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OdatriaNewsletter of the Victorian Herpetological Society

No. 16, December 2015

2016 VHS Committee:President: Adam SapianoSecretary: Kevin WelshTreasurer: Shane BrodieExec. Comm. Member: John McGrathExec. Comm. Member: Shane Robinson

Odatria Editor/ProducerKevin Welsh

“Odatria” is published by The Victorian Herpetological Society Inc, Copyright 2015 all rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced or stored by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be directed to VHS committee.

Any views or opinions are entirely those of the relevant author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Victorian Herpetological Society Inc.

Correspondence:PO Box 4208, RINGWOOD VIC 3134vhs@optusnet.com.au

www.vhs.com.au

Photo credits with photos. Uncredited photosare from VHS archives. Photos published are the property of both the Victorian HerpetologicalSociety Inc. and the respective authors. Subject to full copyright and all rights are reserved.

Any articles should be sent to the editor in electronicform and/or in printed paper format. All articles are refereed to person/s in the respective field. Photos, slides and diagrams are encouraged as all can be used and should be sent via registered post or email. Taxonomy usually follows Wilson & Swan, 2003 but authors can cite other references if used. The VHS editorial staff have the right to refuse publishing any articles that are deemed unsuitable, offensive or controversial.

The VHS would like to thank the following individuals for their help & support: Daavid Turnbull, Judy Turnbull, Andrew Owen, Jennifer Lewin, Robyn Welsh, Shane Simpson, John McGrath, Caroline Dean, Elaine Brock, Mike Swan, Mimmo Zagarelos,

My Favourite Story by Mair Swartz

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ContentsEditorial

by Adam Sapiano 3

Cover Photograph: Xian - New Green Tree Python mum Morelia viridis by Andrew Owen of

Supreme Green Tree Pythons

Ten Coolest Lizards5

Herp Happenings15

Samaraby Thalia Schlittler

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Meeting ReviewGreg Fyfe

September 21st, 201411

Expo 20165th March 2016

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EDITORIAL

Well another year has almost gone; the VHS committee is working hard behind the scenes on a number of different things.

We have developed a new and exciting website for you all. The website is up and running but we are still making changes. The plan is to have as many memberships as possible online. This will allow you to renew and pay online. You will be able to update your details at any time to ensure you don’t miss out on anything.

We also announced our first ever Expo dinner on the 4th of March 2016! This is promising to be a great night. With international Herpetologist Romulus Whitaker joining us at the Melbourne Zoo for dinner and a presentation. If you want to be a part of this great event contact us now, vhs@optusnet.com.au.

The expo date has also been set for 5th of March 2016. This date was locked in a long time ago as we are limited with venue availability. Please contact us for more information if you would like to have a table at our Expo or if you have something you would like to donate for our auction.

We have also had a number of great speakers at our meetings including, “The Reptile Doctor” Shane Simpson, John Cann and Cindy Jones. I would like to thank our good friend John “the wrangler” McGrath for organising these guest speakers. John has promised me he has got a few more great speakers lined up for next year.

I look forward to seeing you all soon, remember to book and pay for your Dinner tickets ASAP as we have limited numbers available. Please have a safe and happy holiday season.

I look forward to seeing you all soon either at a meeting, expo or around the traps.

Happy Herping,

Adam Sapiano

WANTED

The Odatria editorial team are looking for enthusiastic people to help with all aspects of the production of Odatria. It takes a lot of effort and many ‘phone calls to put each edition together. If you feel that you have some skills to offer, are passionate about the hobby and have spare some time to assist us - please contact the team at:- vhs@optusnet.com.au

by Adam Sapiano

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Samara was my beautiful green tree python.

The first time I ever walked into the reptile room my eyes went straight to her she was at the back of the room but because of her bright colours I saw her first.

I have always loved green tree pythons so when I saw Samara I wanted to be the keeper of her, She was the first snake I became assistant keeper of.

She was so special to me. I remember going in on Fridays after school getting her out of her cage and just having her around my neck and doing jobs with her there until like 6 o’clock.

Samara was the first snake to bite me which to some people might sound strange but she actually showed me that it’s wasn’t that bad to be bitten and didn’t hurt that much.

I didn’t know this beautiful snake for long enough when she she was taken by the fire, she actually didn’t die in the fire she died after as a result to the fire.

But in the time that I did know her we spent some special time together this beautiful snake will always be remembered specially by me. She was so important she was like my own - I loved her to bits.

I’m going to have to stop writing now or I’ll end up in a puddle of tears.

Thank-you to everyone that helped with donations and support to our reptile room as we are slowly getting back up and running, and thank-you Samara for being such a big part in my life, love you very much and I always will.

SAMARAThalia Schlittler, Lilydale High School

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10. Thorny dragon (Moloch horridus) An Australian lizard that grows up to 20 cm in length, and can live up to 20 years. Most of these dragons are coloured in camouflaging shades of brown and grey. They are covered entirely with conical spines and also have a spiny fake head on the back of its neck. They present the “fake head” to potential predators by dipping their real head.

9. Panther Chameleon (above) (Furcifer pardalis) Found in the eastern and northern parts of Madagascar. Male Panther chameleons grow to a typical length of 45 cm. Females are about half that size.

7. Tokay gecko (right) (Gekko gecko) A gecko native to large parts of Asia. Its habitat is rainforest trees and cliffs but they can be found around humans too, on walls and ceilings. The Tokay Gecko is the second largest Gecko species, attaining lengths of about 28–51 cm for males, and 18–48 cm for females, with weights of only 150–400 grams. They are distinctive in appearance, with a bluish or grayish body, sporting spots ranging from light yellow to bright red.

8. Jackson’s chameleon (Trioceros jacksonii) An African chameleon first discovered in 1896. They are sometimes called three-horned chameleons because males possess three brown horns: one on the nose and one above each eye. Their color is light green but like all chameleons, they can change color quickly. Adult size is 30 cm and they eat mainly small insects.

Ten Coolest Lizards This list is reproduced from MostToday.com. As always, if you disagree greatly from this list or just wish to submit you own, feel free to send us your own particular top ten reptiles or amphibians (complete with pictures)

and we will happily publish it in a later edition of Odatria.

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�. Lesser Chameleon (Furcifer minor) The Lesser chameleon is a species of lizard in the Chamaeleonidae family, endemic to Madagascar island. This species is endangered by its habitat loss.

�. Green Iguana (Iguana iguana) The Green Iguana, or simply Iguana is a large species of lizard native to Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. It grows to 1.5 metres in length from head to tail, with bodyweights upward of 9 kg).

4. Oriental Garden Lizard (Calotes versicolor) The – Found widely distributed in Asia. During the breeding season, the male gets a bright red throat which led to a common but incorrect name of “Bloodsucker”. In reality, the Oriental Garden Lizard eat mainly insects.

3. Red-headed Rock Agama (Agama agama) The Found in most of Subsaharan Africa, it can often be seen in the heat of the day on rocks or walls. In the breeding season, the males develop amazing colorful markings: the head, neck and tail turn bright orange, and the body turns dark blue. Outside of the breeding season, the male is plain brown. Its primary source of food is insects.

2. Parson’s Chameleon (Calumma parsonii) A very large species of chameleon that is endemic to forests in eastern and northern Madagascar. They reach up to 68 cm (27 in) in length.

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1. Galapagos Land Iguana (Conolophus subcristatus) A species of lizard that is endemic to the Galápagos Islands. It is estimated that 5,000 – 10,000 land iguanas are found in the Galapagos. In the past, their population was so big that Charles Darwin remarked that “…when we were left at James [Island], we could not for some time find a spot free from their burrows on which to pitch our single tent”. He then continued to describe the Galapagos Land Iguanas as “ugly animals, of a yellowish orange beneath, and of a brownish-red colour above: from their low facial angle they have a singularly stupid appearance”. They grow to a length of 1-1.5 meters and weigh 11 kg. It is estimated that they have a life span of 50-60 years

The following photos were provided to us by Elaine Brock. They highlight a few species of our wonderful Australian lizards.

Gidgee Skinks (Egernia stokesii)

Land Mullets (Egernia major)

Storr’s Monitor (Varanus storri)

Ridge-tailed monitor (Varanus acanthurus)

Blue-tongued lizards (Tiliqua scincoides)

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My Favourite Story

I love stories, especially those where snakes are involved.When I was asked to contribute some content to this magazine I was wondering what I should write about. I could tell the story of when a Mozambique spitting cobra spat in my eye. Or when my friend, the Vice Chairman of the South African Herpetological society, Arno Naude, lost his toe because he was bitten by a puff adder in the foot through a small hole in his shoe while being filmed on TV. However, the story I would really like to tell comes from herpetological legend Austin Stevens.

I first heard of Austin as a young boy. He was described to me as “That guy who is breaking the world record for staying the longest time in an enclosure with 36 of South Africans deadliest snakes”. Which, by the way was 107 days. Austin worked at a snake park where I saw my first ball python, blood python and carpet python. Austin has written 2 books: Snakes in My Bed and Snake Masters, both of which are highly amusing and a must for snake enthusiasts. (See below for links)

Austin was kind enough to allow me to use the following story about a South African rock python. The python can grow up to six meters in length. Aside from its beauty it’s pure teeth and muscle.

The locals of South Africa fear snakes immensely especially those that have a girth the size of a man’s thigh. They are a protected species and only the native bushman is allowed to kill them for food.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Taken from the book Snakes in My Bed, Chapter 7

One summer afternoon, as I was about to close the park for the day, the phone rang in the front office. I lifted the receiver and an excited voice, with a heavy Afrikaans accent, boomed in my ear. `Snake park? My name is Pieterse. We got a snake, meneer (sir), a big one! It’s in a hole we bulldoze on my plaas (farm). Please — can you fetch it before the locals kill it? It’s very big, meneer!’

The call came from the Warmbaths farming district, some

one hundred kilometres away, and the farmer in question was desperate. ‘I don’t mind the snake on my plaas,’ he told me earnestly. ‘It eats all the rats and things. But it’s very big and my workers won’t come to work if the snake is here!’

I could sympathise with his predicament. He knew enough to understand the value of a large python on his property, but to explain this to his superstitious rural staff who considered all snakes to be both dangerous and evil, especially a large one like this, was almost impossible.

Postponing all other plans, I assured Mr Pieterse that I was on my way, and hurriedly scribbling down directions, I set out at high speed, arriving in record time just one hour later.

Mr Pieterse was waiting and he greeted me with a crushing handshake. ‘Ag, so glad you could come, man,’ he exclaimed with a smile. ‘We must save this snake. She’s a beauty!’ I was pleased that a hardworking farmer could be bothered to make time to save a snake. More often than not I encountered a negative attitude from farmers, for whom a `dead snake’ was usually the ‘best snake’.

He climbed into my vehicle and guided me across his land, first asking me to stop off at the African workers’ quarters where we collected two men and a couple of empty grain sacks. `I have one man watching the snake,’ Pieterse informed me. ‘But I think we might need these grain sacks, and the extra men.’

We bumped along the dusty track which stretched across the fields and eventually came to a stationary bulldozer, where I was instructed to stop. `She’s down in the hole.’ Pieterse pointed. Following his arm, I spotted a large hole beneath the half-excavated roots of an old wattle tree.

‘I’m building a dam, you know,’ Pieterse continued, ‘but I stopped when I found the snake; and anyway, all my workers ran away. That’s when I called you.’ Stepping down into the excavation, I moved across to the hole and

by Mair Swartz

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cautiously brought my face close to the opening. I peered into the gloom and immediately recognised the skin pattern of an African rock python.

The body girth was enormous, suggesting a female, but of the head there was no sign. Prodding the coil closest to me I was immediately rewarded with a long, powerful hiss, like steam released from a pressure pipe, the sound frighteningly amplified in the underground chamber. I prodded again, aware now of the approximate position of the snake’s head, and it lunged out in anger.

I was ready for it, however, and I grabbed at the neck with both hands. I pulled backwards with all my strength, bringing five metres of coil as thick as my thigh out on top of me as I sprawled in the loose sand underfoot.

Not waiting to see the outcome of my struggle, the farmer’s ‘helpers’ had all stealthily disappeared, leaving only Pieterse behind to help me.

`What must I do? Tell me what must I do?’ he cried, running towards me where I wrestled on the ground, giant coils all over me.

`Grab the body!’ I shouted breathlessly. ‘I’ve got the head, but she’s very strong! We’ll have to drag her to the car.’

So together we pushed and pulled our way up the slope until with a great heave, we managed to bundle the now furious reptile into the open trunk of my car. I released the head at the last moment and jumped back, just as she struck out viciously, determined to avenge this abuse.

She was an extremely large snake and filled the entire luggage compartment. Hurriedly I tossed in all the empty grain sacks supplied by Pieterse, in the hope of covering her and thus calming her down but she struck out again angrily, scattering sacks far and wide. Frantically Pieterse and I grabbed and held and pushed until at last I managed to slam the lid shut without amputating the python’s head, or our hands, in the process.

Suddenly, miraculously, the helpers reappeared, asking politely if they could go now, seeing as the snake was successfully taken care of. Anger flared briefly in Pieterse’s face. `Voetsak!’ he roared at them, throwing his arms into the air. `Voetsak (go away), you cowards.’ And they all turned away meekly, thankful to be dismissed, however harshly, and headed back to their quarters.

I dropped Pieterse back at his house and thanked him sincerely for his time and trouble and, leaving him with an open invitation to visit the park any time as my guest, I headed back towards the main road and on to the park.

By now the sun had set and it was getting dark quickly. Deciding that the sooner I get the giant python into a spacious cage the better, I kept my foot flat down on the accelerator. I had gone about twenty kilometres when something lying across the road caught my eye as it momentarily showed up in the headlights, and before I could touch the brakes, two lightly pinned black cables disappeared under my wheels at 140 km per hour.

‘Damn!’ I muttered to myself as the familiar white reflective cross-bands stepped into the road to wave me down. This I did not need. I jumped on the brakes and brought the car to a screeching halt just beyond the traffic officer, who glared at me with disapproval.

Sitting well hidden in the bushes a few metres off the road sat two more traffic officers, closely studying the readings on their little machine and by the gleeful looks on their faces I knew this was the one they had been waiting for. They were obviously making a night of it, too, judging by the gas cooker sizzling in the background.

The officer strolled up to my open window and looked at me, unsmiling. ‘Would you mind please stepping out of the vehicle?’ he said. He then proceeded to stalk around the car, looking very grave, pen and clipboard at the ready.

I did as I was asked, deciding to plead the truth and appeal to the humanitarian in him. `Officer, I’m the curator of the Hartebeespoort Dam Snake and Animal Park,’ I told him. ‘I have just collected a very large snake from a farmer near Warmbaths and I must transport it to the park as quickly as possible. Please don’t delay me!’

The officer peered at me quizzically from behind a serious pair of mirror-faced dark glasses. ‘That’s a different approach if ever I’ve heard one,’ was all he said. He moved to the rear of the car. ‘Please open your baggage compartment.’

My heart skipped a beat. ‘Please — no,’ I said. ‘Just write out the fine and I’ll be on my way.’ I did not want to have to tackle the python so soon again. The man was unmoved. ‘The baggage compartment!’ he insisted. I sighed heavily. ‘Officer, there is a great big snake in there. I can’t take the chance of upsetting it now. Please just write out my ticket.’

The other two officers were interested now and they strolled over to where we stood. `He must be hiding something serious in there to come up with a cock-and-bull story like that!’ one of them sneered. `This is illegal! You have no right to search my car!’ It was my last hope and they were ready for it. `With the speed you’ve just clocked up on our indicator, we can make or break your future for the next two years or more. We suggest you cooperate with us now and save a lot of time; unless of course you have something to hide?’ They all smiled at me smugly.

