HERP NEWS 229/2009
SCIENCE DAILY (Rockville, Maryland) 17
August 09 First Gene-encoded Amphibian Toxin Isolated
Researchers in
China have discovered the first protein-based toxin in an amphibian –a 60 amino
acid neurotoxin found in the skin of a Chinese tree frog. This finding may help
shed more light into both the evolution of amphibians and the evolution of
poison.
While
gene-encoded protein toxins have been identified in many vertebrate animals,
including fish, reptiles and mammals, none have yet been found in amphibians or
birds. In the case of poisonous amphibians, like the tropical poison dart
frogs, their toxins are usually small chemicals like alkaloids that are
extracted from insects and secreted onto the animal's skin.
Therefore, Ren
Lai and colleagues were surprised to find a protein toxin while examining the
secretions of the tree frog Hyla
annectans. They then purified and characterized this new toxin, which they
called anntoxin.
In protein
sequence and structure, anntoxin was very similar to dendrotoxins (the venoms
found in cobras and other mamba snakes) and cone snail toxins, though anntoxin
only has two disulfide bridges (a strong link that helps keep proteins folded)
compared to three in the other types. The slight differences may account for
why anntoxin does not block potassium channels as the other venoms do, but
rather sodium channels important for signaling in sensory nerves.
Like these
other venoms, though, anntoxin is fast-acting and potent; the researchers found
it could produce rapid convulsions, paralysis and respiratory distress in
several would-be predators like snakes and birds.
The
similarities and differences make anntoxin a very valuable protein for further
study, considering amphibians' special niche as the animals bridging the
evolutionary land-water gap.
Journal
reference: You et al. The First Gene-encoded Amphibian Neurotoxin.
Journal of Biological Chemistry, 2009; 284 (33): 22079 DOI:
10.1074/jbc.M109.013276
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090817143554.htm
CAIRNS POST (Australia) 17 August 09 Sunbaking
crocs 'pose no threat'
A group of
crocodiles seen enjoying the winter sun
more than 6km up the Barron River at Caravonica are no cause for alarm, a
leading expert says.
The crocs, one
estimated at more than 2m long, had been se en every morning in the past week
lounging on the banks of the river about 2km downstream from the popular Lake
Placid recreation area.
Paul Harris,
from the Johnstone River Crocodile Park, said it was not unusual to see the
crocs that far up the river, saying they were "crocodiles being
crocodiles".
"That is
pretty normal," he said.
"If it
wasn't fast-flowing water, then I wouldn't be surprised to see them that far up
the river."
He said the
regular sightings of the crocodiles were common because of the weather and he
said it was unlikely they would pose any threat to humans.
"They
have got to heat up because it is winter coming into spring," he said.
"So they
will take any chance they can to get up on the banks and soak up some sun.
"They
don't particularly like us, they are quite scared of us.
"A croc
that size wouldn't be looking at us as a food source so it would be quite
timid."
Crocodiles
have been known to occupy Lake Placid with a 1m crocodile confirmed in the area
in 2005.
http://www.cairns.com.au/article/2009/08/17/58521_local-news.html
HOUMA TODAY (Louisiana) 17 August 09 Large
alligator shot and killed in Mulberry subdivision (Robert Zullo)
Houma: Sitting down to dinner with his family in
their Mulberry home last week, 33-year-old Dustin Richard saw a knobby black
snout, and a pair of eyes poke out of the water in the boat slip out back.
“I saw that
big monstrous head cruising past and then his body came out, we could tell he
was huge,” Richard said.
Richard and
his children, two boys and a girl ages 2 to 10, ventured outside to see what
turned out to be an 11 ½-foot alligator.
“I just
thought it’d be neat for the kids to see an alligator,” Richard said. “It’s
like having Annie Miller’s swamp tour in your backyard.”
But they found
neighbors had already noticed the reptile and called for help. Houma’s own
“Alligator Man,” 75-year-old nuisance specialist Easton DeHart, strolled up to
the scene.
