lake Ouachita, and Lake Fayetteville are popular spots for snakes. Despite the abundance of snakes, these Arkansas spots are still worth a visit. For outdoor enthusiasts, these lakes offer many activities to enjoy, from camping and hiking to fishing and kayaking. Visiting these spots is comforting because water snakes are usually harmless to humans. While semi-aquatic snakes can be venomous, identifying them can help you stay safe in snake territory.
In case you are interested, the three most "infested" according to the article are Lake Ouachita, Lake Fayetteville, and Greers Ferry Lake so book your trip now. You can check out the full article here. A warning to some, is an invitation to others! Just another place to add to your herping lists!
USARK has issued an absolutely terrifying action alert for Arizona that all animal owners need to be aware of. Please spread the word far and wide. There are almost two identical senate bills being introduces which allow for warrentless search of private property and immediate seizure of animals without cause. What does that mean? USARK explains:
Remember, warrants protect us from unreasonable governmental intrusion. As if that is not bad enough, the bills would make it so that, “The formal rules of evidence do not apply and reliable hearsay is admissible in the postseizure hearing.” Please read that last sentence again! “The formal rules of evidence do not apply and reliable hearsay is admissible…”
First, the formal court rules are tossed out the window. This means that the due process that typically exists in court does not apply. Additionally, hearsay is generally inadmissible in court unless a special exception is provided because it is not considered reliable or trustworthy. If this bill passes, hearsay will be good enough for the seizure and State possession of animals in Arizona. Needless to say, this goes against our constitutional rights as Americans.
We know from what we have seen in Florida what happens when government has too much power, healthy innocent animals that could be relocated and rehomed die violently on video for all to see. SB1204 has a hearing on Thursday, February 15 with the Senate Natural Resources, Energy and Water Committee. Please share this with everyone you know in Arizona. Visit USARK page HERE to learn more and keep up to date. Also JOIN USARK. Membership matters. Our numbers count! We will keep you up to date here as well!
Alterna crew in Del Rio, Photo by Jeff Barringer -
While looking for the photo of the day today, I came across this old gem. See kingsnake.com turns 25 today. I have heard the story many times of how Jeff tried to sell this whole website to people 25 plus years ago on herping trips and everyone thought he was crazy! See you have to realize the internet and the tech world we know it is new. We old fogies used to actually talk to people. I know! We would CALL people on the phone and we would answer phones not knowing who was calling! It was insanity! Forums lost their flair when social media hit because people liked that instant gratification. Our archives however is the history of our world. The who's who of the reptile community really and well worth the time to look back. We learned how to make things better back then and you can watch how the reptile community grew to where it is now. We were also closer.
This photo is the early days. Well before kingsnake.com started in West Texas the old Alterna crew days. Many of these people are still around, some aren't. How many can you recognize?
In Australia, venomous snakes are everywhere and killing them is quite common. One professor is attempting to change that mentality explaining how they can actually benefit the farmers who kill them.
New research by myself and colleagues estimated the magnitude of that benefit. We found adult eastern brown snakes can collectively remove thousands of mice per square kilometre of farmland each year, which substantially increases farm productivity.
Our study suggests the benefits of snake populations on agricultural land far outweigh the potential costs, and farmers should tolerate rather than kill them.
.....
Agricultural productivity gains are not the only benefits of tolerating brown snakes on farmland.
It would also allow a reduction in the use of chemical methods for rodent control, which can be expensive and ineffective. The chemicals can also threaten the health of humans, livestock, scavenging wildlife and pets.
Tolerating brown snakes might also reduce the incidence of snake bite. Most snake bites are inflicted when people are trying to catch or kill the reptile.
Its a pretty refreshing article that attempts to change the minds of people on venomous animals. Here's to hoping he changes a mind or two. To read the full article and attached study, click here.
Second Chance Wildlife Center
Yeah you read that right. It is well known that Rat snakes are often chased from hen houses for eating eggs and one of the more common dangers to many native colubrids is golf balls because they resemble eggs, but this one rat snake decided he was going for broke,
This rat snake was one of the most unusual cases we have treated at SCWC! Upon intake, it was apparent that the snake had ingested a foreign object resembling an egg. This is common in rat snakes, as golf balls and decoy eggs are often mistaken for fresh chicken eggs. In this case, the object had been trapped in the snake’s stomach so long that there was a hole worn through the snake’s skin.
The object turned out to be a gear shift knob and was surgically removed by doctors at Second Chance Wildlife Center, in Gaithersburg, Maryland! She is stable and will winter there before being released in spring. To read the full story click here or visit the rescue's page here.
Zoo Atlanta in Georgia recently sent 11 endangered Guatemalan beaded lizards (Heloderma charlesbogerti) to La Aurora Zoo. (Zoo Atlanta v)
With an estimated 500-600 animals in the wild, the Guatemalan Beaded Lizard (Heloderma charlesbogerti) is one of the more endangered lizards on the planet. Now when you consider the fact that they are part of the family of the only medically significant venomous species of lizards, it makes them even more special. Zoo Atlanta has been long involved in their conservation efforts and recently had a clutch hatch!