Angry now, I snatched the keys from the ignition and handed them roughly to the first officer. ‘OK. Go ahead,’ I said, ‘but I’m warning you, there’s a BIG snake in there

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the volume of his cries went up a notch as the snake began to tighten its grip around his neck and shoulders.

Again I called to his comrades. ‘Help me lift this snake, for God’s sake! I’m holding the head!’ I told them. The officer on the ground was clearly out of control and it was obvious he was beyond helping himself, such was his terror.

The other two now crept closer and under my orders we managed to free their suffering colleague from the python’s coils. For the second time that day I shoved, pushed and fought the reptile back into the compartment and slammed the lid on the biggest, angriest snake I had ever handled.

For some minutes we all simply stood there in the darkness, panting and wheezing, the officers stupefied by what they had just experienced. Then I said, ‘Can I go now, please?’ Still breathing hard, they turned and stared at me, as though in a trance, and in silence I climbed into my car, started the motor and pulled slowly away.

Looking back in the rearview mirror, I saw them standing there in the road, unmoving, faces still blank. I put my foot down and headed for home.

Website: www.austinstevens.net Online Shop: http://astevensadmin.redbubble.com Facebook: h t t p : / / w w w . f a c e b o o k . c o m /AustinStevensAdventurer AuthorPage: h t t ps : / /www.amazon .com/au tho r /austinstevens

NEXT VHS EXPO

Saturday 5th March 2016 �:00am - 5:00pm

MELBOURNE SHOWGROUNDS EPSOM ROAD ASCOT VALE

ALSO

INAUGURAL VHS DINNER

Friday 4th March 2016 6:30pm - 11:00pm

MELBOURNE ZOO ???? ROAD PARKVILLE

and you might get bitten!’

The three men chuckled, exchanging knowing looks. By now it had become dark, with no sign of a moon. And it was even darker in the trunk of the car. One officer produced a battery operated torch, bathing the interior in light. They bent closer and stared at the pile of suspicious looking sacks.

As one they all leaned forward to pull at the top layers, and from deep below, sounding like a steam-driven locomotive as it prepares to accelerate to maximum power, there came a whooosh! of escaping air, amplified ten times by the confinement of the baggage compartment, and like a steam geyser, the pile of empty grain sacks erupted skywards, as an enormous body of seething fury, metres of thick muscular coils, came hurtling out of the depths and lunged with all its considerable might at the now wide-eyed, open-mouthed, stunned intruders.

The first strike went high, connecting the open compartment lid with a shattering crash. Pulling back, the furious reptile immediately lunged again, more accurately this time, and the two closest officers hurled themselves backwards, while the third collapsed right where he stood, screaming and holding his hands over his head. The torch clattered to the ground, the globe shattering as it fell.

I jumped forward in the sudden darkness, risking all, and grabbed desperately for the head as the powerful snake forced her way out of the trunk. `Help me dammit!’ I yelled at the two officers behind me, but they were clawing their panicstricken way into the night as giant coils of snake came tumbling out of the car and spilled directly onto the still cringing officer blubbering at my feet. Needless to say

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The meeting began with the ever popular VHS auction, which was a great success. Auction items included Bearded Dragons (Rick Walker bloodline), various reptile books, a dimming day/night temperature controller, ceramic heat emitters and reptile related children’s toys. As always, any donations (herp or non-herp) are greatly appreciated.Promotion of the upcoming 2015 VHS Expo was also discussed. This year over 40,000 flyers and posters have been printed and ‘Reptile Education Victoria’ has also promoted the Expo via their ‘Reptile bus’ at the Royal Melbourne Show.

It was then time to call on Greg Fyfe. Greg is a well known herpetologist, having spent much of his time living in the Northern Territory, where he worked as a National Park Ranger before moving to Alice Springs to set up his native reptile display, which he operated for over 10 years. Greg has 35+ years experience in the field and is most well known for his chapter on Skinks (pp. 259-387) in Mike Swan’s ‘Keeping and Breeding Australian Lizards’, 2008 (Herp Books, Lilydale, Victoria, Australia) and ‘Keeping Children’s Pythons’ 2003, Fyfe, Greg, Green, Darren (Australian Reptile Keeper Publications, Bendigo, Victoria, Australia).

Greg delivered his presentation in two parts; Part I: Life as a fly-in-fly-out (FIFO) fauna handler and spotter working on gas and water pipelines in South East Qld, and Part II: Captive husbandry and breeding of some arid zone Brown Snake species (Pseudonaja spp).

During the recent resources boom in Australia, iron-ore and natural gas spawned a thriving industry. The Gladstone pipeline (Eastern Queensland) was one of the projects Greg worked on which comprised thousands of kilometres of pipe line for the purposes of extracting and transporting natural gas, primarily for overseas consumption. He described the creation of temporary onsite work camps in which living conditions were ‘like living in a prison cell’,

VHS MEETING REVIEWGreg Fyfe - September 21st, 2014

Edited by Elaine Brock and Greg Fyfe - Photos by Greg Fyfe

with over 500 people stationed in each camp. Greg mainly worked in the vicinity of Roma in outback Qld, hundreds of kilometres from the port facilities at the end of the pipeline at Gladstone.

To lay the enormous pipeline, much of the flora, such as native trees, needed to be cleared along a fifty metre wide corridor for the length of the pipeline. However, the local farmers, from whom the land was rented, favoured Bottle-trees, so some of these were relocated or the pipe made to bend around them. Greg worked on several pipelines over 70 kilometres in length, which gives an idea of the scale of the task. Generally, areas designated for pipelines also have many dead trees scattered throughout the farm areas, which also provide a habitat for much wildlife. Most farmers prefer the entire area to be cleared.

In order to ensure animal safety, any trees with hollows are marked with tape for inspection and, if any animals are present, they are re-located to a suitable local habitat. If any animals are accidentally injured during this process, they are fostered by wildlife carers until they can be rehabilitated and later relocated.

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During the process of laying the pipes, trenches are usually left open for a period of between 3-8 days, which can be a hazard for reptiles, frogs and mammals, which become trapped. Trenches are checked daily for animals which may fall in and hide under sand bags provided for their cover. In particular, frog species tend to sit under the sand bags in order to remain hydrated. In trenches more than 1.5 metres deep, animals are scooped out with a net, with the fauna spotter/handler remaining above the trench.

Greg noted that the Spotted Marsh Frog is a species which may be particularly difficult to remove from the trenches (as are cows - which also tend to fall in). To assist animals exit the trench, ramps are created so they can independently climb out of the trenches. Other frog species Greg has encountered during this project have included:

Greg has also come across incredible Water Holding frogs, still in their cocoons, during torpor. He described the cocoon as consisting of ‘several layers of skin’ in which the frog appeared to be ‘wrapped’. Greg was able to re-locate the frogs and re-cover them over with mud to preserve moisture. During his time working on pipe-lines he has encountered only two of this particular species (both in their cocoons).

Many marsupials have also been found trapped in pipelines and required rescue. However, ‘on the up-side’, many

cane toads may be buried along with the pipes during the process.

In order to further understand the range and numbers of many animals, GPS positions of animals were logged, as were species identification and release locations. Queensland National Parks have submitted much data on the range extensions of some species to aid in conservation and preservation of native wildlife.

Lizard and Turtle species encountered by Greg have included:-

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Many Eastern Brown snakes were found, but only in ‘certain areas’. Greg also adds that most appeared in ‘good condition’, were ‘fairly quiet’ and ‘behaved quite nicely’. There were no reports of envenomation on the project. Greg also observed much variation in the colour of the Eastern Brown snakes he encountered. Their heads may look like an Eastern in colour, but their bodies were more like a Western colouration.

Other snake species encountered whilst working on the pipeline project included a Carpet Python (hatchling, South Eastern locale, Brisbane) and one other form of Metcalfei. The two Carpet python species appeared to ‘cross over in habitat’.

Greg did not observe any Mulgas (Pseudechis australis) or Red-bellied Black Snakes (Pseudechis porphyriacus) in the Roma area. He further notes that no Death Adders are found within this locale ‘these days’.

Greg emphasised that cultural heritage must also be observed when considering clearing a site for the proposed pipe-line. If any artefacts are found within the surface layer of soil when initial environmental tests are conducted, the pipe-line project is aborted.

Part II of Greg’s presentation detailed his experiences in keeping various Brown Snakes and other Elapids.

Greg housed his Inland Taipans and Eastern Brown Snakes, Speckled Brown Snakes and Death Adders in melamine enclosures on metal frames (for display purposes). His set up comprised UV fluoro tubes, with the ballasts under the cage floor to create a ‘hot spot’, separate basking spots and reverse-cycle air conditioning for the building.

The animals were on display all year round and were not cooled during winter.

Eastern Brown Snake Eating A Mouse Photo by Greg Fyfe

Greg kept a wild-caught Brown Snake for display, which ‘settled down’ within a month of captivity. Any animals which were wild-caught required a permit from the NT government.

In Alice Springs, Greg received call-outs for Western Brown snakes, which he was also able to put on display. The Eastern Brown snakes Greg encountered in Alice Springs were generally around 1.5 metres in length. In one particular wild-caught specimen, Greg observed an arthropod (a Pentostomid) being ‘coughed’ up from the lungs of a Brown snake. The parasite had eaten part of the tissue from the snake’s lungs but the snake ‘still lived’.

The Alice Springs form of Western Brown snake is generally documented as having an orange coloured body and black head. Greg noted that over 45% of the Western browns he encountered had some variation to this colouration. Some had an ‘orange body’ which was ‘almost black on top’. Another 45% of Westerns had ‘herring-bone’ - brown or pale beige body patterning with a pale coloured head. Most of the Western Brown snakes (Alice Springs form) had orange dots on their throat, and generally averaged one metre in length.

Greg was still able to breed his captive Brown snakes each season, with just reverse-cycle air-conditioning and despite the fact that they were not cooled. He also observed that this ‘did them no real harm’ and they were able to co-exist in pairs.

Greg describes a first clutch from one Western Brown snake as containing 30 eggs and a second clutch of 24 from the same female in the same season. On average, Greg’s Western Brown snakes produced around 20 eggs per clutch.

Western Brown Snake 2001 Photo by Greg Fyfe

Western Brown Snake 2002, colour variation Photo by Greg Fyfe

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The clutches contained both the ‘banded’ and ‘herring-bone’ body patterned neonates in the same clutch. Some were black-headed with an orange body, whilst others were ‘pale-headed’. Initially, the neonates were fed fresh eels, and later progressed to pinkie mice.

During the 1980s and early ‘90s, Greg was able to release captive bred Brown snakes into the wild in the NT, with permission. However, he generally chose to sell ‘banded’ individuals to keepers in Victoria, where they were highly sought after.

Greg housed his Speckled Brown snakes and Eastern Brown snakes individually. He observed that Speckled Brown snakes would ‘calm down quickly in captivity’. They also tended to ‘flatten their neck’, ‘tilt their head up’ and maintain a ‘low posture’ when threatened, rather than lifting their head up ‘like a Cobra’. They were housed (singularly) in 1.2 metre enclosures.

Greg also noted that his Speckled Brown snakes did not feed during winter and that wild-caught animals would only begin to eat from spring onwards. As a species they were ‘easy to maintain’, and were fed on a diet of pinkies only (not lizards). It was necessary only to ‘manipulate’ the mouse for the snakes to commence eating. He describes his Speckled Brown neonates as ‘cute’, ‘very calm’, and ‘robust’ with an ‘orange spot on their nose’. Greg’s presentation highlighted many interesting and seldom seen reptiles, amphibians and mammals which he observed and relocated during his consignment. Greg’s

Western Brown Snake 2001 Photo by Greg Fyfe

observations of the Speckled Brown snake were also of particular interest to our members.

An enjoyable and interesting evening was had by all.

SOME OTHER REPTILES FOUND ON THE GASFIELDS PIPELINE PROJECTS

Western Brown Snake 2001 Photo by Greg Fyfe

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Jump To It! A Frog’s Leaping Style Depends On The Environment

A frog’s jump is not as simple as it seems....Australian scientists have discovered that different species adopt different jumping styles depending on their environment.

The Lead researcher, Miss Marta Vidal-Garcia ( PhD candidate, Australian National University ), found that tree dwelling frogs reached great heights but didn’t cover much distance with their jumps. Aquatic frogs, meanwhile, jumped very long distances but remained close to the ground. On the other hand, the jumps of burrowing frogs were low both in height and distance. The scientists used high speed video cameras to film the jumps of approximately 230 wild frogs, from 30 different species.

‘We searched actively for the frogs at night after heavy rains during their breeding season, as they are more likely to be active’, Miss Vidal-Garcia said. The frogs were caught by hand and filmed in the field with two high-speed filming cameras in order to get a Three-Dimensional view of their jumps. The videos were then analysed frame by frame by computer software and variables including height, distance and speed were measured. The results showed that frogs from different habitats adopt distinct jumping styles.

Frogs from different habitats also had distinct shapes. ‘Burrowing frogs have very squat bodies and short limbs’ explained Miss Vidal-Garcia. ‘This is because they tend to occupy arid environments so this helps to minimise water loss through their permeable skin. The aquatic frogs, however, have more streamlined bodies with longer limbs to improve swimming ability’.

Miss Vidal-Garcia added ‘In the future, I am hoping to do more fieldwork so that I can collect data from fifty species

and cover all the Australian frog clades. I also want to investigate how the shape of the pelvis influences jumping style’.

Science Daily (Society for Experimental Biology)June 2014

State To Put Squeeze On Black Market Wildlife Trade

Native fauna is being traded over social media sites, forcing Queensland wildlife officers to monitor the internet as part of a crackdown on the illegal trade in the state’s fauna.

Environment minister Andrew Powell said snakes, turtles, geckos and birds were the most popular creatures on the black market, with more than 200 animals seized during raids over the past two years.

“Last year a Brisbane man was caught with 40 protected turtles at his home and fined $9500,” he said. “Not only was it illegal to have taken and kept the turtles, but they were in an inadequate sized fish tank that was clogged with fecal matter, skin cells and rotten meat.”

Department of Environment and Heritage Protection wildlife officer Cameron Wregg said the health of rescued animals varied.

“We have seen animals that have been in a very poor condition that have had to be euthanased, to animals that are in a fairly good condition but have not been kept with the appropriate licensing and permits,” he said. ”We’ve seen some very emaciated animals, dehydrated animals, animals that have been taken from the wild with hooks and the like, and those hooks have still been found in the animals which have had to be later surgically operated on.”

HERP HAPPENINGS

Tree frogs reach great heights with their jumps, but do not cover much distance.

Turtles found living in awful conditions during a recovery operation.

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Mr Powell said social media and buy/sell/swap websites had allowed the illegal trade to blossom, and encouraged so-called “designer” species, most common in snakes, where colour mutations such as albinism were highly sought after.

“A new focus will be the illegal practice of cross breeding different species to create hybrids,” he said. “Scientists have advised this poses a real risk to conservation if animals were to escape and establish themselves in the wild.”

Mr Powell said venomous snakes were also often found in criminal hideouts being used to protect drug stashes, and in many cases were unable to be rehabilitated.

Mr Wregg said exotic species were reported immediately to Customs, but EHP officers also came across domestic species released into the wrong areas.

NATALIE BOCHENSKIBrisbane TimesJune 2014

Nt Crocodile Industry ‘To Double’

Get ready to snap up a lot more handbags and back-scratchers: the value of the Northern Territory crocodile farming market is set to double to $40 million a year.

THE industry is now worth about $20 million a year to the NT. It will grow to $40 million over the next few years due to an expansion of the Darwin Crocodile Farm.