DeHart,
licensed by the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries to respond to
nuisance alligator complaints, deals with hundreds of the reptiles each year.
He said he
prefers to remove them unharmed and have Department of Wildlife and Fisheries
agents deposit them back in the swamps, far from populated areas.
“I kill one
out of 10 calls,” he said. “It depends on the circumstances.”
DeHart said
trying to get this gator out of the water alive — the biggest he’s seen all
summer — would have been too dangerous.
“You can’t
hardly catch them when they’re in the water,” he said.
So he took aim
with a .223 rifle and fired, hitting the alligator in the head but failing to
deliver a lethal blow.
“The bullet
hit the top of the head,” DeHart said. “It made him kind of crazy.”
The
disoriented alligator charged into a bulkhead and DeHart finished him off,
using a truck to pull the 600-pound body ashore.
“He was big,
fat and round,” DeHart said.
Richard, who
has lived in the house on the end of Tigerlilly Drive for nearly two years,
said gators are a frequent sight.
But he’s never
seen one as big as the animal DeHart shot Aug. 5.
“They’re
always back there, that’s just the biggest one we’ve seen,” Richard said.
“Something that big is alarming. I haven’t seen any of the gators, even the
small ones, come up on land. It is a little disturbing.”
DeHart said
large alligators can pose a threat to children and pets.
The Mulberry
gator spat up pieces of shell and stone driveway, indicating he’d been on land
in the subdivision. He also appeared to have eaten a small animal, possibly
someone’s pet, DeHart added, though he didn’t analyze the stomach contents
closely.
“Evidently he
got on the bank and grabbed some animal,” he said, adding that he’s found dog
collars inside other alligators he’s caught.
In July of
last year, an 11-year-old Slidell boy lost his arm after he was attacked by an
11-foot alligator in a pond near a subdivision.
“It’s a
dangerous animal,” DeHart said, adding that it’s better to be safe than sorry
when large gators are near people. “I take care of it. ... I don’t put an
animal ahead of a child or a human being.”
http://www.houmatoday.com/article/20090817/articles/908159953
TUSCALOOSA NEWS (Alabama) 17 August 09 Expert
to study snakes’ northward migration - Burmese pythons have already infested
the Florida Everglades, but can they survive winter farther north? (Tommy
Stevenson)
Tuscaloosa: When Whit Gibbons was a boy growing up in
Tuscaloosa’s West End, he would set traps for salamanders, toads and just about
any other creepy-crawly thing by digging long trenches in the woods into which
his prey would fall.
Today, as
professor emeritus of ecology at the University of Georgia, head of the
environmental outreach and education program at the Savannah River Ecology
Laboratory in South Carolina, the author of eight books and the Ecoviews column
that runs every Sunday in The Tuscaloosa News, Gibbons has turned his
fascination with reptiles and amphibians into a career.
But his
current project involves creatures much larger than he caught as a child in the
1950s — Burmese pythons, which can grow to more than 20 feet long and which
have infested the Florida Everglades, 100,000 strong by some estimations.
“And they are
heading north,” Gibbons said recently from his Savannah River lab in Aiken,
S.C. “How much further north, no one knows, but it’s something we are trying to
find out by seeing how they survive the winter this far north.”
Some
scientists speculate that most of the pythons infesting the Everglades are the
progeny of pets that escaped en masse when Hurricane Andrew damaged or
destroyed more than 125,000 homes in 1992. But just how adaptable the snakes
are as they spread farther north is the subject of the study being conducted
jointly at Gibbons’ lab by the University of Florida, Davidson College and the
National Park Service.
Some models,
based on the python’s range in its native Asian habitat, project that the
snakes could move up various waterways into most of the Southern states to the
Smoky Mountains and even as far west as California.
But Frank
Struss, director of facilities engineering at the University of Alabama and an
amateur herpetologist who has owned exotic snakes, said he can already tell
Gibbons and others working on the project what will happen over the winter.
“Without some
protective place to go for warmth, like under a house, they will die,” he said.
