Reptiles
grrlscientist | March 8, 2010tags: reptiles, chameleon species, herpetology, Chris Raxworthy, research, American Museum of Natural History, AMNH, New York City, field research, nature, travel, Madagascar, speciation, streaming video
With Madagascar containing nearly two-third's of the world's chameleon species, Christopher Raxworthy, Associate Curator of Herpetology at the American Museum of Natural History, recently embarked on an expedition to the island in search of these special lizards. His hope was to track down the lined-chameleon in order to further study speciation on Madagascar.
Having recently returned from…
edyong | March 1, 2010
Snakes have been around for nearly 100 million years and scientists have found many fossils of extinct species. But this astonishing specimen is different. This serpent is Sanajeh indicus. It is sitting in a dinosaur nest and its coils surround three eggs and the body of a hatchling.
There are many reasons to think that this prehistoric tableau represented a predator caught in the act of hunting, rather than a mash-up of unconnected players thrown together by chance. The snake is perfectly posed, with its head resting atop a coil and its body encircling a crushed egg. All the pieces are…
laelaps | February 25, 2010
When it comes to nature documentaries the BBC's natural history unit is the best of the best. Over and over again they have produced top-notch programming, and their new multi-part series Life is perhaps the best I have ever seen. The series contains some familiar moments, such as a sengi running down its carefully-groomed pathways, but the bulk of the series consists of vignettes that I have never seen on screen before. One of the most compelling is the story of the slow death of a water buffalo at the jaws of a horde of patient Komodo dragons, a portion of which I have posted above.
I know…
laelaps | February 24, 2010A Cuban crocodile (Crocodylus rhombifer), photographed at the National Zoo in Washington, DC.
laelaps | February 24, 2010A Cuban crocodile (Crocodylus rhombifer), photographed at the National Zoo in Washington, DC.
No one knew what happened to William Olson. At about three in the afternoon on April 13, 1966 he had been swimming with his friends from the Peace Corps in the part of the Baro river that ran through Gambela, Ethiopia when he suddenly disappeared. The last person to remember seeing him was hunter Karl Luthy. One moment Olson was standing in the river, pressing his body against the current, and the next he was gone.
Luthy could not be sure, but he was almost certain that Olson had been taken by a Nile…
laelaps | February 22, 2010A Madagascar giant day gecko (Phelsuma madagascariensis grandis), photographed at the National Zoo.
edyong | February 21, 2010Whiptail lizards are a fairly ordinary-looking bunch, but some species are among the strangest animals around. You might not be able to work out why at first glance, but looking at their genes soon reveals their secret - they're all female, every single one. A third of whiptails have done away with males completely, a trick that only a small minority of animals have accomplished without going extinct.
Some readers might rejoice at the prospect of a world without males but in general, this isn't good news for a species. Sex has tremendous benefits. Every fling shuffles the genes of the two…
laelaps | February 7, 2010A black rat snake (Elaphe obsoleta), photographed near Bear Mountain in New York.
laelaps | February 3, 2010A restoration of Titanoboa (foreground) in its natural setting. (By Jason Bourque, image from Wikipedia.)