"The lizards that went down will not be released into the wild themselves, however," Zoo Atlanta's Curator of Herpetology Robert L. Hill explained on Wednesday.
"The plan is that these animals would reproduce in their beaded lizard-specific facilities, and that following a quarantine period, the offspring would then be transferred from La Aurora Zoo to protected areas within the known wild range of the species in the dry forests of the Motagua Valley."
When I spoke in 2022 at the International Herpetological Symposium, I had the pleasure of seeing the breeding setup at Zoo Atlanta! It was very amazing to see in person and get up close to conservation project in action! Congrats to the full Zoo Atlanta team! To read the full story, click here!
actual photo of me braving the blizzard in Wisconsin
One week ago, we had zero snow on the ground, Until last Friday, our temperatures here in Wisconsin had been above average for the month every single day. Tuesday we had our first smack of winter. Our first winter storm hit Wisconsin. I live very close to Lake Michigan which is still holding temps above 40 degrees, so here in Milwaukee we didn't get nothing. You know, it was like my first marriage. Full of promises but it really failed to deliver. We all laughed. Then the Polar vortex started dropping. Thursday night's storm hit and it snowed from Thursday until late Saturday. We ended up with areas well over a foot of snow and it was really wet and heavy. Power lines and trees were falling at a rapid pace and the impassable roads made it hard for crews to get things put back together. Our temps began plummeting. This scene played out across the entire country.
I'm a pet sitter and was going to be away from home for the nights. This led to a big panic. What if the power went out when no one was home? How would the reptiles fare? I know my dog would be OK but what about the reptiles? And then where would I go? Time to kick the plans into gear. Especially knowing I could be gone with more than 12 hours of no power and a house full of reptiles
Not really, but snakes being snakes and making the news. I mean it is Australia. Recently we shared the combating carpet pythons in the middle of a gold tournament, but Australia said, hold my Fosters. An Eastern Brown wanted a better seat at the Brisbane International Tennis Tournment during Dominic Thiem’s opening qualifying round.
“I really love animals, especially exotic ones,” former US Open champion Thiem told the Brisbane International website. “But they said it was a really poisonous snake and it was close to the ballkids, so it was a really dangerous situation.
“It’s something that has never happened to me and is something I’ll definitely never forget.”
Yep, you read the headline correct! Scientists recently found proteins in the venom of the lancehead pit viper Cotiara (Bothrops cotiara) could help lower blood pressure and may be used in treatments down the road.
"Venoms never cease to surprise us. Even with so much accumulated knowledge, fresh discoveries are possible, such as unpredictable fragments that are parts of known proteins. Despite all the available technology, a great deal remains to be studied in these toxins," Alexandre Tashima, co-author of the study and professor at the Federal University of São Paulo's Medical School (EPM-UNIFESP), said in a statement.
On an aside, before I share the link to Newsweek where this article is from, I really need to address their media on this article! It is pretty negative for a pro-snake and pro-venom story. There is not a single photo of the actual species of snake the venom is from, and you know the typical lunging diamondback picture with venom leaking from the fangs instead. This is a story about learning that venom can actually save human lives and really we shouldn't be adding that aggressive view of animals that really only are like that when cornered. That being said I want to thank Wolfgang Wuster again for use of an ACTUAL photo of Bothrops cotiara. To read the full article, which despite my rant on the media placed within it, was quite wonderful, click here.
After saving over 700 eggs from poachers, the Costa Rica National Guard released 446 Sea Turtle babies recently!
Costa Rica, one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, is home to five of the seven sea turtle species. They are natural-born fighters, as only one in every 1,000 sea turtle eggs will become an adult. Hatchlings are prey to almost everything up until that point.
Once they reach adulthood, which can take up to 30 years, their list of enemies decreases significantly. The biggest predators they face are humans.
To read the full story and see the release video, click here.
Chelonia mydas, a newly hatched baby green sea turtle. Photo: Shutterstock
In Taiwan, saving the Green Sea Turtle on its preferred nesting island was the goal, but drastically impacting the native lizards species was the unintended result. Since 2001, on Badai Beach the only remaining suitable nesting spot on Orchard Island, researchers have protected every Green Sea Turtle Nest with a fine mesh netting. This netting prevented any ground dwelling predators from dining on the babies cooking inside. Orchard Island is also the home of the kukri snakes and the stink ratsnakes, both of which gladly dine on eggs. With the instant loss of their normal food source, they turned elsewhere.
The scientists estimated kukri snakes consumed around 120 sea turtle eggs each year before 2001, which would be equivalent to between 5,000 and 18,000 lizard eggs from the five soft-shelled lizard species on the island.
The team found that while populations of kukri snakes and stink ratsnakes were estimated to have declined by 12 per cent and 8 per cent per year between 1997 and 2020, lizard species saw drops of 11 to 25 per cent every year.
Now conservation efforts need to alter their program to protect not only the Green Sea Turtles, but also the existing native species, especially the lizards. This shows how science works best. As you learn how things are working, you adjust to make things work better.
To read more of how these efforts are changing, click here.