“Crocodile farming is an industry growing at a rapid pace because the Northern Territory has a reputation for the highest quality skins,” Minister for Lands, Planning and the Environment Peter Chandler said in a statement.

With 95 per cent of NT crocodile skins being exported overseas, the industry is a big contributor to the national bottom line, he said.

Darwin Crocodile Farm is home to 73,000 of the reptiles, making up a whopping half of those in captivity in the country.

New works there aim to improve the overall quality of skins, and are due to be completed in October.

They will include a new abattoir, more room for the crocodiles and a greener footprint, said owner Mick Burns.

“We’re expanding the capacity of the farm primarily to reduce density, density being one of those things that are unfortunately trial and error in the crocodile industry because there’s no book to read about how you best farm crocodiles,” he told reporters in Darwin on Thursday.

“Australia is leading the charge in being much smarter about how we farm.”

Expanding the farm means more room for the crocodiles as well as increasing capacity by about 10 to 20 per cent, Mr Burns said, and the abattoir would allow the animals to be processed using “the latest technology in the safest way”.

This includes reducing energy use, via water management and recycling systems and solar power.

The farm currently processes about 15,000 crocodiles a year, Mr Burns said.

“If they were all perfect (skins) that probably makes 5000 bags; it goes way beyond bags, of course, to smaller items: clutch purses, belts, boots.”

He said the farm sells a lot of skin to RM Williams.

It is also working with 10 institutions domestically and overseas to further crocodile research, including Charles Darwin University, the University of Sydney and University of Georgia in the United States.

“It goes to show how diverse industries in the Northern Territory are - we’re more than just a big mining town,” Mr Chandler said.

A project is due to begin in the coming weeks in the indigenous community of Ramingining, which will create jobs for locals who will collect, hatch and raise crocodiles before selling them back to Mr Burns’ farm, he said.

AAPJuly 2014

Scientists Gear Up To Fight Deadly Snake Fungal Disease

Researchers have developed a faster and more accurate way to test for infection with Ophidiomyces ophiodiicola, a fungus that is killing snakes in the Midwest and eastern United States. The test also allows scientists to monitor the progression of the infection in living snakes.

The researchers reported on the test at the 2014 Mycological Society of America Annual Meeting.

A black market snake.

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“We need people to know that they don’t have to anesthetize an animal to collect a biopsy sample or, worse yet, euthanize snakes in order to test for the infection,” said University of Illinois comparative biosciences department professor Matthew Allender, an expert in snake fungal disease. “Now we can identify the infections earlier, we can intervene earlier and we can potentially increase our success of treatment or therapy.”

The new test uses quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR), which amplifies fungal DNA to identify the species present and measure the extent of infection.

Researchers first took notice of Ophidiomyces (oh-FID-ee-oh-my-sees) in snakes in the mid-2000s. Today the fungus threatens the last remaining eastern massasauga (mass-uh-SAW-guh) rattlesnake population in Illinois and has been found to infect timber rattlesnakes, mud snakes, rat snakes, garter snakes, milk snakes, water snakes and racers in several states, Allender said.

“I’ve tested snakes from Illinois, Tennessee and Michigan, and we’ve tested samples from snakes in New Jersey, Georgia and Virginia,” Allender said. Snakes in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio and Wisconsin have also tested positive for the fungus.

Ophidiomyces consumes keratin, a key ingredient in snake scales. It can cause scabs, nodules, abnormal molting, ulcers and other disfiguring changes to snake skin. Mortality is 100 percent in Illinois massasauga rattlesnakes found with outward signs of infection, Allender said. There are only 100 to 150 massasaugas left in Illinois, he said, and about 15 percent of those are infected with the disease.

Allender also is an affiliate of the Illinois Natural History Survey, part of the Prairie Research Institute at the U. of I. He and his INHS colleague, mycologist Andrew Miller, liken this emerging fungal disease in snakes to white-nose syndrome, another fungal disease that has killed millions of North American bats. Miller and graduate student Daniel Raudabaugh recently published an analysis of Pseudogymnoascus destructans, the fungus implicated in white-nosed syndrome, and are repeating the analysis on Ophidiomyces.

“The fungus killing these snakes is remarkably similar in its basic biology to the fungus that has killed over 6 million bats,” Miller said. “It occurs in the soil, seems to grow on a wide variety of substances, and possesses many of the same enzymes that make the bat fungus so deadly.”

Other colleagues at the INHS, herpetologists Michael Dreslik and Chris Phillips, have been studying eastern massasauga rattlesnakes in the wild for 15 years, and are working closely with Allender to characterize both biological and health factors that lead to infection. The new qPCR test is integral to this mission, Allender said. It also will help the team develop new therapies to treat infections in snakes.

“This work is truly collaborative across disciplines, allowing

the team to make advances in studying this disease that haven’t been accomplished anywhere else,” Allender said.

“Our qPCR is more than 1,000 times more sensitive than conventional PCR,” Allender said. “We can know how many [fungal spores] are in a swab and then we can start to treat the snake and we can watch to see if that number is going down.”

The researchers also are hoping to find new disinfectants that will kill the fungus so that researchers who are studying snakes in the wild will not spread it to new locales on their equipment or shoes.

“Some of our preliminary studies show that the common disinfectants that we use are not effective,” Allender said. “This fungus overcomes it.”

Science Daily(University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)July 2014

Mysterious Snake Disease Decoded

A novel virus has been identified as the possible cause of a common but mysterious disease that kills a significant number of pet snakes all over the world, thanks to research led by scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) — and three snakes named Juliet, Balthazar and Larry.

The virus, previously not thought to infect snakes at all, appears to cause “inclusion body disease.” Long the bane of zoo officials and exotic pet owners, the deadly illness spreads among boas and pythons in captivity, causing micro clumps of clustered proteins to form inside the snake, leading to bacterial infections, neurological problems, anorexia and withering, leading to death.

The new work, described this week in the American Society for Microbiology’s new open-access journal mBio, paves the way toward developing diagnostics and treatments, which may make it possible to eradicate the disease from snake collections worldwide.

“It’s a devastating disease when it gets into a collection, zoo or aquarium because it’s essentially fatal every time,” said Joe DeRisi, PhD, the senior author of the study, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator (HHMI) and vice chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UCSF.

Surprisingly, he said, the cause of the illness appears to be a completely new set of viruses of a type known as an arenavirus. The discovery came as a complete a shock to the team of scientists because, while arenaviruses are common in rodents and cause extremely nasty infections in other mammals, nobody knew they could infect reptiles.

“Now we have found that they infect snakes, as well,” said Mark Stenglein, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at UCSF who

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discovered by DeRisi and Don Ganem, MD, at the time an HHMI investigator and professor of microbiology and medicine at UCSF, in 2008.

Could DeRisi help save Larry the snake as well? Sanders suggested to Hook she had nothing to lose by asking.

DeRisi was in his office one morning in early 2009 when he spied a hand-written letter in his stack of daily mail. Inside was a plea from Hook describing Larry’s illness. She had heard he had found the cause of a mysterious parrot disease. Would he do for snakes what he did for parrots? She enclosed a picture of herself with Larry.Having never heard of the disease, DeRisi set the letter aside and it was lost under a pile of paper. Only months later, while cleaning his office, did he stumbled across it again. He was about to toss it away, but in scanning the letter again he noticed Hook mentioned the local exotic pet veterinarian Sanders. So he called, they spoke, and DeRisi decided to take on the project.

“It satisfied all the criteria as an interesting disease,” DeRisi said. But first he had to find samples to test from infected snakes.

Around the same time, inclusion body disease was diagnosed in a snake at the Steinhart Aquarium in the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Also discovered were snake mites, which are believed to be a possible vector for passing the disease from snake to snake.

Academy veterinarian Freeland Dunker decided to test all of the boas exposed to the infected snake for the disease — a complicated procedure requiring a surgical biopsy of the liver. He discovered a few more were infected, and all of them had to be euthanized to prevent any spread of the disease. Dunker asked his pathologist, Drury Reavill DVM if she knew of any current research being done on inclusion body disease for which tissues from the euthanized snakes could be used. As it turned out, Reavill had already been in touch with DeRisi’s group and knew they were looking for samples.

The effort to find the virus went into overdrive after Stenglein joined the DeRisi laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow and took on the project. But before he and DeRisi could find traces of the virus they needed to know the sequence of the boa constrictor genome so they could distinguish snake DNA sequences from viral sequences in the diseased animals. The problem was that there were no snake genomes available.

Thus, their first step was to sequence the entire boa constrictor genome, and they had to start with a snake that they were sure was free of inclusion body disease. At the Academy, Dunker helped in this effort by collecting blood from a boa constrictor named Balthazar, an education animal which was housed separately, had no contact with the rest of the boa snake collection and tested negative for the inclusion body disease.

Substantial help in the sequencing effort came from

is the first author on the paper.

Stenglein, DeRisi and their colleagues isolated at least two strains of the arenaviruses from half a dozen snakes afflicted with inclusion body disease. They could find no traces of the same viruses in snakes that were free from disease.

Arenaviruses infect mostly rodents but occasionally people, and can cause fatal hemorrhagic diseases like Lassa fever, which kills thousands of people every year in Africa. There is no evidence, however, that a snake has ever transmitted an arenavirus infection to a person despite the fact that snake owners and veterinarians handle infected snakes all the time, said DeRisi.

For years, many experts have hypothesized that a virus or some other infectious pathogen might cause inclusion body disease because of evidence that it spreads easily from snake to snake. No definitive cause has been identified until now, and the discovery may never have occurred if not for a random sequence of events, including cases of inclusion body disease in an aquarium collection, a friendly DNA sequencing competition among scientists, a postdoctoral researcher who was looking for a project, and a snake owner worried about her favorite pet.

Taryn Hook poses with her pet snake, Larry, whose condition spurred Hook to ask Joe DeRisi, PhD, a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator and vice chair of the UCSF Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, to investigate the cause of inclusion

body disease.

The story began with a snake named Larry, and his owner, Taryn Hook of San Jose, California. Before Larry, Hook had lost two snakes to inclusion body disease, and, in early 2009, she became convinced Larry had it as well. He was developing bacterial infections similar to what Hook had seen with her two other snakes. Knowing there was no treatment or cure, she was desperate to find anyone who might save her snake.

Hook took Larry to see the exotic pet veterinarian Chris Sanders, DVM, owner of the nearby Wildwood Veterinary Hospital. Sanders had just attended a conference at which he had heard DeRisi talking about his Virochip DNA microarray technology and its ability to identify viruses, fungi and other pathogens — including at least one exotic pet disease, a mysterious parrot virus — when no other gene probing technology could. The parrot virus was

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the Academy. Antibodies raised against the virus showed that these clumps were formed from arenavirus protein, further strengthening the association of this new virus and the deadly disease.

In solving this longstanding veterinary mystery and setting the stage for treatments, vaccines, and perhaps even eradication of this disease, the scientists also discovered an unexpected new branch of virus biology: The viruses they found appear to be a combination of arenaviruses and filoviruses, neither of which has been known to infect reptiles.

The article, “Identification, characterization, and in vitro culture of highly divergent arenaviruses from boa constrictors and annulated tree boas: a candidate etiological agent for snake inclusion body disease (IBD)” by Mark D. Stenglein, Chris Sanders, Amy L. Kistler, J. Graham Ruby, Jessica Y. Franco, Drury R. Reavill, Freeland Dunker, and Joseph L. DeRisi is published in the journal mBio.

In addition to the authors from UCSF, authors of this study are affiliated with Wildwood Veterinary Hospitals in Portola Valley, CA; Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, Zoo/Exotic Pathology Services in Sacramento, CA; and the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

This work was supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the National Institutes of Health.

JASON BARDIUniversity of California San FranciscoAugust 2014

Snakes Alive At Chilli Beach

A day in the life of far northern police is never dull and no truer words were said when local Lockhart River police received information about a vehicle acting suspiciously in their area.

Local police intercepted a 31-year-old Holloways Beach man and a 23-year-old Whiterock man in a utility at about

scientists participating in a friendly competition called the Assemblathon 2, which was sponsored by UC Santa Cruz and UC Davis. Balthazar’s DNA was sequenced and a number of groups around the country competed to build (assemble) the most complete genome sequence possible using the raw data.

Characterizing Balthazar’s genome paved the way for finding the arenavirus in the midst of millions of other sequences of the snakes’ DNA. This “needle in the haystack” problem was solved using custom software written in the DeRisi lab, and made available for free on his website.

This is where the shock came.

The team found two arenavirus strains in the snakes — a surprise in itself; but in addition, they observed that theviruses did not look like your ordinary arenaviruses. They looked like distant relatives of other arenaviruses but had protein coats that were more similar to those of Ebola viruses. Like arenaviruses, Ebola virus can cause fatal hemorrhagic fever when transmitted to humans. Neither of those viruses has ever been known to infect reptiles, and although it had been postulated that they share a common ancestor, no such virus linking them had ever been discovered.

Once the virus was computationally identified, the team had to find a way to grow the virus so that it could be studied further. Because the virus infects boa constrictors, the ideal way to grow it, the team reasoned, would be to infect boa constrictor cells, but no such cell line existed. So DeRisi and Stenglein turned to a third snake, named Juliet.

Juliet was a red tailed boa owned by Chris Sanders, who’d had her since his days as a young veterinary student. She was about 20 years old when Balthazar’s genome was being assembled and was dying of lymphoma. When she ultimately succumbed to the cancer, Sanders harvested her kidneys and the DeRisi laboratory was able to use them to make a boa constrictor cell line.

The scientists took virus from diseased snakes, added it to Juliet’s kidney cells growing in petri dishes and showed that the snakes accumulated exactly the same “clumps” of proteins as had been observed in the sick snakes from

On the left are kidney cells of a red-tailed boa constrictor infected with inclusion body disease, which causes micro clumps of clustered proteins to form inside the snake, leading to bacterial infections, neurological problems, anorexia and withering, leading

to death. On the right are uninfected kidney cells.Unflinching in their dedication to service of Queen and Country L-R: Constable Lorrena White, Senior Constable Russ White and

Sgt Warren Murdock with scrub pythons at Lockhart River

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anonymously via 1800 333 000 or crimestoppers.com.au 24hrs a day.

Crime Stoppers is a charitable community volunteer organisation working in partnership with the Queensland Police Service.

For all non-urgent police reporting or general police inquiries contact Policelink on 131 444.

SERGEANT CARY COOLICANMyPolice Far NorthJuly 2014

Helping Save Narrow-headed Garter-snakes From After-effects Of Slide Fire

The narrow-headed gartersnake population is dwindling, but Erika Nowak and her team at Northern Arizona University are determined to aid in its recovery, recently rescuing several snakes from ash-filled floods in Oak Creek Canyon following the Slide Fire.

Nowak, associate research professor of Biological Sciences at NAU and herpetologist at the Colorado Plateau Research Station, has been studying the narrow-headed gartersnake, which was recently listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. She said Oak Creek is one of the few places where the snake numbers are still somewhat healthy and where she has been monitoring the population for more than a decade.

As a result of the Slide Fire, the burned areas of Oak Creek were at risk for ash-filled flooding due to monsoon rains. When ash blankets the habitat, the fish that the gartersnakes feed on aren’t able to survive. Additionally, the ash covers rocks and small holes making it difficult for the snake to hide while hunting. Though the snakes can survive for some time without food, they will eventually starve to death, Nowak explained.

Nowak organized the survey and rescue mission to Oak Creek last month alongside the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Forest Service. The team included NAU

1pm on Sunday police in Portland Road, Lockhart River.