When I was growing up I used to spend hours poring over the Time/Life series of nature books in my little library, absolutely enthralled by images of strange creatures from all over the world, but one photograph was particularly arresting. A grainy black-and-white double-page spread showed an anaconda that had wrapped its crushing coils around a caiman and a tree, slowly squeezing the life out of the crocodylian. Without any frame of reference for size it was easy to envision the two…
grrlscientist | January 13, 2010tags: conservation, reptiles, King Cobra, Ophiophagus hannah, Gharial, Gavialis gangeticus, water pollution, Romulus+Whitaker, TEDTalks, streaming video
The gharial, Gavialis gangeticus, and king cobra, Ophiophagus hannah, are two of India's most iconic reptiles, and they're endangered because of polluted waterways. Conservationist Romulus Whitaker shows rare footage of these magnificent animals and urges us to save the rivers that sustain their lives and our own.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers…
grrlscientist | January 13, 2010tags: art, wildlife art, stop-motion painting, Lanjak Dawn, Crowned Flying Lizard, Orang-utan, entertainment, Carel Brest van Kempen, streaming video
This is yet another fascinating stop-motion video of the creation of artist Carel Brest van Kempen's painting, Lanjak Dawn. This is his first major painting to receive the time-lapse treatment. In this piece, a male Crowned Flying Lizard displays to a prospective mate in a Bornean forest while a big male Orang-utan calls from his sleeping nest. Featuring music; I Formed the World with my Tongue, I Cleared the Bar with my Diaphragm and Haloumi,…
laelaps | January 11, 2010An eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina), photographed at Cape Henlopen State Park, Delaware.
laelaps | January 11, 2010Pterosaur fans, rejoice! Today marks the launch of Pterosaur.net, a website entirely dedicated to the famous flying reptiles. Put together by an all-star team of paleo bloggers, it is the best resource for information on pterosaurs available on the web. Go check it out!
grrlscientist | January 11, 2010tags: art, wildlife art, stop-motion painting, Brown Anole Portrait, Brown Anole, Anolis sagrei, entertainment, Carel Brest van Kempen, streaming video
This is a fascinating stop-motion video documenting the creation of artist Carel Brest van Kempen's painting, Brown Anole Portrait. Probably Florida's most common reptile, the Brown Anole, Anolis sagrei, was introduced from Cuba.
Carel Brest van Kempen published a stunning book, Rigor Vitae: Life Unyielding [my review] and writes the art blog that goes by the same name, that might be of interest to you.
edyong | December 28, 2009
In the White Sands National Park of New Mexico, there are three species of small lizard that all share white complexions. In the dark soil of the surrounding landscapes, all three lizards wear coloured coats with an array of hues, stripes and spots. Colours would make them stand out like a beacon among the white sands so natural selection has bleached their skins. Within the last few thousand years, the lesser earless lizard, the eastern fence lizard and the little striped whiptail have all evolved white forms that camouflage beautifully among the white dunes.
Erica Bree Rosenblum from…
laelaps | December 21, 2009A female gharial (Gavialis gangeticus), photographed at the National Zoo in Washington, DC.
grrlscientist | December 12, 2009tags: Woodpecker vs Snake, behavior, birds, Giant Bird Snake, Pseustes sulphureus, Crimson-crested Woodpecker, Campephilus melanoleucos, streaming video
Here is some remarkable footage from somewhere in the Amazon (Peru?) of a Crimson-crested Woodpecker, Campephilus melanoleucos, taking on a "Giant bird snake" or "puffing snake", Pseustes sulphureus, that has raided its nest and swallowed its eggs.
laelaps | November 4, 2009A restoration of the crocodyliform Goniopholis scavenging a stegosaur carcass. Photographed at the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point, Utah.
edyong | October 30, 2009Tiger snakes are a group of extremely venomous serpents found all over the southern half of Australia, and on many of its islands. Some were cut off from the mainland by rising sea levels more than 9,000 years ago, while others were inadvertently introduced by travelling humans and have been around for less than 30 years.
When the snakes first arrive on an island, they find prey that are generally larger than they're used to on the mainland. That puts them under strong evolutionary pressure to have larger heads, in order to swallow larger meals. But by feeding snakes from different…
edyong | October 29, 2009The Northern short-tailed shrew is a small, energetic mammal that lives in central and eastern North America. The Mexican beaded lizard is a much larger reptile found in Mexico and Guatemala. These species are separated by a lot of a land and several million years of evolution, yet they share astonishing similarities. Not only are they both venomous, but the toxic proteins in their saliva have evolved in very similar ways from a common ancestor, converging on parallel lethal structures independently of one other.
This discovery, from Yael Aminetzach at Harvard University, shows that…