Credit: Francisco Farriols Sarabia via Wikimedia Commons
While studying lizard skulls at the National Dinosaur Monument in North Dakota, Dalton Meyer discovered a new species of fossilized Gecko. While inspecting a pair of skulls of previously labeled as European skink ancestors, the use of 3D imaging proved one to be exactly that, however the other emerged to be a gecko type of animal closely resembling the banded gecko common to the US.
What caught my attention the most about the story other than the fact that it was basically about dinosaur geckos (and please click through to the story at the end to read everything) was this part!
In naming the new species, Meyer chose “helioscopus,” which roughly translates into “sun watcher,” and “dickersonae,” which honors his grandmother, Helen Dickerson, his great aunt, Shirley Dickerson, and Mary Cynthia Dickerson (no relation), who was the first curator of herpetology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
“Both my grandmother and great aunt were extremely important people in my life, and my great aunt passed away while I was in the early stages of working on this fossil,” Meyer says. “I was truly honored to have a chance to get to use their family name in this new species, in part as a memorial that will now persist long after I am gone.”
If you remember my first presentation to the International Herpetological Symposium, you know why! To read the full story, and I strongly suggest you do, click here to visit futurity.org.
Photo of Gideon, a Grand Cayman hybrid bred by Ty Parks in FL, but living his best life safe in WIsconsin - Cindy Steinle
Recently, the State of Florida deemed all Green Iguanas (Iguana Iguana) as a restricted species and created quite a stir, confiscating animals from even private zoos and killing the animals rather than allowing them to be rehomed or allowed to remain on display at the zoo. Now in a move to destroy the reptile industry further, Florida Fish and Wildlife is making the move to change the language from Iguana (Iguana Iguana) to simply Iguana. This would thus include all species including Cyclura and Ctenosaura most definitely but potentially all species under the family Iguanidae which would also include Amblyrhynchus, Brachylophus, Cachryx, Conolophus, Dipsosaurus, and Sauromalus as well.
This is not only bad for pet owners and breeders, but seriously detrimental to worldwide conservation efforts as many assurance populations of a variety of both Cyclura and Ctenosaura species are maintained safely in Florida.
Read the update after the jump or click here to be taken to USARKFL's notice! There is also a link to the bill after the jump.
Being dubbed "The world's bravest golfer", in reality, he is just an Australian playing golf. While teeing off, a golfer had some visitors at the tee pad.
The serpents have been identified as coastal carpet pythons, which don’t have fangs or venom, but are known for their “100 small, sharp teeth which have the ability to cause substantial needle-like lacerations.” No matter what, they use constriction to kill their prey, so perhaps stay away. Just in case
Now we know that it is two males in combat and the Golfer was never in danger. To see the whole story with video, visit Golf Digest here.
The snake that was found in a bag carried by one of the guests at Immigration offices in Kampala recently. PHOTO/KARIM MUYOBO
When a man recently showed up at the immigration offices looking for services in Naguru, Kampala, security was stunned to find a large black snake in his bag. They were even more shocked to learn this large black snake was in fact a Cobra.
Mr Simon Peter Mundeyi, the spokesperson of the Internal Affairs ministry, said when the strange man was asked why he had carried such a dangerous reptile (a cobra), he said it is his "brother" and that he moves around with it wherever he goes
Remember, leave you snake at home when visiting government offices! To read the rest of the story, click here!
Garter snakes come together in communities led by older females, new research shows.ALL CANADA PHOTOS/ALAMY
The general belief is that snakes are solitary animals, but as more research into these animals happens we are learning that many have very developed social communities. In a first of it's kind study of thousands of wild snakes, we learn that Garter snakes have a very complex community with social structures and a female based hierarchy.
Ecologists had long assumed snakes are antisocial loners that hang out together only for core functions such as mating and hibernation. However, in 2020, Morgan Skinner, a behavioral ecologist at Wilfrid Laurier University, and collaborators showed in laboratory experiments that captive garter snakes have “friends”—specific snakes whose company they prefer over others. Still, studies of wild snakes were lacking “because they’re so secretive and difficult to find,” Skinner says.
Then he learned that the Ontario Ministry of Transportation had funded an unprecedented long-term study of a huge population of Butler’s garter snakes (Thamnophis butleri) in Windsor, Canada. Ecologists began to monitor the flute-size slitherers in 2009 to keep them safe from nearby road construction. They regularly captured snakes in the 250-hectare study area, using identifying markings to track more than 3000 individuals over a 12-year span—about the lifetime of a garter snake.
The study goes into much more detail and deserves a look! To read more on this incredibly interesting study, visit Science.org here.
In the hottest and wryest region of Vietnam, deep in the dry lowland forest of Nui Chua National Park, researchers discovered a new species of blind skink. Searching around the leaf litter around the yellow-bellied termite mounds that these skinks preferred to dine on, the found 7 specimens. When they looked closer, they realized they had a new species, the Ninh Thuận blind skink ()
Ninh Thuan blind skinks have a “worm-like” body that can reach about 4.6 inches in length, the study said. Their eyes are “rudimentary” and “completely covered by scales.” They are also “limbless” with only males having “rudimentary” hind limbs that form “flap-like structures” near their tails.
To read more about this cool discovery click here.