“I’ve had that happen to me. In the winter I put heating pads in my snake
enclosures, and one winter one of them failed, and a pretty good-sized ball
python I had died of pneumonia.”
Struss said
that as some of his Burmese pythons grew larger, they required extra sources of
heat in their cages to make it through the winter.
“I just don’t
think the projections for them getting this far in the wild in any numbers are
accurate because of the cold snaps we tend to have in winter,” he said.
Gibbons’ study
began in June when 10 male pythons of lengths varying from 5 feet to more than
a dozen feet were captured in the Everglades and put into an outdoor enclosure
at the Savannah River lab. The snake pit has a perimeter of several hundred
feet surrounded by a 7-foot smooth concrete wall that Gibbons says will make it
impossible for them to escape. The enclosure includes a pond surrounded by
brush and other vegetation common to the Southeast.
“They are
doing fine right now, of course, because it’s summer and so hot,” Gibbons says.
“But the idea is to find out how or if they can survive winter this far north.
They are semi-aquatic snakes and live and breed where there is ample water, and
that would have a determination on where they spread to.”
Aiken, near the
Georgia state line in central South Carolina, is a bit farther north than
Tuscaloosa, but it has a similar climate. Tuscaloosa is on a major waterway,
the Black Warrior River, which flows into the Mobile delta.
So does
Gibbons think future generations of children looking for critters might one day
run into a snake bigger than they are, say, in the Sipsey Swamp or the
backwaters of Hurricane Creek? Or does he agree with Struss, who says they may
gain a foothold along the Gulf coast, but not spread much farther north?
“That’s what
our study intends to find out,” he said. “This winter will tell us a lot.”
Radio
transmitters and data collectors have been implanted in the snakes to help
researchers monitor their movements in a mixed environment of brush, ponds and
trees and collect meticulous records on what happens to the snakes as it gets
cooler.
But even if it
is determined that the snakes cannot survive much farther north than Florida,
they have already become a problem in that state. And evidence shows they are
on the move.
A 17-footer
that had been kept as a pet escaped and strangled a 2-year-old in her bed in
Orlando last month, while a 14-footer was pulled from a drainage pipe two weeks
ago in Bradenton, Fla., part of the hugely developed Tampa-Sarasota-St.
Petersburg area on the west-central coast, miles from the Everglades.
Another
17-footer was captured on the grounds of the Okeechobee Veterinary Hospital
north of the Everglades.
Mike Dorcas, a
professor at Davidson College in North Carolina who is part of the Burmese
python project, has sliced open pythons from the Everglades to find the remains
of bobcats, large birds and even white-tailed deer. He said that, with the
exception of alligators, they have no natural enemies.
Although
Gibbons says he shares Struss’ doubts the snakes will get as far north as
Tuscaloosa, he thinks they would adjust “very well” in the south Louisiana
bayous, where they could feast on the abundance of nutria, large rodents that
are also an invasive species introduced from South America.
“The pythons
would love those marshes and bayous,” Gibbons said. “The question, again, is
can they get through all the urban sprawl and stand the temperature
fluctuations we have in the South.”
Gibbons also
has questions about the theory that Hurricane Andrew set the wheels in motion
for the infestation of the large, dangerous predators.
“I have my
doubts about the theory that Andrew came through and just set everything free,”
he said. “I think it might be an accumulation of things — people setting pets
free when they got too big, pets escaping and maybe Andrew to a certain extent
— that just reached a critical mass in the last decade or so.
“I really
think we will never know what happened,” he said. “Our job now is to learn
everything we can about what could happen.”
EVENING POST (Bristol, UK) 17 August 09 New
pics of Bristol snake that ate cat
New photos
show the sheer size and power of Squash, the 13ft, 80kg Burmese python that
killed and ate a pet cat in a Bristol garden.
The
10-year-old snake swallowed four-year-old tabby Wilbur on June 25 after the cat
ventured into its domain.
But Darren
Bishop, who has had Squash since she was a six-week old baby, says he is a
responsible owner.