It will be alleged both men had removed a quantity of reptiles and spiders from the Kutini-Payamu (Iron Range) National Park area north of Lockhart River and they were housed in containers in the utility cab and tray, along with a firearm. Fauna seized included orange naped snakes, stimson pythons, skinks, bandi snake and tarantula like bird spiders.

The 23-year-old Whiterock man and a 31 year old Holloways Beach man were subsequently issued with a Notice to Appear (NTA) for offences under the Nature Conservation Act.

The 23-year-old was also issued with a NTA in relation to the storage of his rifle. Lockhart River Police worked with representatives from Cairns CIB and the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection (DEHP) to further the investigation.

A representative from DEHP took possession of the animals and provided further advice as to identification.

It will be further alleged, local detectives from Cairns and Smithfield and officers from DEHP seized five reptiles from a Holloways Beach address yesterday morning.

The officers also attended a Whiterock address and seized a quantity of cannabis plants and a hydroponic set up, insecure rifles and an additional 30 reptiles.

Police charged the 23-year-old Whiterock man with one count each of produce dangerous drugs, stealing and fail to secure weapons. He is due to appear in the Cairns Magistrates Court next month.

Officers from DEHP are continuing their investigation with regard to seized fauna.

Anyone with information which could assist police with their investigations should contact Crime Stoppers

One of the non-venomous scrub pythons

Adult female gartersnake.

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The Renner Springs Desert Inn along the Stuart Highway in the Northern Territory was previously thought to be too far south for the cane toads to live, but co-owner Alan Revell said masses of the animals now called the area home.

“Certainly there were hundreds and hundreds at any given time,” Mr Revell said.

CANE TOAD MYTHS

• Cane toads were a failed attempt at biological control

• The toads have caused the extinction of many Australian native species

• The toad’s poison is deadly to all Australian predators

• Toads are wiping out native frogs

Source: canetoadsinoz.com

He said contractors digging deep holes first reported the toads being nearby about six years ago, but it was only in the past two years that number began building up to plague proportions.

The numbers fluctuate depending on the time of the year but now there are always some around his roadhouse.

“Two months ago if you saw a dripping tap you would see toads eight deep trying to get the water,” he said.

Sydney University cane toad expert Professor Rick Shine said the toad was surprising researchers with its ability to adapt and change its behaviours and physiology.

He said the toads move across the landscape when it is wet, and at the invasion front it was not unusual for a toad to cover a kilometre or two in one night.

CANE TOAD FACTS

• Cane toad numbers have risen from 102 in 1935

graduate students and undergraduate interns from the Watershed Research and Education Program, as well as members of the Arizona Game and Fish Department, U.S. Forest Service, Oak Creek Ambassadors and several volunteers.

Nowak explained that the team used a preemptive two-pronged approach. “The first part was to do comprehensive surveys to assess the status of the population in Oak Creek before the flooding occurred,” Nowak said. “The second was to salvage some of the snakes to ensure we had genetic material from them in captivity in case flooding caused the unimaginable.”

The researchers believe that there are several factors contributing to the decline in population in the Oak Creek area, including major threats by nonnative species such as crayfish, predatory fish and invasive plants. Other contributing factors are habitat degradation causing higher water temperatures and decreased water quality and accidental or intentional killing of snakes by humans.

Scott Nichols, institutional veterinarian at NAU and another key player in the preservation efforts, drew blood samples from 11 gartersnakes from Oak Creek in order to establish a baseline for the blood levels in the animals.

“We are really ramping up our efforts to recover the species,” Nowak said. “We want to survey but also collect blood so we can compare blood values from captive snakes to wild snakes to improve our husbandry efforts.” In general, caring for the species in captivity has been difficult, she added.

The team also has been refining efforts for breeding over the past year with captive narrow-headed gartersnakes from the Black River, an area affected by the 2011 Wallow Fire, which involves pairing males and females and simulating the natural lifecycle of the snakes including hibernation. One female recently was confirmed pregnant and a second exhibiting reproductive behavior is scheduled for an ultrasound in the coming weeks.

“We envision NAU being a really critical player in the recovery of the species,” Nowak said. The team hopes the snakes will thrive and continue to breed so they can eventually be reintroduced into the wild in places like Oak Creek.

Science DailyNorthern Arizona UniversityJuly 2014

Cane Toads Push South Into Colder, Drier Areas, Plague Proportions At Renner

Springs Desert Inn

An outback roadhouse has become the frontline for the cane toads’ push into southern Australia, with the amphibians surprising the experts by adapting to cool, dry conditions and building up to plague proportions.

The cane toad is surprising researchers with its ability to adapt and change

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to an estimated more than 1.5 billion

• Cane toads occupy over 1.6 million square kilometres of Australia

• The largest cane toad ever confirmed was Toadzilla in the Northern Territory in 2007 that weighed 840 grams, but another from Proserpine in Queensland in 1975 allegedly weighed three kilograms.

• Cane toads can live up to 35 years in captivity

• In 2008 a cane toad named Spew survived for 40 minutes in a dog’s stomach after being swallowed whole before emerging unharmed.

Source: abc.net.au/tv/programs/canetoads.htm

“If there’s a bit of wet weather the toads can move across and then they can find one of these artificial water bodies that remains damp and they basically become aquatic animals,” Professor Shine said.

“They only manage to live in the desert by spending their time during the dry periods very close to water,” he said.

Cane toads were introduced into Australia in the 1930s to try to control beetles that were damaging sugar crops.

Experts are uncertain whether the toads had any impact on beetle numbers but the beetles are still common in Australia, suggesting they were a failure.

After being released in Cairns, Gordonvale and Innisfail in Queensland the cane toads moved north and west, reaching the Northern Territory in 1984.

GAIL LISTON and XAVIER LA CANNA ABC NewsJuly 2014

Explainer: Why Do Snakes Flick Their Tongues?

Many people think a snake’s forked tongue is creepy. Every so often, the snake waves it around rapidly, then retracts it. Theories explaining the forked tongues of snakes have been around for thousands of years. Aristotle reasoned that it provided snakes with “a twofold pleasure from savours, their gustatory sensation being as it were doubled”.

Italian astronomer Giovanni Hodierna thought snake tongues were for cleaning dirt out of their noses. Some 17th century writers claimed to have watched snakes catch flies or other animals between the forks of their tongues, using them like forceps. It is a common myth even today that snakes can sting you with their tongues. But none of those hypotheses is likely.

Most animals with tongues use them for tasting, to clean themselves or others, or to capture or manipulate their

prey. A few, including humans, also use them to make sounds. Snakes do not use their tongues for any of these things. Over the past 20 years, Kurt Schwenk, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Connecticut, has been working on understanding the function of snake tongues, and “smelling” is the closest description of what snakes do with their tongues.

TONGUES THAT SMELL

Snakes use their tongues for collecting chemicals from the air or ground. The tongue does not have receptors to taste or smell. Instead, these receptors are in the vomeronasal, or Jacobson’s Organ, which is in the roof of the mouth. Once inside the Jacobson’s Organ, different chemicals evoke different electrical signals which are relayed to the brain.

It was once thought that the tongue delivered chemicals directly to the Jacobson’s Organ, because both the organ and the pathways that lead to it are paired just like the tips of the tongue. But X-ray movies have revealed that the tongue does not move inside the closed mouth, it simply deposits the chemicals it has collected onto pads on the floor of the mouth as the mouth is closing.

It is most likely that these pads deliver the sampled molecules to the entrance of the Jacobson’s Organ when the floor of the mouth is elevated to come into contact with the roof following a tongue flick. The case for this is strengthened because geckos, skinks, and other lizards lack deeply-forked tongues but still deliver chemicals to their vomeronasal organs.

SMELLING IN 3-D

Because it is forked, the tongue of a snake can collect chemical information from two different places at once, albeit places that are fairly close together by human standards. When snakes spread the tips of their tongues apart, the distance can be twice as wide as their head. This is important because it allows them to detect chemical gradients in the environment, which gives them a sense of direction – in other words, snakes use their forked tongues to help them smell in three dimensions. Owls use their asymmetrical ears in this way to detect sound in three dimensions.

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deeply-forked tongues than females, which presumably enhances their ability to find mates. Although sexual dimorphism – where one sex is markedly different from the other – is rare in snakes, differences in tongue size are likely to be present in other species as well.

Scent-trailing is probably also quite helpful to snakes tracking down prey, including for sit-and-wait predators like vipers, which have evolved smelly but non-toxic venom components to help them relocate their bitten and envenomated prey.

When following a scent-trail, snakes simply touch their tongue tips down to the ground to pick up the chemical information lying there. But snakes can also use a different type of tongue-flick to sample airborne chemicals.

Snakes often wave their tongues in the air without putting them in contact with anything. The tongue creates air vortices, such as those formed in the water behind a boat. These vortices drift away from the boat as they form. Bill Ryerson, a student in the Schwenk lab, found that vortices created in the air by snake tongues have a special property – they do not drift away but rather stay in the vicinity of the tongue, where they can be sampled repeatedly as the tongue skirts the part of each vortex where the air velocity is the highest.

Oscillating tongue-flicks are unique to snakes. They allow snakes to sample 100 times as much air as the simple

Snakes and owls use similar neural circuitry to compare the signal strength delivered from each side of the body and determine the direction that a smell or a sound is coming from. Humans do this with their hearing too, but not as effectively.

This makes it possible for snakes to follow trails left by their prey or potential mates. In the 1930s, before guidelines on the ethical use of animals in research were as strict, German biologist Herman Kahmann experimentally removed the forked part of snakes’ tongues and found that they could still respond to smells, but that they had lost their ability to follow scent trails. These results were refined and confirmed during the 1970s.

SNIFFING OUT SEX

In the 1980s, snake biologist Neil Ford at the University of Texas at Tyler watched how male garter snakes used their tongues when they were following pheromone trails left behind by females. He found that if both tips of the male snake’s tongue fell within the width of the trail, the snake continued slithering straight ahead. However, when one tip or the other fell outside the edge of the trail, the snake turned his head away from that tip and back towards the pheromone trail, and his body followed.

Following this simple rule allowed the snakes to perform trail-following behaviour that was both accurate and directed. If both tongue tips ever touched the ground outside of the trail, the male would stop and swing his head back and forth, tongue-flicking, until he relocated the trail.Snake ecologist Chuck Smith at Wofford College found evidence that male Copperheads have longer, more

Tongue sizes in Copperhead snake males (left) and females (right). Smith et al/Journal of Zoology

Dagfhous et al/Chemical Senses

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downward extension of the tongue. The tongue then transfers these molecules to the Jacobson’s Organ via the mouth floor. Evidence suggests that male Copperheads can also find and follow females using oscillating tongue-flicks to detect airborne pheromones, although the details of how they determine direction using such dispersed and transient odours are still poorly understood.

Andrew DursoThe ConversationJuly 2014

Croc Shot In Search For Missing Man

Northern Territory Police say it is still too soon to know if a two-metre crocodile killed Travis Costa, who has been missing for almost a week.

THE 22-year-old Aboriginal from Pirlangimpi community, on Melville Island in the Tiwi Islands about 100km north of Darwin, left the community on foot on Friday night.It’s not known where he was headed, and he has not been in touch with his family since.

NT police say a two-metre crocodile was shot near the community’s beach on Wednesday, and locals reported to police that biological material was found inside.

“At this stage it is unknown if the remains are human and testing will be undertaken,” said Senior Sergeant Antony Deutrom.

The community, rangers and police continue to search for Mr Costa by foot and air.

“This is a very distressing time for the family and community,” Snr Sgt Deutrom said.

AAPAugust 2014

How Amphibians Crossed Continents: Dna Helps Piece Together 300-million-

year Journey

There are more than 7,000 known species of amphibians that can be found in nearly every type of ecosystem on six continents. But there have been few attempts to understand exactly when and how frogs, toads, salamanders and caecilians have moved across the planet throughout time.

Armed with DNA sequence data, Alex Pyron, an assistant professor of biology at the George Washington University, sought to accurately piece together the 300-million-year storyline of their journey.

Dr. Pyron has succeeded in constructing a first-of-its-kind comprehensive diagram of the geographic distribution of amphibians, showing the movement of 3,309 species

between 12 global ecoregions. The phylogeny -- or diagram of evolutionary relationships -- includes about half of all extant amphibian species from every taxonomic group.

“There have been smaller-scale studies, but they included only a few major lineages and were very broad,” Dr. Pyron said. “What we needed was a large-scale phylogeny that included as many species as possible. That allows us to track back through time, not only how different species are related, but also how they moved from place to place.”

His findings, which appear in the journal Systematic Biology, suggest that, contrary to popular belief, certain groups of amphibians may have swam long distances from one landmass to another within the past few million years.

Biologists have long hypothesized the distribution of extant lineages of amphibians has been driven by two major processes: vicariance and dispersal.

Vicariance occurs when a population is separated following a large-scale geophysical event. After the fragmentation of supercontinent Pangaea and the subsequent split of the Laurasian and Gondwanan landmasses, certain groups of amphibians were able to “hitch a ride” from one continent to another, Dr. Pyron explained. The researcher’s biogeographic analysis supports this hypothesis, showing that continental movement can explain the majority of patterns in the distribution of extant species of amphibians.

Dr. Pyron also found that dispersal during the Cenozoic Era (66 million years ago to the present), likely across land bridges or short distances across oceans, also contributed to their distribution.

Given their ancient origin, it is unsurprising that the history of amphibians is a mixture of both vicariance and dispersal. But the third and final distribution pattern that Dr. Pyron notes in his study was an unexpected finding.

Past studies have assumed that long-distance over water dispersal was essentially impossible for amphibians due to salt intolerance. However, when Dr. Pyron began completing his analysis, he noticed a number of cases of distribution that could not be explained by old age.

Pseudophilautus poppiae, a microendemic shrub frog from Southern Sri Lanka that only occurs in a few hectares of cloud

forest.

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For instance, one group of frogs found in Australia and New Guinea (pelodryadine hylids) that originated around 61 to 52 million years ago is deeply nested within a group of amphibians that exist only in South America. By the time pelodryadines originated, all major continental landmasses occupied their present-day positions, with South America and Australia long separated from Antarctica.

“They’re 120 million years too late to have walked to Australia,” Dr. Pyron said.

So how could this group of South American amphibians be related to frogs on the other side of the world?

“You wouldn’t think that frogs would be able to swim all the way there, but that seems like one of the more likely explanations for how you could have such a young group nested within South America and have it somehow get to this other continent,” Dr. Pyron said.

In his study, Dr. Pyron points two other instances of long-distance oceanic dispersal.

“What you have is this mixture of processes. You have vicariance, which over 300 million years has put certain groups in Africa, some in Australia and others in South America,” Dr. Pyron said. “But even more recently, within the last few million years, you have these chance events of long distance dispersals across the ocean, which can influence distribution patterns.”

Dr. Pyron’s next research question is whether there is any specific quality, such as tolerance to salt water, which allows some groups of amphibians to be better dispersers. He has also begun to conduct a similar analysis with lizards and snakes to see if the same distribution patterns hold up. And as new species are discovered, Dr. Pyron will continue to revise his model.

These findings not only provide evidence for the unlikely hypothesis of long-distance oceanic dispersal, but they also provide a model for explaining the distribution of other species and learning about the geographic diversity of different groups. For example, an endangered frog in South America unconnected to any other major lineages would need to be a high conservation priority.

“That’s something we can only learn from a biogeographic analysis,” Dr. Pyron said.

Science Daily(George Washington University)August 2014

Vale ‘Gump’, The Last Known Christmas Island Forest Skink

Among the most haunting and evocative images of Australian wildlife are the black and white photographs of the last Thylacine, languishing alone in Hobart Zoo. It’s an extraordinary reminder of how close we came to preventing an extinction.

