Herp Photo of the Day

image from Iowa County Sheriff facebook page of Burmese found in WI

This is WRONG and puts our entire hobby at risk.

While at NARBC Tinley I spent a little time with a few vendors, one was Bryan Suson of Sundown Reptiles with his abronia and a few special monitors! It was super short because Bryan is ALWAYS a very busy guy at the show. Thanks for the time Bryan!

Hey, it's Earth Day.

Hear ye, hear ye!

You asked, we've made it happen.

It has been ages since I have been able to say this and boy does it feel good!
This weekend Kingsnake.com is officially BACK at the mighty Tinley Park NARBC!!
Come meet Jon with me, it is my first time too!

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Checkout the sneak peek at part of Kingsnake's new homepage.

A Japanese tree frog ( Dryophytes japonicus ). They are arboreal frogs, active from spring to autumn, and hibernate underground in winter. © Yorozu Kitamura | Dreamstime.com There are so many ways that reptiles and amphibians give back to humanity and here is another amazing one. Are you on a GLP1? Thank a gila. Cancer research and blood pressure meds are using venom, however, this is a new approach! Gut bacteria of several amphibians is being studied for potential benefits related to cancer research; the Japanese tree frog, Dryophytes japonicus, appears to have a beneficial bacterium, Ewingella americana, hanging out in their intestines!

In a mouse colorectal cancer model, a single intravenous administration of E. americana achieved complete tumor elimination with a 100% complete response (CR) rate. This dramatically surpasses the therapeutic efficacy of current standard treatments, including immune checkpoint inhibitors (anti-PD-L1 antibody) and liposomal doxorubicin (chemotherapy agent). ... This research demonstrates that unexplored biodiversity represents a treasure trove for novel medical technology development and holds promise for providing new therapeutic options for patients with refractory cancers.

Gorgeous Geckos a plenty.

What's your favorite gecko?

B. E. A. u. tiful

Ibu Baron aka "The Baroness" and the crew In late 2025, in Sulawesi, there were reports of a giant snake roaming. It was reported to be the biggest ever seen! Licensed snake handler Diaz Nugraha and natural history photographer Radu Frentiu headed out on an expedition to confirm the rumors of the snake! There they found Ibu Baron or "The Baroness".

According to Guinness World Records, the snake measured 7.22 meters using a surveyor’s tape. She was also weighed inside a canvas sack on scales normally used for rice, coming in at 96.5 kilograms, or about 213 pounds. She hadn’t recently eaten, which is worth noting, since a large meal can dramatically inflate a python’s weight.

Erm, I'm supposed to be here.

Tiger Legged Monkey Frog posted to Kingsnake by Herpetologia

Updates?
We've been a little quieter about updates as we work feverishly in the background.

Thank you all for your patience and being on this journey with us.
We have some cool updates coming soon, this picture might even be a teaser.

Check it out - Kingsnake's new logo in the wild.

Thank you Hissed_Snakes for spreading the word, Kingsnake is back, and Kingsnake is for everyone.

By the time a human brain registers danger, a viper’s strike is already over. Here’s how these snakes can move faster than mammalian nervous systems can respond. getty For years people have been fascinated with the speed of a snake's strike, especially that of a venomous snake. The question of which is fastest is always the biggest, it's the viper btw. But what really are the mechanics behind the how and is there a way that we can avoid it?

In practical terms, this gap between perception and movement creates a hard physiological limit. No amount of training, vigilance or experience can meaningfully overcome it once a strike has begun. From a biological standpoint, this places vipers in a unique category. Their strikes are fast enough to outpace even the fastest mammalian sensorimotor loops, which means that evading the strike will depend fully on anticipating it, rather than reacting to it. This is why prey species that survive vipers often rely on distance, vigilance or erratic movement; speed alone is not enough.

1 / 1Do Western Ghats King Cobras, Ophiophagus kaalinga, take the train? (a) View of Chandor Station, Goa, India, from below the platform, showing the vegetation and the concrete pillars, where the snake was found. This location is atypical and unsuitable for king cobras. (b) Laborer accommodations lie just a dirt path away from the concrete pillars where the king cobra was recorded. (c) The snake emerged from beneath a pile of railway tracks stored at the site for ongoing railway maintenance and repair. (d) An Indian Cobra (Naja naja) on a windowsill in the moving Lokshakti Express train near Valsad, Gujarat State, India. Photos by Dikansh S. Parmar (a, b), Sourabh Yadav (c), and Sameer Lakhani (d). Credit: Biotropica (2026). DOI: 10.1111/btp.70157 We all have laughed at the movie "Snakes on a Plane" but now the reality of snakes on a train is all too true for the cobras in India! Many travelers started reporting, with photos, the Western Ghats King Cobra (Ophiophagus kaalinga) riding on the train. These vulnerable snakes started popping up in odd locations in the country, in ranges that are not hospitable to their needs.

In 2017, study author Dikansh Parmar was volunteering with a local animal rescue group that received a call about a snake onboard a train. The incident is now included as part of this study. Another train rescue occurred in 2019, which ended up in a newspaper report in Uttarakhand. An incident occurred in 2023, in which a snake catcher from Gujarat State snapped a picture of an Indian Cobra sitting in a train window. The study team writes, "With the increased global availability of low-cost smartphones and social media in recent years, the number of reports of snakes on and around trains in India has increased, with three incidents recorded in a 30-day period, and many more emerging on social media."