A scan of the
python confirmed that there was a micro-chipped animal inside, and an RSPCA
inspector issued Mr Bishop with a verbal warning.
Now Wilbur's
owners, Martin and Helen Wadey, are fighting for the law to be changed so that
snakes are officially classified as dangerous animals and for owners to require
a licence for them.
A petition
they set up on the 10 Downing Street website has already attracted more than
3,700 signatures after the incident made headlines worldwide.
Mr Bishop, a
35-year-old excavator driver, keeps his huge pet in a large tank in his home in
Upper Sandhurst Road, Brislington, and when he lets her out into his garden he
keeps an eye on her every 10 minutes.
But his vigilance
wasn't enough to stop Squash crushing, asphyxiating and eating Wilbur.
Mr and Mrs
Wadey think the python could have been hunting their beloved pet. But Mr Bishop
says the cat must have made the first move.
Whoever struck
first, these photos clearly show that Wilbur never stood a chance.
The Burmese
python, a constrictor, is one of the six largest snakes in the world and is
native to the rainforests of South-East Asia.
At 13ft long
Squash is an adult, and could continue to get bigger throughout her life. But
she could still have a long way to go.
A Burmese
python at a serpent safari park in America was measured at 27ft in 2005,
weighing in at 183kg – more than twice the weight of an average man. Like all
snakes Burmese pythons are carnivorous, with a diet consisting mainly of birds
and mammals.
Exceptionally
large pythons may require very large animals for their diet, such as pigs or
goats. Some Burmese pythons in Florida have even been know to attack
alligators.
Burmese
pythons are typically afraid of humans and generally avoid them, but because of
their large size could easily overpower and kill an adult.
In July, a
two-year-old girl was crushed to death in Florida by an 8ft Burmese python.
VIRGINIAN-PILOT (Hampton Roads, Virginia) 17
August 09 Cat helps keep owner safe from poisonous snakes (Devon Hubbard
Sorlie)
To most, Teddy
is an average gray and white domestic shorthair with a white bib and booties.
But to Gary
Barnette, he's a hero. For the third time this year already, 4-year-old Teddy
has alerted Barnette to danger lurking amongst his rural landscaping.
Barnette, who
is still recovering from back surgery that has him using a cane to walk,
noticed Teddy intently stalking something near an outbuilding on his rural
property off Johnstown Road last month.
Using a stick,
Barnette carefully lifted a bucket a few inches to see a water moccasin, coiled
and ready to strike.
Barnette
hobbled back to his house to get a shotgun and dispatched the snake. And then
gave Teddy lots of hugs and praise.
"That's
the third water moccasin he's found in the yard so far this year,"
Barnette said. "And he found one last year."
Barnette, 69,
a former narcotics detective with the Chesapeake police department and ABC
undercover agent, believes Teddy's vigilance in letting him know where snakes
are has prevented him from being bitten more than once.
Had Barnette
walked near the snake or inadvertently uncovered its hiding place, his reflexes
would not have been fast enough for him to jump out of the way.
Teddy doesn't
discriminate when it comes to flushing out snakes. He'll corner black snakes,
brown snakes and garter snakes with the same verve as he does water moccasins.
But Barnette lets the harmless snakes go free.
"They
come out searching for frogs," Barnette said of the dangerously poisonous
cottonmouths.
Barnette
advocates getting cats for patrol duty. He recalled an article he read in a
Pamlico, N.C., newspaper about a man who walked up on a rattlesnake and was
bitten. He then had a bad reaction to the anti-venom, which caused his liver
and kidneys to shut down.
Barnette wrote
a letter to the North Carolina paper, explaining how his cats let him know
where snakes are on his property and keep them relatively snake-free.
A couple weeks
later, Barnette said he called the Pamlico animal shelter and was delighted to
hear every cat had been adopted shortly after his letter was published.
Teddy himself
was adopted from Chesapeake Animal Control two years ago.