That loss is also an important lesson on the consequences of acting too slowly. Hobart Zoo’s Tasmanian tiger died just two months after the species was finally given protected status.

Last year, we wrote about the last-known Christmas Island Forest Skink, an otherwise unremarkable individual affectionately known as Gump. Although probably unaware of her status, Gump was in a forlorn limbo, hoping to survive long enough to meet a mate and save her species. It was an increasingly unlikely hope.

Despite substantial effort searching Christmas Island for another Forest Skink, none was found.

On 31 May 2014, Gump died, alone. Like the Thylacine, she barely outlived the mechanisms established to protect her, dying less than five months after being included on the list of Australia’s threatened species.

SUDDEN DECLINE

Until the late 1990s, Forest Skinks were common and widespread on Christmas Island. Their population then crashed, and has now vanished. It has been a remarkable disappearance but not entirely peculiar, as it was preceded by an eerily similar pattern of decline and extinction (in 2009) for the Christmas Island Pipistrelle, the most recent Australian mammal known to have become extinct. Nor is the skink unique among the island’s native reptiles – most of them have shown similar patterns of decline.

We think Gump’s death is momentous because it probably marks the extinction of her species. If so, this will be the first Australian native reptile known to have become extinct since European colonisation – a most unwelcome distinction. (Unlike the death of an individual, extinction can be hard to prove. There are, after all, some optimists who believe Thylacines still live. For the Forest Skink, the trajectory of decline and the fruitlessness of dedicated searches provide reasonable grounds to presume extinction, although this conclusion may take some years to be officially recognised. And, of course, we’d like to be proved wrong.)

Gump, who died in May, was the last known member of her species.

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LESSONS AND LEGACIES

Gump’s death might be passed over as a trivial bit of bad news and quickly forgotten. But Forest Skinks have been around since before modern humans walked out of Africa, so their extinction on our watch is not trivial. We should treat this loss with a profound respect, and seek to learn lessons that may help prevent similar losses in the future.

These are the legacies we seek from Gump’s life and death:

First, we should acknowledge that extinction is an unwelcome endpoint that is usually caused by ecological factors, but in recent times has often been compounded by deliberate human action or inaction. In most cases, extinction can be seen as a tangible demonstration of failure in policy and management, of inattention or missed opportunities.

In comparable cases elsewhere in our society, such as unexplained deaths or catastrophic governmental shortcomings, coronial inquests are instigated. Such inquests are widely recognised as a good way to learn lessons and to change practices in a way that will help avoid future failures. Inquests are also useful to acknowledge accountability, and to explain negative events to the public.

An inquiry – albeit more modest than a coronial inquest – is an appropriate response to any extinction. The presumed first extinction of an Australian reptile species would make for a worthwhile precedent: how could it have been averted, and what lessons can we learn?

Second, the Australian government has shown a welcome attention to the conservation of threatened species. It has appointed the first Threatened Species Commissioner, and federal environment minister Greg Hunt recently committed to seeking to prevent any more Australian mammal extinctions.

We would urge that this avowed interest be further consolidated by the loss of the Christmas Island Forest Skink, with a clear statement that this extinction is momentous and deeply regretted. The government should explicitly seek to avoid future preventable extinctions

(a commitment recognised internationally through the Millennium Development Goals), and should pledge to implement a more effective and successful strategy for conserving Australia’s threatened species (and biodiversity generally).

Third, it is no coincidence that two endemic vertebrate species have gone extinct on Christmas Island in the past decade, and that many other native species are declining there, despite the fact that most of the island is a national park.

Christmas Island’s extraordinary natural values are not being matched by the resources provided to manage them, or by their low profile in our national awareness. The island meets the criteria to qualify as a World Heritage site, and it is time for the government to seek such a listing.

The fourth hoped-for legacy concerns the so far successful captive breeding program for two other Christmas Island species that otherwise would have gone the same way as Gump: the endemic Blue-tailed Skink and Lister’s Gecko.

This is an admirable accomplishment. But it is at best a halfway house, because a species solely represented by individuals in cages becomes an artifice. We urge the government to commit fully to a currently proposed conservation plan for Christmas Island that seeks to allow such species to return to their natural haunts, following eradication or effective control of their primary threats such as introduced black rats, feral cats, yellow crazy ants, giant centipedes and wolf snakes.

Fifth, this extinction has largely been enacted out of public view. With the exception of a 2012 scientific paper, the few reports documenting the Christmas Island Forest Skink’s decline are not readily accessible.

There is an island-wide biodiversity monitoring program (which is admirable), yet the results of such monitoring are not routinely reported or interpreted to the public. Our society deserves to be warned of impending and unrecoverable losses, and to know when good management has averted them.

This case is not unusual: for most Australian threatened species, it is difficult if not impossible to find reliable information on population trends. This makes it difficult to prioritise management, making it likely that management responses will be initiated too late, and it severely limits public awareness of conservation issues. We recommend the development of a national biodiversity monitoring program that would allow ready public access to information about trends in threatened and other species.

It is 78 years since the death of the last Thylacine. Our photographs of extinct Australian animals are now taken in colour, rather than black and white. But has anything else improved? We hope it will. JOHN WOINARSKI, DON DRISCOLL AND HAL COGGER The ConversationAugust 2014

Gump’s legacy could be a renewed push to prevent any more extinctions.

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New Mobile App Will Help Save The Turtles On The Murray River

Turtle populations are crashing across south eastern Australia. Foxes are eating their eggs and killing the nesting females by ripping their heads off.

Scientists estimate that along the Murray River turtle populations have fallen by 90 per cent.

Zoologist Ricky Spencer, from the University of Western Sydney, says a new app will enable people to become citizen scientists, and report turtle sightings. The result will be the first river-long study of turtles.

‘We want people to basically record turtles, any turtles they see on roads, where ever they see them, and particularly where turtles nest so we get a big picture that we can’t do alone,’ Dr Spencer said.

The data that is collected will be used to identify the best management strategies.

‘We are not going to eliminate foxes along the whole Murray,’ Dr Spencer said. ‘We need to know hot spots for where they are being killed and where they are nesting so we can start doing something. Not much has been done for active management for turtles, there are a lot of agencies now turning their attention to it.’

Train driver and turtle enthusiast Graham Stockfeld has been using the app. He has logged sightings at Gunbower, on rural train lines and in Melbourne.

There are three turtle species along the Murray.

The Eastern Long Neck is the one which is most frequently seen. It eats insects, including mosquitoes, that fall in the water. It likes temporary water, and can be seen walking, looking for puddles and ponds.

The Murray short neck is called the vacuum of the river because they clean up everything dead, including carp and they eat algae. They rarely come out of the water, except to bask on logs.

The Broadshell is the biggest freshwater turtle in Australia. The endangered turtle can extend to one metre when its neck is outstretched. It lives in the river and eats

fingerlings.

Dr Spencer says even though there appears to be large numbers of the short neck, the very long-lived population is ageing - they live between 50 and 100 years - and there are no juveniles coming through.

He says over 500 sightings have been logged already over winter, when turtles tend to be pretty quiet. ‘We can just imagine how many thousand we will get in summer’.

The Bush TelegraphAugust 2014

Can A New Species Of Frog Have A Doppelganger? Genetics Say Yes!

Recently, Malaysian herpetologist Juliana Senawi puzzled over an unfamiliar orange-striped, yellow-speckled frog she’d live-caught in swampland on the Malay Peninsula.

She showed the frog to Chan Kin Onn, a fellow herpetologist pursuing his doctorate at the University of Kansas. They wondered -- was this striking frog with an appearance unlike others nearby in the central peninsula an unidentified species?

Poring over records to find out, the researchers saw that a comparable frog had been collected in the area 10 years earlier, but it was written off then as a species from an Indonesian island about 450 miles to the west. The distance and geography between the two habitats made them suspect their frog might have been formerly misidentified.

“The frog was originally confused with the Siberut Island Frog, which is a species that occurs on Siberut Island off the western coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, due to their similar appearance in color-pattern,” Chan said.

They wondered if genetic code from the exact same frog species could have jumped eastward from a remote island across 150 miles of Indian Ocean -- then over the whole of Sumatra -- then across the Strait of Malacca into the Malaysian interior?

Long necked turtle (oblong turtle)

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“Despite their similarities, we had a strong suspicion that the frog from Malaysia wasn’t the Siberut Island Frog,” Chan said.

Later, extensive genetic analysis performed in the lab of Rafe Brown, curator of herpetology at KU’s Biodiversity Institute, would determine whether the Malaysian frog was indeed new to science -- genetically distinct from its doppelgänger on Siberut Island.

“The lab is very high-tech and is able to run a number of different types of genetic analyses,” Chan said. “It’s also able to run the latest in cutting-edge genetic analysis called Next Generation Sequencing, which a lot of researchers are currently utilizing. We also have a very powerful bioinformatics lab that can analyze extremely large and computationally expensive datasets. The great thing about the lab is that we have the equipment and expertise to run everything from initial DNA extractions to the final data analyses without having to rely on any outsourcing.”

When testing was complete, the first hunch of the Malaysian team proved right: “Sure enough, results from Rafe’s genetic analysis showed that the frog from Peninsular Malaysia was genetically too distant from the Siberut Island Frog to be considered the same species, so we decided to describe it as a new species.”

As lead author, Chan published the team’s findings in a recent issue of the journal Herpetologica.

“We decided to call it ‘Hylarana centropeninsularis’ because it’s currently only known from central Peninsular Malaysia,” he said. “The name is constructed from the Latin word ‘centro’ that means center and ‘peninsularis,’ in reference to Peninsular Malaysia.”

To date, Chan has described seven species of frogs and three species of lizards, all from Peninsular Malaysia, that are new to science.

Born and raised in Malaysia, Chan took interest in nature as a child, interacting with jungle plants and animals -- then keeping snakes and lizards as pets.

“At one point, I had as many as 25 species of pet snakes in my room,” said the KU researcher.

At the National University of Malaysia, Chan found himself under the tutelage of herpetologist Norhayati Ahmad and Lee Grismer of La Sierra University, California, a world-renowned herpetologist with research interests in Malaysia.

“I knew about Rafe Brown and KU through their research and publications and first met him at a conference in Borneo,” Chan said. “My research interests aligned well with Rafe -- we both work on frogs in Southeast Asia and are generally interested in answering the same type of questions.”

For would-be herpetologists looking to follow in Chan’s species-finding footsteps, the KU researcher had words of advice: “Do it the old-fashioned way. Wade through the mud and get dirty!”

Science Daily(University of Kansas)August 2014

Deadly Boomslang Snake Venom Makes You Bleed From All Of Your Orifices Until

You Die

Let me introduce to you the snake that reinforces the phrase “Never trust a pretty face”- the boomslang snake.

Adding to the repertoire of s#!t scary snakes, Dispholidus typhus is a swift, agile creature whose venom certain packs a punch. Thankfully, it’s shy, non-aggressive and difficult to track down in its home of sub-Saharan Africa, but that hasn’t stopped it from rightfully earning a fearsome reputation.

Boomslangs spend most of their time chilling out in trees in a variety of environments, from coastal thickets to savannahs. These snakes exhibit sexual dimorphism, meaning that the males and females display obvious morphological differences. The females are typically brown, whereas the males can display a variety of bright colors, from greens and yellows to pink-ish reds. A characteristic feature of these snakes is their strikingly large eyes that take up a large proportion of their heads. Youngsters are particularly beautiful because their eyes are an iridescent green, but don’t let these puppy dog eyes fool you. This snake will mess you up. For many years, it was believed that this species was harmless, but world-renowned herpetologist Karl P. Schmidt learned the hard way that this snake is, in fact, badass. Back in 1957, whilst examining a young

The new species Hylarana centropeninsularis. The new species from the central Malay Peninsula (A) and its look-alike from Siberut

Island (B).

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boomslang, Schmidt was bitten on the thumb. Given that nobody knew these snakes were deadly, Schmidt thought nothing of it and carried on as normal. In just one day, he died of respiratory arrest and cerebral hemorrhage; an event that quickly spurred researchers to examine this snake’s venom, which unsurprisingly turned out to be highly toxic.

Boomslangs are rear-fanged, meaning that they’re equipped with large teeth at the back of their mouths. Consequently, to inject their prey with venom, the snakes have to open their mouths very wide, around 170 degrees.

What this snake’s venom does to you would not be out of place in a horror movie. It’s hemotoxic, meaning that it destroys red blood cells, disrupts the clotting process and causes tissue and organ degeneration. What this unfortunately means is that massive hemorrhage ensues, causing the victim to bleed from the gums, nose and other orifices.

Sometimes, the body of the victim will turn blue because of the widespread internal bleeding. Adding insult to injury, the process can be extremely slow, sometimes taking 5 days for the victim to die of internal bleeding. Thankfully, there is an antivenom, so if you’re bitten by one of these guys- don’t hang about.

Happy nightmares.

JUSTINE ALFORDIFL ScienceJanuary 2014

How Lizards Regenerate Their Tails: Researchers Discover Genetic ‘Recipe’

By understanding the secret of how lizards regenerate their tails, researchers may be able to develop ways to stimulate the regeneration of limbs in humans. Now, a team of researchers from Arizona State University is one step closer to solving that mystery. The scientists have discovered the genetic “recipe” for lizard tail regeneration, which may come down to using genetic ingredients in just the right mixture and amounts.

An interdisciplinary team of scientists used next-generation molecular and computer analysis tools to examine the genes turned on in tail regeneration. The team studied the regenerating tail of the green anole lizard (Anolis carolinensis), which when caught by a predator, can lose its tail and then grow it back.

The findings are published today in the journal PLOS ONE.

“Lizards basically share the same toolbox of genes as humans,” said lead author Kenro Kusumi, professor in ASU’s School of Life Sciences and associate dean in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. “Lizards are the most closely-related animals to humans that can regenerate entire appendages. We discovered that they turn on at least 326 genes in specific regions of the regenerating tail, including genes involved in embryonic development, response to hormonal signals and wound healing.”

Other animals, such as salamanders, frog tadpoles and fish, can also regenerate their tails, with growth mostly at the tip. During tail regeneration, they all turn on genes in what is called the ‘Wnt pathway’ -- a process that is required to control stem cells in many organs such as the brain, hair follicles and blood vessels. However, lizards have a unique pattern of tissue growth that is distributed throughout the tail.

“Regeneration is not an instant process,” said Elizabeth Hutchins, a graduate student in ASU’s molecular and cellular biology program and co-author of the paper. “In fact, it takes lizards more than 60 days to regenerate a functional tail. Lizards form a complex regenerating structure with cells growing into tissues at a number of sites along the tail.”

“We have identified one type of cell that is important for tissue regeneration,” said Jeanne Wilson-Rawls, co-author and associate professor with ASU’s School of Life Sciences. “Just like in mice and humans, lizards have

Arizona State University researchers discovered that green anole lizards turn on at least 326 genes in specific regions of the regenerating tail, including genes involved in embryonic

development, response to hormonal signals and wound healing.

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satellite cells that can grow and develop into skeletal muscle and other tissues.”

“Using next-generation technologies to sequence all the genes expressed during regeneration, we have unlocked the mystery of what genes are needed to regrow the lizard tail,” said Kusumi. “By following the genetic recipe for regeneration that is found in lizards, and then harnessing those same genes in human cells, it may be possible to regrow new cartilage, muscle or even spinal cord in the future.”

The researchers hope their findings will help lead to discoveries of new therapeutic approaches to spinal cord injuries, repairing birth defects, and treating diseases such as arthritis.

