Famous Reptiles

Looking for a reptile to keep as a pet whose heart is as true blue as its tongue? You may want to look no further than the aptly named blue-tongued skink. According to myriad skink owners and Marisa Nagele, an educator at the Elmwood Park Zoo in Norristown, Pennsylvania, certain subspecies of blue-tongued skinks are intelligent, personable critters that even enjoy limited interaction with humans. In the wild, blue-tongued skinks are found in the warm, sandy areas or grassy, savannah-like regions of Australia, New Guinea and Indonesia. They will often dig a burrow with their snouts or legs, or find an abandoned one to live in. They look very much like snakes with stubby legs, and Nagele says the skink uses that to its advantage. "Skinks are a fairly harmless animal," she says. "They aren't poisonous, they don't have big teeth, they can't constrict their food or anything. So, when there are predators [like hawks] around, one of their biggest defenses is to pre...

The specimen shows that modern tuatara found in New Zealand are little changed from ancestors that lived 190 million years ago. New Zealand's tuatara look like somber iguanas. But these spiny reptiles are not actually lizards. Instead, they are the last remnant of a mysterious and ancient order of reptiles known as the Rhynchocephalians that mostly vanished after their heyday in the Jurassic period. And they truly are the oddballs of the reptile family. Tuatara can live for more than a century, inhabit chilly climates and are able to slide their jaws back and forth to shear through insects, seabirds and each other. They even possess a rudimentary third eye below the scales on the top of their heads that may help them track the sun. These bizarre traits make tuatara an evolutionary enigma, and a spotty fossil record of its long-lost kin has confounded paleontologists. Likely outcompeted by lizards and snakes, virtually all Rhynchocephalians went extinct at the close of the Mesozoic ...

A US man has been charged with smuggling more than 1,700 reptiles, of which 60 were found in his clothes. Jose Manuel Perez was arrested on February 25 after he allegedly crossed into the US from Mexico by car with approximately 60 reptiles – including dozens of lizards and four snakes – hidden inside his jacket pockets and trousers, among others. Even though he initially told customs officials that he had nothing to declare, later, Perez claimed that "the animals were his pets", as per a press release from the US Department of Justice. Jose Manuel Perez, 30, of Oxnard is charged with smuggling more than 1,700 reptiles into the United States, including 60 found hidden in his clothes at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in February 2022. pic.twitter.com/YWKF0dOXRc — US Attorney L.A. (@USAO_LosAngeles) March 24, 2022 See reactions: But for what reason did he bring all these reptiles? It's so strange…. Did he want to have a collapse of the ecosystems/ etc overti...

A company that tried and failed to form its own government in Nevada is now battling with a state agency over one of the Silver State's most beloved animals. Emails obtained by the Reno Gazette Journal show Blockchains, a cryptocurrency company based in Sparks, Nev., and Germany, has prohibited Nevada Department of Wildlife employees from entering any of its property to manage and care for the range's desert bighorn sheep. Once on the brink of extinction, a herd of desert bighorn sheep — Nevada's state animal — was reintroduced to the Virginia Range a decade ago. The range spans nearly 240,000 acres, but just 80,000 acres are publicly owned. Roughly 107,000 acres are part of the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, the largest industrial center in the country. In the center, about 67,000 acres are owned by Blockchains. But a recent email from Blockchains let NDOW officials know that it does "not grant access to anyone from NDOW being on our...

Names such as Gila monster and Komodo dragon, conjure up images of creatures more suited to realms of science fiction. Yet these mini-dinosaurs are very real, with many of the approximate 6,000 reptile species even more strange than some people may consider possible. And with their less formidable reptilian cousins becoming increasingly popular as household pets, people are ever-more interested in the lifespan of lizards. So how long do lizards live? We asked the experts. How Long Do Lizards Live in the Wild? Dr. James Stroud, a Postdoctoral Researcher at The Losos Lab at Washington University in St. Louis, told Newsweek about how the lifespan of the curious reptiles "can vary dramatically", due to the sheer diversity of the creatures. This claim is supported by Martin Whiting, Professor of Animal Behavior at Sydney's Macquarie University, who said: "There is enormous variation in the lifespan of lizards." He suggests the length of time these exemplars of evol...