"People
who live in the country need to have cats, because cats will let you know
what's going on in your yard," he said, balancing a squirming Teddy with
one hand and the dead snake with the other.
"I just
love cats," Barnette added, as Teddy affectionately rubbed his head on the
former Marine's chin. "I hope people will take this opportunity to go to
an animal shelter and adopt one or two."
http://hamptonroads.com/2009/08/cat-helps-keep-owner-safe-poisonous-snakes
THE SUN (London, UK) 17 August 09 So
snappy together (Virginia Wheeler)
If you thought
the legend of the horse whisperer was impressive, here's an animal tale with
even more bite.
Rather than
trying to tame wild stallions, fearless Costa Rican fisherman Chito prefers a
playful wrestle in the water with his best pal Pocho - a deadly 17ft crocodile.
The
52-year-old daredevil draws gasps of amazement from onlookers by wading
chest-deep into the water, then whistling for his 980lb buddy - and giving him
an affectionate hug.
Crazy Chito
says: "Pocho is my best friend. This is a very dangerous routine but we
have a good relationship. He will look me in the eye and not attack me.
"It is
too dangerous for anyone else to come in the water. It is only ever the two of
us."
Chito made
friends with the croc after finding him with a gunshot wound on the banks of
the Central American state's Parismina river 20 years ago.
He had been
shot in the left eye by a cattle farmer and was close to death.
But Chito
enlisted the help of several pals to load the massive reptile into his boat.
He says:
"When I found Pocho in the river he was dying, so I brought him into my
house.
"He was
very skinny, weighing only around 150lb. I gave him chicken and fish and
medicine for six months to help him recover.
"I stayed
by Pocho's side while he was ill, sleeping next to him at night. I just wanted
him to feel that somebody loved him, that not all humans are bad.
"It meant
a lot of sacrifice. I had to be there every day. I love all animals -
especially ones that have suffered."
It took years
before Chito felt that Pocho had bonded with him enough to get closer to the
animal.
He says:
"After a decade I started to work with him. At first it was slow, slow. I
played with him a bit, slowly doing more.
"Then I
found out that when I called his name he would come over to me."
At one point
during his recovery, Chito left the croc in a lake near his house. But as he
turned to walk away, to his amazement Pocho got out of the water and began to
follow him home.
Chito recalls:
"That convinced me the crocodile could be tame." But when he first
fearlessly waded into the water with the giant reptile his family was so
horrified they couldn't bear to watch. So instead, he took to splashing around
with Pocho when they were asleep.
Four years ago
Chito showed some of his tricks to friends, including getting the animal to
close his eyes on command, and they convinced him to go public with a show.
Now he swims
and plays with Pocho as well as feeding him at the lake near his home in the
lowland tropical town of Sarapiqui.
The odd couple
have now become a major tourist attraction, with several tour operators,
including Crocodile Adventures, taking visitors on touring cruises to see the
pair.
On the Crocodile
Adventures website it describes the spectacle as: "One of the most amazing
things that no cruise ship passenger will want to miss, the adventure show
between the man and the crocodile."
American
crocodiles, which inhabit North, Central and South America, can live to around
70 years old. It is estimated that Pocho is around 50 - almost the same age as
his owner.
They are also
said to be less aggressive than their Nile or Australian counterparts.
Chito, whose
real name is Gilberto Shedden, was given his nickname by friends, who also call
him "Tarzan Tico" - Tico being a familiar word for a Costa Rican.
And he
certainly plays up to the name, wearing a tattered pair of leopard-print shorts
for his half-hour performances with Pocho.
A keen
conservationist, he also offers boat tours, where he eagerly points out a
variety of wildlife.
But he only
charges a few dollars to watch the breathtaking crocodile show, claiming he
does not want to cash in on Pocho.
He says:
"He's my friend, I don't want to treat him like a slave or exploit him.
"I am
happy because I rescued him and he is happy with me because he has everything
he needs."