The research team included Kusumi, Hutchins, Wilson-Rawls, Alan Rawls, and Dale DeNardo from ASU School of Life Sciences, Rebecca Fisher from ASU School of Life Sciences and the University of Arizona College of Medicine Phoenix, Matthew Huentelman from the Translational Genomic Research Institute, and Juli Wade from Michigan State University. This research was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health and Arizona Biomedical Research Commission.

Science Daily(Arizona State College of Liberal Arts and Sciences)August 2014

Chef Peng Fan Killed By Snake Bite After He Chopped Off Cobra’s Head

A chef was killed after he was bit by the severed head of a snake that he was preparing for a dish.

Peng Fan had chopped the head off the Indochinese spitting cobra, a delicacy in Asia, to make a snake soup.

Around 20 minutes later he was tossing it in the rubbish when the snake’s head bit him, injecting him with its lethal venom, the Mirror reported.

Restaurant guests reported hearing screams from the kitchen.

The chef from Shunde, a district in the city of Foshan in southern China’s Guangdong province, was rushed to

hospital but died before he could be given an anti-venom.

A police spokesman called it “a highly unusual case”.

He said: “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.”

News Corp AustraliaAugust 2014

Hunt For Rare Albino Cobra That May Have Escaped From Exotic Animal Company

A rare albino cobra is on the loose in Los Angeles after it is suspected of escaping an exotic animal company.

Extra animal control officers have been sent to Thousand Oaks to search for the albino monocled cobra after it bit a greyhound on Monday.

The cobra is venomous and very dangerous, the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control says.

The victim greyhound, named Kiko, was bitten on the neck but is expected to make a full recovery after it was taken to a veterinarian.

The 1.5m snake was photographed by the dog’s owner and circulated about the neighbourhood today.

It is not known who owns the cobra but there are suspicions it may have escaped a company 16km away that rents out exotic animals for film and television shoots, CBS Los Angeles reports.

The company, Brocketts Film Fauna, advertises an albino monocled cobra available for rent.

“He’ll probably glow in the dark, he’s that white,” snake catcher Jules Sylvester told CBS.

“I’m sure we’ll spot him again.”

MSN New ZealandSeptember 2014

The rare albino cobra that bit a dog in Los Angeles on Monday.

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First Evidence That Reptiles Can Learn Through Imitation

New research has for the first time provided evidence that reptiles could be capable of social learning through imitation.

The ability to acquire new skills through the ‘true imitation’ of others’ behaviour is thought to be unique to humans and advanced primates, such as chimpanzees.

Scientists draw an important distinction between imitation and emulation when studying the cognitive abilities of animals. In true imitation, the individual ‘copying’ another’s behaviour not only mimics what they see, but also understands the intention behind the action. In emulation, an animal copies a behaviour without understanding its deeper significance: for example, a parrot reciting the words of its owner.

There is considerable debate about the extent to which non-primates are capable of true imitation.

Now researchers from the UK and Hungary have presented the first compelling scientific evidence that reptiles could be capable of social learning through imitation.

They set out to investigate whether the bearded dragon (Pogona vitticeps) is capable of imitating another bearded dragon through a simple experiment using a wooden board which contained a doorway.

All subjects successfully copied the actions of the demonstrator lizard, suggesting for the first time that reptiles exhibit social learning through imitation equivalent to that observed in ‘higher’ species.

Lead researcher Dr Anna Wilkinson from the School of Life Sciences, University of Lincoln, UK, said: “The ability to learn through imitation is thought to be the pinnacle of social learning and long considered a distinctive characteristic of humans. However, nothing is known about these abilities in reptiles. This research suggests that the bearded dragon is capable of social learning that cannot be explained by simple mechanisms -- such as an individual being drawn to a certain location because they observed another in that location or through observational learning. The finding is not compatible with the claim that only humans, and to a lesser extent great apes, are able to imitate.”

Reptiles and mammals evolved from a common ancestor and the investigation of similarities and differences in their behaviour is essential for understanding the evolution of cognition, Dr Wilkinson explained.

Recent advances in the field of reptile cognition have found evidence of sophisticated abilities in this group.

The latest research, published in the academic journal Animal Cognition, involved 12 bearded dragons which had not previously been involved in cognition experiments.

One lizard was trained to act as a ‘demonstrator’, opening a wire door which covered a hole in a wooden board. The

door could be moved horizontally along sliding rails to left or right by use of the head or the foot. The demonstrator was then rewarded with food (a mealworm) on the other side of the door.

The subjects were divided into an experimental group and a control group. The experimental group watched the demonstrator lizard approaching the test apparatus and opening the door with a sliding head movement.

All eight experimental subjects went on to successfully open the sliding door, pushing it to the same side they had observed. None of the control group subjects did this.

A key difference between the control and experimental groups was that, while sliding head movement occurred in the case of all experimental subjects, it was never observed in the control subjects. As this was the movement that the demonstrator performed in order to open the sliding door, this suggests that experimental subjects imitated an action that was not part of their spontaneous behaviour.

Dr Wilkinson concluded: “This, together with differences in behaviour between experimental and control groups, suggests that learning by imitation is likely to be based on ancient mechanisms. These results reveal the first evidence of imitation in a reptile species and suggest that reptiles can use social information to learn through imitation.”

The team included researchers from Eötvös University in Hungary, Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna.

Science Daily(University of Lincoln)September 2014

Massive Red-bellied Black Has Snake Catcher Rethinking His Call Out Fee

This two-metre-long red belly black had snake catcher Geoff Delooze rethinking his life decisions.

The “abnormally large” and “heavy as” snake, which according to Mr Delooze weighed about 10 kilograms, was found hiding under an airconditioning unit at an engineering firm in Cameron Park, Newcastle, on Wednesday.

Still image from a video of a bearded dragon taking part in the study. .

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Energy Australia Diverts Burra, SA Wind Farm Project To Protect Endangered

Pygmy Bluetongue Lizard

A national energy company building a wind farm has planned the project so as not to disturb colonies of a tiny endangered lizard. The populations of pygmy bluetongue lizards have meant Energy Australia will divert roads and other infrastructure to their proposed project in South Australia near Burra.

The Melbourne-based company is waiting on a decision from the Environment, Resources and Development Court before it goes ahead with the multi-million-dollar wind farm.

The pygmy bluetongue lizard was thought to have been extinct until 1992 when one was found in the belly of a dead brown snake.

Since that time researchers at Flinders University, as well as farmers and the community around Burra, have worked to keep the lizard off the endangered list.

The reptile, which measures only 15cm at full length, spends most of its life down spider holes – having either killed or evicted the resident wolf or trap-door spiders.

Energy Australia project development manager Clint Purkiss said the protocols for planning developments always included a flora and fauna audit.

The presence of the threatened lizard does not impact on the location of the Stony Gap windmills but roads would have passed through the bluetongue’s territory.

“We have certainly factored it into the design of some of the ancillary infrastructure,” Mr Purkiss said.

“There are areas of existing track where there are small populations ... which we will fence off and utilise the track away from the populations.

“There are some areas of reticulation, the overhead and underground cabling that we will ... design in accordance with the Pygmy Bluetongue Lizard Recovery Team.”

Mr Delooze got the call to pick the snake up, and couldn’t believe his eyes when he caught sight of the “ferocious eater”, The Newcastle Herald reports.

“I have to admit, it had me looking back at these people thinking, ‘What the hell is this? My call-out fee isn’t big enough for this,’ “ he said.

“I’ve been doing this for a few years now and that’s easily the biggest red belly I’ve ever come across.”

Paul Austin, a manager at WDS Engineering where the snake was found, said the find had “left a few people rattled”.

“But that’s Australia, I guess; it’s what we have to deal with.”

The business backs on to bush and Mr Delooze believes the snake would have been disturbed by nearby road work.

“This was a real old snake, at least 15 years old. It wouldn’t have had much to do with humans before yesterday,” he said.

He said red belly blacks were the most common snake he captured, and the second most dangerous, but they usually only reach about one metre in length.

“They normally don’t get to that size because they either run into the end of a shovel or are the victim of road rage,” he said.

With the hotter months approaching, Mr Delooze also had some bad news for those who would prefer to read about snakes than see them.

“It has been that dry up around the Hunter Valley, it’s going to be like one of those snake seasons from the old days. They love the heat and they love suburbia; it’s got everything they need.”

MICHAEL MCGOWAN Newcastle HeraldOctober 2014

Pygmy Blue-tongue Lizard (Tiliqua adelaidensis)

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The results are important because they suggest that climate change and land use in Madagascar will have varying effects on different species, said Jason Brown of the City College of New York.

“It means that there won’t be a uniform decline of species -- some species will do better, and others will do worse,” said Brown, a co-author on the study appearing online in the journal Nature Communications.

The study is part of a larger body of research aimed at identifying the climate, geology and other features of the environment that help bring new species of plants and animals into being in an area, and then sustain once they’re there.

Located 300 miles off the southeast coast of Africa, the island of Madagascar is a treasure trove of unusual animals, about 90 percent of which are found nowhere else on Earth. Cut off from the African and Indian mainlands for more than 80 million years, the animals of Madagascar have evolved into a unique menagerie of creatures, including more than 700 species of reptiles and amphibians -- snakes, geckos, iguanas, chameleons, skinks, frogs, turtles and tortoises.Visitors to the island may come across neon green geckos that can grow up to a foot in length, and tiny tree frogs that secrete toxic chemicals from their skin and come in combinations of black and iridescent blue, orange, yellow and green. They’ll also find about half of the world’s chameleons -- lizards famous for their bulging eyes, sticky high-speed tongues and ability to change color.

Researchers have long sought to understand how Madagascar -- a country that makes up less than 0.5 percent of the Earth’s land surface area -- gave rise to so many unusual species.

Previous studies have linked the distribution of species to various factors, such as steep slopes that fuel diversity by creating a range of habitats in a small area. But few studies have integrated all of these variables into a single model to examine the relative influence of multiple factors at once, Brown said.

Mr Purkiss said it was not unusual to plan developments around important plants and animals.

“It’s just part of the process,” he said.

About 5,000 pygmy bluetongue lizards have been located in the region from Eudunda to Jamestown.

Chris Reed, a wool producer outside Burra, sold 80 hectares of his land in 2010 to conservation group Nature Foundation SA to promote the long-term survival of the lizard colonies in the region.

Researchers from Flinders University have found cropping and cultivating the land will destroy the lizard’s burrows but some sheep grazing can enhance the reptile’s welfare, because they are able to find spider burrows to shelter in and can also more easily sight their prey.

“So what we are really trying to do is figure out exactly what is the right level of grazing, what is going to be the best for the lizards”, said Professor Mike Bull at Flinders University’s School of Biological Sciences.

Professor Bull has been studying the lizards for 20 years.He said with 10 PhD projects and numerous other research projects it is “probably one of the most studied lizards in Australia”.

Documentary-maker David Attenborough even included a segment on the lizard in his Life in Cold Blood series.

Every September, Nature Foundation SA holds its “Lizard Crawl” at Tiliqua, a reserve north-west of Burra, where the local community is encouraged to understand more about the lizard and look out for the holes they live in.

Professor Bull said it is important the community takes ownership of their unique little reptile.

“I’m not going to keep on going forever ... so we need to leave the community with a way of looking after the lizards – a way of monitoring how they are going,” he said.

Prue Adams LandlineOctober 2014

No Single Explanation For Biodiversity In Madagascar

No single “one-size-fits-all” model can explain how biodiversity hotspots come to be, finds a study of more than 700 species of reptiles and amphibians on the African island of Madagascar.

By analyzing the geographic distribution of Madagascar’s lizards, snakes, frogs and tortoises, an international team of researchers has found that each group responded differently to environmental fluctuations on the island over time.

Over 90 percent of the more than 700 species of reptiles and amphibians that live in Madagascar -- like the jeweled chameleon (Furcifer campani) shown here -- occur nowhere else on Earth. A study of how Madagascar’s unique biodiversity responded to environmental fluctuations in the past suggests that the climate change and deforestation that the island is experiencing today will

have varying effects on different species.

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Quick-moving Toads Take The Straight And Narrow Path

Cane toads have been spreading faster and faster across northern Australia since their arrival on the Queensland coast in 1935. This increase in speed is due in part to toads at the forefront of the invasion, which have evolved to move in straighter paths, a new study suggests.

Since 101 cane toads were introduced to Australia in 1935 — in a misguided attempt at pest control in sugarcane fields on the northeastern coast of Queensland — the invasive amphibians have quickly spread west and wreaked havoc. The toads are toxic, and many native animals have died after eating them.

One curious aspect of the toad invasion has been its speed, which has been increasing. Soon after their arrival, cane toads spread at a rate of about 10 kilometers per year. Now that rate is 55 kilometers annually. Scientists have documented some interesting features that have allowed that increase in invasion speed: Toads at the front line of the expansion have longer legs and are more active at night. The toads also move in a straighter path, according to a new study, published October 8 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

“It’s not just an issue of toads evolving longer legs, and running faster — they have also changed the way they move. Somehow or other, evolution has furnished the invader with a compass,” University of Sydney herpetologist Rick Shine said by e-mail.

There are lots of different ways that an animal can move faster, but often those ways come at a cost. A toad might need to eat more to grow and power its longer legs, for example. Moving in a straighter path, though, may be more effective because there wouldn’t be such a big trade-off, Shine’s group proposes.

The team worked with cane toads at a farm near Darwin, Australia. When the toad invasion arrived there in 2005, the researchers began radio-tracking adult cane toads for five days at a time over the next 10 years. This let the scientists track the toads’ movements. The first cane toads to arrive tended to move in straighter paths than those living there years later, the scientists found.

“Invasion-front toads appear to treat the landscape into which they are moving as one that needs to be traversed

He and Duke University biologist Anne Yoder and colleagues developed a model that combines the modern distributions of 325 species of amphibians and 420 species of reptiles that live in Madagascar today with historical and present-day estimates of topography, rainfall and other variables across the island.

From steep tropical rainforests to flat, desert-like regions, the researchers analyzed three measures of biodiversity: the number of species, the proportion of unique species and the similarity of species composition from one site to another.

“Not surprisingly, we found that different groups of species have diversified for different reasons,” Yoder said.

For example, changes in elevation -- due to the mountains, rivers and other features that shape the land -- best predicted which parts of the island had high proportions of unique tree frog species. But the biggest influence on why some areas had higher proportions of unique leaf chameleons was climate stability through time.

“What governs the distribution of, say, a particular group of frogs isn’t the same as what governs the distribution of a particular group of snakes,” Brown said. “A one-size-fits-all model doesn’t exist.”

Understanding how species distributions responded to environmental fluctuations in the past may help scientists predict which groups are most vulnerable to global warming and deforestation in the future, or which factors pose the biggest threat.

Other studies have found that some of Madagascar’s reptiles and amphibians are already moving up to higher elevations due to climate change, and roughly 40 percent of the country’s reptile species are threatened with extinction due to logging and farming in their forest habitats.

The difficulty of using this model to predict species’ responses is that the environmental fluctuations the researchers examined occurred over tens of thousands of years, whereas the changes in climate and land use that Madagascar is currently experiencing are taking place over a matter of decades, said Brown, who was a postdoctoral research associate at Duke at the time of the research.

Making accurate predictions about the threat of future extinction requires determining the timescales at which current environmental changes pose a threat.

“One of the lessons learned is that when trying to assess the impacts of future climate change on species distribution and survival, we have to deal in specifics rather than generalities, since each group of animals experiences its environment in a way that is unique to its life history and other biological characteristics,” Yoder said. Science Daily(Duke University)October 2014

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It took some time to put the “very cranky” lizard back in its box while tow truck operators cleared up the wreckage of all three cars.

Brett said his nephew had been showing the pet off at his house earlier in the day.

“He had it with him for the day at my place ... and he was just showing it off,” he said.