The reptile house will also be home to a Taipan, the world's most venomous snake. "There's not very many reptile facilities in this area," said Rick de Ridder, owner of the Emerald Coast Zoo. "I think that's what this area needs, is more education on what snakes are." Known as Rick the Reptile Guy, a nickname given to him by the late Steve Irwin, de Ridder has entertained and educated millions on television by starring in the A&E series "Wild Transport." He hopes that this new addition to the Emerald Coast Zoo will continue to educate and inspire the community about reptiles. "The goal is to educate the public about how cool reptiles are, that they're not these big, scary creatures," de Ridder said. He added that the reptile house was designed with an open entrance so that people can walk into or near the enclosure without feeling trapped. "I try to make a pretty big deal of not scaring people with reptiles but showin...

February is finally gone and we can start looking forward to spring with the arrival of March. Even though spring officially arrives in the third week of March, usually this month involves a massive swing in temperatures. It could be 30 degrees one day and 55-60 degrees the next, you just never know. April is typically the month we see more warmer temperatures on a regular basis. It's still technically winter, and it will feel wintry across New York State late on Wednesday and into Thursday morning. If you have not heard, there's a snow system working its way towards the region once again and will deliver a shot of accumulating snow into early Thursday. According to the National Weather Service, a snow event will be in Western New York by late afternoon on Wednesday and work its way into the rest of the state by the evening. The City of Buffalo will only see around an inch of snow, but most other regions will see great amounts. Batavia to Rochester will see up to three inches o...

Someone apparently dumped an adult ball python in Chabot Regional Park in Castro Valley, and park officials are scrambling to find it, because the cold-blooded critter is unlikely to survive the chilly nighttime temperatures. One of the frustrating habits that people have picked up during the pandemic has been getting pets for companionship and then just flat-out abandoning them, a phenomenon animal care professionals call "owner surrenders." To abandon them in the wild is particularly cruel, especially when the animal is cold-blooded and needs a humid environment. That's the case with an abandoned pet who's got officials worried, as a ball python that was abandoned in Castro Valley's Chabot Regional Park, and the Chronicle reports that park officials are rushing to find the snake while it's still alive and hissing. The snake poses little risk to people, as pythons are not venomous. But this variety of python is ill-equipped to survive low temperatures. "...

Barely 10 miles from Ecuador's capital city Quito, the wrinkled slopes of the Andes shelter one of the most biologically diverse and threatened spots in the tropics. At the foot of the Andes here lies a valley. The river running through it, called the Guayllabamba, is at the heart of a remarkable tale of two newly identified species of glass frogs. One of them, Hyalinobatrachium mashpi , lives on the southern side of the river, in the Mashpi and Tayra Reserves, two private, adjacent rainforest oases that together encompass 6,200 acres. The other frog species, Hyalinobatrachium nouns , dwells in the northern flank of the valley in the Toisan Range, a steep complex of mountains isolated from the main Andes belt, an island floating above a green sea . Both creatures exist at roughly the same altitude, in similar humidity and temperature conditions. They both measure between 1.9 and 2.1 centimeters from snout to vent (a standard length measure of amphibians). Their bodies are nearly id...

SILVER CITY, N.M. — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service added a fish called the peppered chub to the endangered species list today. The agency also designated 872 river miles of critical habitat in New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma for the chub, a 3-inch-long, torpedo-shaped fish of the Great Plains. Peppered chubs are on the brink of extinction. They survive only in the upper South Canadian River in northern New Mexico and the Texas Panhandle and in a tributary creek, comprising about 6% of their historic range. That river stretch is gaining pollution and losing water to drought. "Peppered chubs are barely getting this lifesaving protection in time," said Michael Robinson at the Center for Biological Diversity. "Under the Endangered Species Act, habitat protection, captive breeding and reintroduction can keep these exquisite fish from going extinct." Today's actions resulted from a 2020 lawsuit filed by the Center after the peppered chub and 240 other declining ani...

Abstract Competition within and among species can play a key role in structuring the assemblages of anuran tadpoles. Previous studies have reported that tadpoles of the invasive cane toad ( Rhinella marina ) are more strongly disadvantaged by the presence of native frog tadpoles than by the same number of conspecific toad tadpoles. That effect might arise from a lack of coevolution of the invasive toad with its competitors; and/or from a generalized superiority of frog tadpoles over toad tadpoles. To clarify those possibilities, we conducted experimental trials using the larvae of a native rather than invasive toad ( Bufo japonicus formosus in Japan) exposed to larvae of native anurans (the sympatric frogs Rana japonica and Rana ornativentris and the parapatric toad Bufo japonicus japonicus ). In intraspecific competition trials, higher densities of B. j. formosus prolonged the larval period and reduced size at metamorphosis, but did not affect survival. In interspecific competitio...