“It is just a pet and it is friendly. “When he is here, he has a walk around and I have got a big fish tank that we put him in when he is here and then he takes him home.”

Lace monitors are the second largest lizard in Australia and would usually be referred to as goannas in Australia.Brett said the powerfully built animal with sharp curved claws sometimes got stroppy.

“He gets choppy every now and again but he is normally friendly and they are just like dogs or other pets,” he said. “They don’t really bite but they can when they get stroppy and they hiss.”

The lizard usually isn’t contained during its travels.

“He had it in a cardboard box but it usually sits on the seat because they’re not very active and don’t move much,” Brett said.

The male lizard is the only of its kind owned by the driver, who has had it for about a year.

Brett’s nephew was taken to the Gold Coast University

quickly and efficiently,” the researchers write, “whereas later-arriving toads may see the landscape and its resources as something to be explored and exploited at leisure.”

In another experiment, the researchers collected frogs in 2006 from four sites across northern Australia, spanning a distance of 1,600 kilometers. They brought those toads back to Darwin and bred them. Generations of toads later, in 2008, the researchers attached radio trackers to the animals and released them, again measuring their movements over five-day periods.

The farther away that the cane toads had been collected from the invasion front, the less straight they moved. Similar results were found for their descendants, which showed that this directionality is probably rooted in the toads’ genes.

“Thus, the invasion process has evoked a significant evolutionary response in a parameter critical to dispersal rate: the degree to which an individual consistently moves in some specific direction,” Shine and colleagues write.

By moving in straighter and straighter paths, the toads can invade new territory faster and faster as they spread.

“Conservation managers need to predict when invasions will arrive in the areas they are protecting — and to do that, they need to understand rates of invasion-front acceleration,” Shine says. “Our paper shows that these kinds of behavioral changes can happen rapidly, and that we should expect most invasions to accelerate.”

SARAH ZIELINSKIScience News October 2014

Escaped Pet Lizard Causes Three Car Pile-up At Arundel

A Labrador man’s friendly play date with his lizard ended dangerously yesterday afternoon when the large reptile escaped from its box and caused a three-car accident in Arundel.

The 21-year-old, who is a licensed reptile owner, was returning home after taking his 1m-long pet to visit his uncle when he noticed the lizard had escaped from its cardboard box.

Police were called to Allied Drive about 3pm after initial reports suggested a dangerous komodo dragon had escaped while being transported on the car’s back seat. However, it was later confirmed to be a male lace monitor about 1m long.

The male driver hit two parked cars after he lost control and while he was being taken to hospital, his uncle, Brett, came to collect the animal.

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found that vegetarians live longer than their carnivorous counterparts. Vegetal food is an intrinsically low-nutrition food, so we think that those who have these diets experience a reduction in reproductive rates, which in turn increases their lifespan.”

The results support key predictions from life-history theory and suggest that reproducing more slowly and at older ages and being herbivorous result in increased longevity.For each species, the team collected literature on body size, earliest age at first reproduction, field body temperature of active individuals, reproductive mode, clutch or litter size and brood frequency, diet and activity time.

They found that long-living scaled reptiles are generally characterised by ‘slow’ life-history traits: delayed and infrequent reproduction, smaller clutches, larger hatchlings and colder body temperatures. High investment in reproduction, expressed in frequent, large clutches is correlated with short life -- but species with large eggs compared to their size live longer.

The team also discovered that herbivores live longer than similar-sized carnivores. Ingestion of a protein-rich diet (meat) may lead to faster growth, earlier and more intense reproduction and hence to shortened longevity. Herbivorous individuals probably consume poorer food, so reach maturity later and live longer. It could also be that hunting is more risky than collecting fruits and vegetables.

Future experiments could test this by feeding a set of species with different diets and exploring the consequences for growth and time to maturity.

In summary, the results support fundamental predictions of life-history theory by showing a link between age at first reproduction, rate of reproduction and longevity.

This study provides the first, large-scale, comparative study of longevity in ectothermic or ‘cold-blooded’ animals and opens many avenues for further research on the attributes that govern longevity in this group. The results support evolutionary theories of aging in a large group of animals which are not often studied in this context -- aging studies usually compare among different mammal (or bird) species, or use experiments with few species of small insects, such as fruit flies.

Science Daily (University of Lincoln)October 2014

Qld Boy Airlifted After Snake Bite

A young boy has been airlifted to hospital after being bitten by a snake on Queensland’s Darling Downs.

THE boy told paramedics he opened a screen door and stepped on what he described as a brown snake north of Toowoomba on Monday morning.

Hospital and an ambulance spokesman said he was “conscious and breathing”.

The male lizard was unscathed.

“It’s fine, nothing wrong with it,” Brett said.

LUCY KINBACHERGold Coast BulletinOctober 2014

Sex-loving, Meat-eating Reptiles Have Shorter Lives

The health risks and benefits of vegetarianism have long been discussed in relation to the human diet, but newly published research reveals that it’s definitely of benefit to the reptile population. That, and being less sexually active! The research team investigated how longevity of 1,014 species of scaled reptiles is influenced by key environmental characteristics and by their feeding and sexual habits.

Snakes and lizards who want to live longer should abstain from sex until late in life, and be vegetarian, according to new research which investigated how reproductive intensity and diet affects reptile lifespan.

An international team of researchers investigated how longevity of scaled reptiles (Lepidosaurs) is influenced by key environmental characteristics and by their feeding and sexual habits.

Based on a worldwide study, involving 1,014 species including 672 lizards and 336 snakes, it was found that a higher frequency of laying or giving birth and early sexual maturation are associated with shortened longevity.

The results have been published in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography.

Co-author Dr Daniel Pincheira-Donoso, from the School of Life Sciences, University of Lincoln, UK, said: “We observed that more sex (or at least more pregnancies) means shorter life, very much like the rock star adage ‘live fast, die young’. Along the same lines, the study revealed that reptiles which sexually mature at a younger age will likely have shorter lives, while those who prefer to delay sexual maturity will probably live longer. And lastly, we

Chinese gecko

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I am not suggesting that you imagined seeing scaly creatures, but the group of animals we refer to as “reptiles” does not exist – at least not anymore.

It all has to do with our (humans, that is) penchant for categorisation. We just love putting things into boxes, and those boxes into bigger boxes. Scientists have even turned this activity into an entire field of biological research, called taxonomy.

Several methods of classification have been used throughout the history of taxonomy. The current, most widely accepted method – cladistics – is considered to be the most objective as it takes into account an organism’s evolutionary history.

The picture below maps out our current understanding of the relationships between land vertebrates. First thing to notice, the label tetrapoda on the left is the base of the diagram, indicating that all species to the right are within the group tetrapoda. From here you can go down each path, labelling each group.

Cladogram of tetrapods (land vertebrates). Reptiles as a group exist on different branches rather than all together.For example, the three groups of animals at the top (caecillians, salamanders and frogs) all belong to the group amphibia, and all the groups of animals from junction [B] onwards are grouped as amniota.

The construction of such a diagram depends on the common ancestors that groups of animals share. For example, junction [A] represents the common ancestor between us and an echidna. Humans are part of eutheria and echidnas are monotremes. All animals sharing this common ancestor are labelled as mammals. Also, in evolutionary terms, we would say that two species that share a common ancestor at junction [A] would be more closely related than those species sharing a common ancestor at junction [B].

All pretty straightforward – but, this is where the reptile label runs into a problem.

I have circled the group of animals we normally refer to as reptiles. If you trace their paths back, you will arrive at junction [C], the last common ancestor of those groups. So, if we are to consider all animals from junction [C] onwards as reptiles, then we must also label birds as reptiles. We could do this I guess, but it would be redundant. The group of animals from junction [C] onwards are already referred

An RACQ CareFlight Rescue crew transported the boy to the Toowoomba Base Hospital in a stable condition after he was treated at the scene.

It is the third snake bite incident involving the rescue chopper in just 10 days.

A 20-year-old Sydney woman was flown to hospital after being bitten on Fraser Island last Wednesday, while a 10-year-old boy was taken from the Warwick Hospital to Brisbane’s Mater Children’s Hospital after being bitten on October 10.

The incidents have prompted calls for people to be aware of first aid procedures for snake bites.

Patients should be immobilised after the bite, CareFlight chief medical officer Dr Allan MacKillop said.

“Wrap a crepe bandage right down the limb and immediately call triple zero,” he said.

Dr MacKillop also discouraged patients from attempting to catch or kill the responsible snake.

AAP October 2014

There’s No Such Thing As Reptiles Any More – And Here’s Why

You have likely been to a zoo at some point and visited their reptile house. A building where the climate control dial is stuck on the “wet sauna” setting, and filled with maniacal children competing to be the first to press their ice cream covered face and hands on every available piece of clean glass.

Assuming you managed to find some clean glass, and supposing the animals were not hiding from the incessant banging and requests to perform like circus animals, you would have likely seen turtles, crocodiles, snakes and lizards.

But what if I told you reptiles don’t exist.

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and caecilians. As you can see from our modern branched image above, Linnaeus may have done better just picking names out of a hat – but I suppose that’s always easier with 20/20 hindsight.

The komodo dragon? Try komodo monitor. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

As naturalists developed new methods of classification, new boxes were created, some species were taken out of one box and added to another.Early in the 19th century French zoologist Pierre Latreille divided the tetrapod group into four major groups:• mammals• amphibians• birds• reptiles

Since then, though taxonomists have routinely shuffled and revised the groups, and though genetic techniques have given us new insights into the evolution of these organisms, the name has stuck.

I don’t expect zoos will change the reptile house to the “non-avian reptile house” or “sauropsida house” anytime soon. It doesn’t really have the same ring to it.As for biology texts, though the reptile label no longer relates to an evolutionary group as mammals or birds does, biologists will still use it.

The “reptile” label groups together a deeply fascinating group of animals who are persecuted far too much, researched far too little and likely have many great stories yet to reveal.

DUSTIN WELBOURNE IFL Science (Originally published in the Conversation)October 2014

Some Like It Loud: Warning Coloration Paved The Way For Louder, More Complex

Calls In Poisonous Frogs

Frogs are well-known for being among the loudest amphibians, but new research indicates that the

to as sauropsida.

Hence, reptile is dead. (I suspect Nietzsche will still be quoted more.)

An obvious question at this point: if there is no such group of animals called reptiles, then why are there reptile houses at zoos? As you might guess, it has to do with history.Looks aren’t everything

Classification of animals (and plants for that matter) was formalised in the 18th century by Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus. Linnaeus built his classification system on the way animals looked, in an age when species were considered to be fixed and unchanging.

Using anatomical keys, Linnaeus divided the animal kingdom into six classes:• mammalia• birds• amphibia• fishes• insects• worms

Then, as with current taxonomical methods, further divided these broad groups into more refined taxonomic categories.

Species of amphibia were divided into two groups:• reptiles• serpents

Reptiles were considered to have feet, with flat naked ears; where serpents did not have feet, laid eggs connected in a chain and “penis double”. That’s right, snakes have a pair of hemipenes. In fact, this last observation is odd since lizards also have a pair. Having feet was clearly the more important diagnostic tool for Linnaeus, otherwise he would have known to put snakes and lizards together.

Linnaeus’ categorisation methods meant that many species were incorrectly grouped together. For instance, reptiles comprised turtles, lizards, crocodiles, salamanders and frogs, while serpents included snakes, legless lizards

The tuatara looks like a lizard, but it isn’t one.

The komodo dragon? Try komodo monitor.

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Using molecular data and statistical analyses, they were able to infer a phylogenetic tree and pinpoint which trait came first. Their findings indicate that visual traits established the frogs as poisonous and cleared the way for louder, more elaborate calls.

Species relying on camouflage for defense will not invite attention with boisterous calls, while their protected relatives -- including nonpoisonous frogs that mimic the appearance of their toxic counterparts -- can be loud and more nuanced.

“The type of color they have is in the range of the noisy ones,” Santos said. “When you’re mimicking somebody that’s already protected, you have some freedom to be found by potential mates.”

These calls require high energy expenditures, but the boon of attracting females without predatory threats makes it a rewarding behavior for males. Less is known about the reasons females are attracted to the noisier males and how they appraise the various calls. Santos explained that if the females are being especially picky, it will drive male diversity by pushing them to create even more complex songs.

“What can the females get from this information? Maybe females -- by being very picky -- increase male diversity,” Santos said. A more diverse pool of potential mates increases the likelihood that their offspring will have more advantageous genes over time.

Science Daily(Plataforma SINC)October 2014

Green Tree Frog Pulls Off Great Snake Escape, Far North Queensland Snake

Catcher Says

A green tree frog has pulled off a great snake escape in far north Queensland, with a zoologist saying the amphibian was regurgitated alive.

Zoologist and part-time snake catcher Lauren Dibben, from Weipa on western Cape York Peninsula, was attempting to remove a common tree snake from a home when she noticed a bulge in its belly.

“I noticed a lump started to come back up and there were a few people standing around watching so I said ‘it’s about to regurgitate something, perhaps it ate a mouse’,” she said.“The next second it actually regurgitated a green tree frog, which came out back legs first and it plopped out on the concrete.

“I ended up taking the frog under the tap because it was still alive and rinsed it off and he was breathing and pretty normal.”

Ms Dibben, who is Weipa’s only licensed snake catcher, said the frog would have only recently been eaten.

development of this trait followed another: bright coloration. Scientists have found that the telltale colors of some poisonous frog species established them as an unappetizing option for would-be predators before the frogs evolved their elaborate songs. As a result, these initial warning signals allowed different species to diversify their calls over time.

Zoologists at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent), the University of British Columbia, and other research universities assembled an acoustic database to analyze more than 16,000 calls from 172 species within the poison frog family, Dendrobatidae. The paper, which will appear in the December issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, is now available online.

The study included both frogs that display bright colors and others that rely on camouflage for protection. Each call was examined in terms of pitch and duration, and researchers also factored in the size of the frogs and their visibility to predators. They found that because warning coloration protected them from predators, they were better able to attract a mate with low-pitch, pulsing vocalizations in plain sight than their quieter, darker-hued relatives.

“This allows the frog to have a unique type of call -- a noisy call,” said lead author Juan C. Santos, formerly of NESCent and now at the University of British Columbia. “These noisy kinds of calls, in general, are what the females really like.”

Scientists already understood that predators shied away from brightly colored frogs because of visual cues, but Santos and his colleagues hypothesized that some species evolved to include audio signals, as well. Such a warning system is not unprecedented: Tiger moths emit ultrasonic chirps to communicate their unsavory taste to bats. Without a similar ability, frogs navigate a precarious dilemma in which they must either risk detection by predators or forgo possible courtship.

Initially the researchers expected that audio warnings predated coloration, but the results indicate the opposite.

Brightly colored species such as the Ameerega bilinguis are likely to make loud elaborate calls because they are already established

as unsavory prey.

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“[The snake] has let it go because of me,” she said.

“I think I saved the frog’s life, but I’m pretty sure he’s going to be mentally scarred for life.”

KRISTY SEXTON-MCGRATHABC NewsOctober 2014

Girl’s Leg Shrivels And Turns Black After Snake Bite Causes Her Leg To Rot Away

The 13-year-old girl, who is unidentified, was first treated by remedies from the indigenous culture she was from, according to a photograph posted on Instagram by the username ‘juventudmedica’.

A month later she was eventually brought to Carcaras, Venezuela,for medical treatment.

One doctor, who has seen the photograph, told MailOnline the girl will need her leg amputated but is still likely to die from the snake venom.

Dr Arun Ghosh, a private GP in Liverpool, said: ‘Snake venom is very complicated and depends on the species of snake.

‘But the picture shows clearly severe tissue necrosis that will need amputation, though she still may die from this

due to the nature of the poison.

‘The whole lower leg is black, it’s spreading up. Looking at the rest of her body she’s showing signs of muscle wastage from the poison. Her other leg is thin. It’s likely she will still die.’

He added that the necrosis has led to a condition called rhabdomyolysis, in which muscle tissue will begin to die throughout the body.

Rhabdomyolysis can result in damage to the kidneys, which coupled with low blood pressure, can lead to kidney failure and even death if left untreated, he said.

Being treated with local remedies probably meant she was given antibiotics, but not treatment to adequately control poisoning from the snake venom, which contains agents that paralyse the nerves and cause the blood to clot. Snake venom, such as from the bothrops viper common in Venezuela, contains agents that paralyse the nerves and cause the blood to clot so the snake can paralyse its preyDr Ghosh said: ‘This girl has had classic rural treatment which is often only able to treat local infection secondary to the bite (at best say equal to antibiotics).

‘But she is unlikely to have received anti-venom treatment (which entails giving treatment to stop blood clotting) to keep her blood flowing through her body.’

The photograph’s caption said the girl also suffered a broken elbow from the incident with the snake.

The bite caused a laceration to the artery in her leg and the resulting bleeding led to what’s known as ‘compartment syndrome’.

This is a serious condition when pressure within a compartment such as the leg causes a decrease in blood supply to the affected muscles.

MADLEN DAVIESDaily MailNovember 2014

The 13 year old girl suffered severe necrosis - the premature death of cells - due to a snake bite that was treated with local indigenous remedies for a month before she was brought to a hospital in

Carcaras.

Snake venom, such as from the bothrops viper common in Venezuela, contains agents that paralyse the nerves and cause the

blood to clot so the snake can paralyse its prey.

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Genesis Of Genitalia: We Have One. Lizards Have Two. Why?

When it comes to genitalia, nature enjoys variety. Snakes and lizards have two. Birds and people have one. And while the former group’s paired structures are located somewhat at the level of the limbs, ours, and the birds’, appear a bit further down. In fact, snake and lizard genitalia are derived from tissue that gives rise to hind legs, while mammalian genitalia are derived from the tail bud. But despite such noteworthy contrasts, these structures are functionally analogous and express similar genes.

How do these equivalent structures arise from different starting tissues?

Reporting in Nature, researchers in Harvard Medical School’s Department of Genetics, led by departmental chair Clifford Tabin, have found that the answer is not unlike the real estate axiom Location, location, location.

The embryonic cloaca -- which eventually develops into the urinary and gut tracts -- issues molecular signals that tell neighboring cells and tissues to form into external genitalia. The cloaca’s location determines which tissues receive the signal first. In snakes and lizards, the cloaca is located closer to the lateral plate mesoderm, the same tissue that makes the paired limbs, receives the signal. In mammals, the cloaca is closer to the tail bud.

To further confirm this finding, the researchers grafted cloaca tissue next to the limb buds in one group of chicken embryos, and beside the tail buds in a second group. They

found that in both cases, cells closer to the grafted cloaca responded to the signals and partially converted toward a genitalia fate.

This proves that different populations of cells with progenitor potential are able to respond to cloaca signaling and contribute to genitalia outgrowth.

“While mammal and reptile genitalia are not homologous in that they are derived from different tissue, they do share a ‘deep homology’ in that they are derived from the same genetic program and induced by the same ancestral set of molecular signals,” said Tabin, who is also the George Jacob and Jacqueline Hazel Leder Professor of Genetics.

“Here we see that an evolutionary shift in the source of a signal can result in a situation where functionally analogous structures are carved out of nonhomologous substrate,” said Patrick Tschopp, an HMS research fellow in genetics in Tabin’s lab and first author on the paper. “Moreover, this might help to explain why limbs and genitalia use such similar gene regulatory programs during development.”

Science Daily(Harvard Medical School)November 2014

Truckie Saves Red-bellied Black Snake From Certain Death After Finding The Serpent Stuck In A Drink Can By Side Of

M7 In Horsely Park

A thirsty snake in need of a pick me up got its head stuck in an energy drink can.

A passing truck driver found the red belly black snake in a spot of bother on the side of the M7 in Horsley Park last Friday.

WIRES who were able to cut the snake free have urged people to be mindful of the litter they leave on the side of roads.

“The snake has probably gone into the can because it was a little bit dehydrated then got itself stuck,” a WIRES spokeswoman said.

This is a python embryo at 11 days after oviposition (egglaying). The right hemipenis (genitalia) bud and vestigial limb-bud can be seen near the tail end of the embryo, in the center of the tail ‘spiral’.

(two white ‘blobs’)

A red-bellied black snake was found by a truck driver on the side of the M7 in Horsley Park with its head stuck in a drink can.

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“The driver decided he wasn’t going to leave it there so he put it in a bag and took it with him. “Our rescuer picked it up from him and cut it out of the can and released it.

“It’s healthy and didn’t have any cuts around its head which is really lucky. It’s really important for people to remember when they’re leaving rubbish around that this can happen.”

As for why the snake put its head in the can — it looked like a nice place to escape the traffic.

“Snakes are inquisitive and this snake was probably looking for a safe place to hide on a busy road,” the spokeswoman said.“Unfortunately, the place it chose wasn’t wide enough or deep enough for it and it got trapped in the can.”

If you see a snake in trouble or if you need help or advice please call WIRES on 1300 094 737.

IAN WALKER Daily TelegraphNovember 2014

Meet The Rare Turtle That Breathes Through Its Arse

A critically endangered species of turtle famous for being able to breathe through its arse is facing extinction in Queensland, but similar species thrive in the Territory says a prominent researcher.

The white-throated snapping turtle elseya albagula, can extract oxygen from the water through cloacal respiration — or “arse breathing” — and is rapidly losing its last remaining habitat on Queensland’s Connors River.

The turtle was recently listed as critically endangered.

James Cook University researcher Jason Schaffer says there are a number of closely-related species in the Territory.

“Arse breathing is a characteristic unique among Australian turtles,” he said.

“In fact, the elseya are thriving in the Territory.”

However, Darwin’s fishos might doubt the turtle’s Territorian credentials, as they lack the ability to talk out of their arses.

Mr Schaffer, who is one of Australia’s leading experts on the animals, said he had never investigated if the turtles were able to speak out of their arses.

He said he’d never actually listened closely to any noise they might make, but insisted it was “highly unlikely,” that they used their cloacae to communicate.

Mr Schaffer said there were several evolutionary advantages to arse breathing, including the ability to stay remain hidden from predators, a skill which the Territory’s politicians may find useful.

A survey of the Territory’s political representatives, however, revealed that they are mostly mouth-breathers.

CRAIG DUNLOP NT NewsDecember 2014

New Model For Snake Venom Evolution Proposed

Technology that can map out the genes at work in a snake or lizard’s mouth has, in many cases, changed the way scientists define an animal as venomous. If oral glands show expression of some of the 20 gene families associated with “venom toxins,” that species gets the venomous label.

But, a new study from The University of Texas at Arlington challenges that practice, while also developing a new model for how snake venoms came to be. The work, which is being published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, is based on a painstaking analysis comparing groups of related genes or “gene families” in tissue from different parts of the Burmese python, or Python molurus bivittatus.

A team led by assistant professor of biology Todd Castoe and including researchers from Colorado and the United Kingdom found similar levels of these so-called toxic gene families in python oral glands and in tissue from the python brain, liver, stomach and several other organs. Scientists say those findings demonstrate much about the functions of venom genes before they evolved into venoms. It also shows that just the expression of genes related to venom toxins in oral glands of snakes and lizards isn’t enough information to close the book on whether something is venomous.

“Research on venom is widespread because of its obvious importance to treating and understanding snakebite, as well as the potential of venoms to be used as drugs, but, up until now, everything was focused in the venom gland, where venom is produced before it is injected,” Castoe

The white-throated snapping turtle (Elseya albagula) is notable for its large size and ability to extract oxygen from the water via cloacal

respiration (arse breathing).

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said. “There was no examination of what’s happening in other parts of the snake’s body. This is the first study to have used the genome to look at the rest of that picture.”Learning more about venom evolution could help scientists develop better anti-venoms and contribute to knowledge about gene evolution in humans.

Castoe said that with an uptick in genetic analysis capabilities, scientists are finding more evidence for a long-held theory. That theory says highly toxic venom proteins were evolutionarily “born” from non-toxic genes, which have other ordinary jobs around the body, such as regulation of cellular functions or digestion of food.

“These results demonstrate that genes or transcripts which were previously interpreted as ‘toxin genes’ are instead most likely housekeeping genes, involved in the more mundane maintenance of normal metabolism of many tissues,” said Stephen Mackessy, a co-author on the study and biology professor at the University of Northern Colorado. “Our results also suggest that instead of a single ancient origin, venom and venom-delivery systems most likely evolved independently in several distinct lineages of reptiles.”

Castoe was lead author on a 2013 study that mapped the genome of the Burmese python. Pythons are not considered venomous even though they have some of the same genes that have evolved into very toxic venoms in other species. The difference is, in highly venomous snakes, such as rattlesnakes or cobras, the venom gene families have expanded to make many copies of those shared genes, and some of these copies have evolved into genes that produce highly toxic venom proteins.

“The non-venomous python diverged from the snake evolutionary tree prior to this massive expansion and re-working of venom gene families. Therefore, the python represents a window into what a snake looked like before venom evolved,” Castoe said. “Studying it helps to paint a picture of how these gene families present in many vertebrates, including humans, evolved into deadly toxin encoding genes.”

Jacobo Reyes-Velasco, a graduate student from Castoe’s lab, is lead author on the new paper. In addition to Castoe and Mackessy, other co-authors are: Daren Card, Audra Andrew, Kyle Shaney, Richard Adams and Drew Schield, all from the UT Arlington Department of Biology; and

Nicholas Casewell, of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.

The paper is titled “Expression of Venom Gene Homologs in Diverse Python Tissues Suggests a New Model for the Evolution of Snake Venom.”

The research team looked at 24 gene families that are shared by pythons, cobras, rattlesnakes and Gila monsters, and associated with venom. The traditional view of venom evolution has been that a core venom system developed at one point in the evolution of snakes and lizards, referred to as the Toxicofera, and that the evolution of highly venomous snakes, known as caenophidian snakes, came afterward. But little explanation has been given for why evolution picked just 24 genes to make into highly toxic venom-encoding genes, from the 25,000 or so possible.

“We believe that this work will provide an important baseline for future studies by venom researchers to better understand the processes that resulted in the mixture of toxic molecules that we observe in venom, and to define which molecules are of greatest importance for killing prey and causing pathology in human snakebite victims,” Casewell said.

When they looked at the python, the team found several common characteristics among the venom-related gene families that differed from other genes. Compared with other python gene families, venom gene families are “expressed at lower levels overall, expressed at moderate-high levels in fewer tissues and show among the highest variation in expression level across tissues,” Castoe said.“Evolution seems to have chosen what genes to evolve into venoms based on where they were expressed (or turned on), and at what levels they were expressed,” Castoe said.

Based on their data, the new paper presents a model with three steps for venom evolution. First, these potentially venomous genes end up in the oral gland by default, because they are expressed in low but consistent ways throughout the body. Then, because of natural selection on this expression in the oral gland being beneficial, tissues in the mouth begin expressing those genes in higher levels than in other parts of the body. Finally, as the venom evolves to become more toxic, the expression of those genes in other organs is decreased to limit potentially harmful effects of secreting such toxins in other body tissues.

The team calls its new model the Stepwise Intermediate Nearly Neutral Evolutionary Recruitment, or SINNER, model. They say differing venom levels in snakes and other animals could be traced to the variability of where different species, or different genes within a species, are along the continuum between the beginning and end of the SINNER model.

Castoe said the next step in the research would be to examine the genome of highly venomous snakes to see if the SINNER model bears out. For now, he and the rest of the team hope that their findings about the presence of venom-related genes in other parts of the python change

Burmese python (Python molurus bivittatus)

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some thinking on what species are labeled as venomous.“What is a venom and what species are venomous will take a lot more evidence to convince people now,” Castoe said. “It provides a brand new perspective on what we should think of when we look at those oral glands.”

Science Daily(University of Texas at Arlington)December 2014

Darwin Python Has Been On A Thrill-killing Rampage - Strangling Feral Cane

Toads Just For Kicks!

A high rolling python with a penchant for amphibian asphyxiation has been popping metaphorical caps in cane toads’ arses at Darwin’s Sky City Casino.

The environmental vigilante – dubbed The Gardens Strangler – has killed at least three toads in two days.

Jason Carpenter said he caught the snake in the act of cold blooded amphibian strangulation.

“When I first looked I had a thought that someone had got a cane toad and put on some Christmas decorations,” he said.

“Then I realised it was a cane toad with a python wrapped round it. It was a negative outcome for the toad.

“If he could only get his mates and train them up.” Mr Carpenter said the snake, who he named “The Assassinator”, worked over two toads the next day – upsizing his kills in the Casino car park where he leaves the bloated carcasses for anyone to stumble across.

The rogue enforcer, who doesn’t bother trying to eat the toads, appears to be the John Elferink of reptiles.

The NT Attorney General has been known to make citizens’ arrests, apprehending alleged perps and holding – or sitting on – them until conventional authorities arrive.

The snake could also be dubbed “Minister Max” – a fitting tribute to former Territory infrastructure minister Max Ortmann who began to strangle an ABC 7.30 Report journalist with his own microphone cord in 1993.

DAVID WOOD NT NewsDecember 2014

Wet Season Crocodiles: Nitmiluk National Park Rangers Check Traps Every Day

Crocodiles are a common sight in the Northern Territory’s Nitmiluk National Park and pose a risk that park rangers do their best to minimise.

Traps set in the Katherine River, which runs through the Nitmiluk Gorge, are used to monitor the movements of crocodiles and to remove any potentially dangerous creatures from the park.

“Every day without fail,” Mr Gorman said. “Especially in the wet season, when the river is more susceptible, up this end, to get the estuarine (saltwater) crocodile in.

“The wet season hasn’t hit us proper yet, for us to expect any of those estuarine crocodiles.”

Any freshwater crocodiles caught in the traps are released, with estuarine crocodiles removed to commercial crocodile farms.

Mr Gorman says park rangers always remain vigilant for crocodiles when they are working out on the water and around the park.

“I’ve been here five years, and in those years we’ve caught five [saltwater] crocodiles,” he said.“We’ve really got to keep our eyes and ears open.”

Nitmiluk National Park rangers co-operate with the Conservation and Wildlife Team in Katherine to monitor the movements of crocodiles.

“The Wildlife Team in (Katherine) also create a buffer for Nitmiluk National Park,” Mr Gorman said.“They do some terrific work in town to keep those saltwater, or estuarine, crocodiles from heading (upstream to the park).

“All through the Katherine River there can be those crocodiles, and through the Daly River, Flora River, they’ve got crocodiles in there, so they can all be thinking about moving (upstream) as well.”

DANIEL FITZGERALD NT Country HourDecember 2014

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2016 VHS Reptile Expo

Hosted by the Victorian Herpetological Society we invite you and your family and friends to the 2016 Reptile and Amphibian Expo to be held at the Melbourne Showgrounds on the 5 March 2016. We’re in the Expo Hall again with its fine ambiance and climate control! There will be fun for everyone with shows, displays, breeders and lots lots more - even some little surprises!!! Look out on our website for more details and updates on what will be Australia’s biggest and bestest reptile expo!!! There are still some tables available for commercial entities and private breeders - so why not contact us at:- vhs@optusnet.com.au for details.

Melbourne Showgrounds5 March, 2016