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/2589865/Blokes-best-mate-is-a-crocodile.html
NORTHERN TERRITORY NEWS (Darwin, Australia)
17 August 09 Cops shoot dead attacking croc (Daniel Bourchier)
Police were
forced to shoot dead a large crocodile after it turned up in the middle of a
Territory town and became aggressive.
There were
more than 30 children around when the crocodile was first spotted. Police at
the community of Gunbalanya were called at 8am on Saturday and told the croc
was in Middle Camp, in the centre of the town.
Brevet
Sergeant Ben Higgins was the first on the scene and said he had never come
across anything like it before.
"We
attended and watched, Parks and Wildlife were called but were not able to get
there," he said.
"In the
end, the croc became disturbed and had to be destroyed.
"It got
to a fence and was snapping at it and trying to do a death roll. It was handed
over to the locals."
Sgt Higgins
said the camp sits between a billabong and another catchment of water.
He said the
billabong had dried up and the only way to get the 500m to the other catchment
of water was to walk along the road and between the homes of the camp.
"Everyone
was standing and watching, no one was really fussed," he said. "There
were about 50-60 people there."
Two police
officers took on the 2.5m croc and two shots were needed to kill it. Sgt
Higgins said the shot croc was handed over to the locals.
"They
skinned him as soon as he was shot," he said. "They chopped him up
and had roasted croc. It was quite tasty."
Gunbalunya,
formerly know an Oenpelli, is 300km East of Darwin in West Arnhem.
http://www.ntnews.com.au/article/2009/08/17/75781_ntnews.html
INLAND NEWS TODAY (Riverside, California) 17
August 09 Stray snake a 50-pound python
Lake
Elsinore: Animal control officers
respond to snake calls all the time. But, there’s one Chrisina Avila won’t
forget.
Usually,
people consider a garter snake a big snake. Sunday night’s snake turned out to
be an 11-foot, 50-pound python.
Francisco
Delgadillo, 43, lives off of Highway 74 between Lake Elsinore and Perris. He
was chatting with his sister when the snake slithered across his front yard.
With some help from a co-worker, Chrisina was able to wrangle it and heave it
into an animal control truck.
The reptile
was considered a stray probably bought as a pet when very young and later
abandoned because it got so huge. It will be kept for a holding period. Animal
Services will work with an exotic rescue group if no one calls to claim it.
Delgadillo is
still in shock. “Our whole yard is fenced so I’m not sure how it got here.
Maybe it came down from one of the trees,” he said.
http://www.inlandnewstoday.com/story.php?s=9983
THE EXPRESS (Port of Spain, Trinidad &
Tobago) 17 August 09 TT playing major role in saving amphibians
London: Paignton Zoo Environmental Park has built a
new refuge for endangered amphibians designed to save entire species from
extinction.
The Zoo’s
“Amphibian Ark” species rescue and reintroduction centre will concentrate its
work on three geographic areas — Madagascar, Tanzania and Trinidad.
Mike Bungard,
Curator of Lower Vertebrates and Invertebrates, said: “We aim to save at least
three distinct species. Not just help with the work or support the work but
actually save them from extinction. It’s an incredible opportunity but a huge
responsibility. We have to get it right.”
The building,
formerly an interactive education space, has been turned into a bio-secure
animal area with public viewing at a cost of £75,000. Mike says the building
work is just the beginning:
“It is a
complicated project that can’t be rushed. We need to do the right thing for the
right species. At this stage I’m not sure how many species the “Ark” will hold.
The amphibian extinction crisis is the greatest species conservation challenge
in our history. Out of 6,000 known amphibian species, 50 percent are threatened
or endangered, compared to ten percent of mammal species.”
Bungard is
currently making lists of priority species for each country and is planning
fact-finding trips to both Tanzania and Trinidad within the year.
“We are
working with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature on Malagasy
amphibians and negotiating with partner organisations in all three countries.
People and politics can complicate matters — Madagascar is particularly
difficult right now with all the political unrest. But the amphibians there
really need our help.”
Amphibians are
affected by habitat loss, climate change, pollution, pesticides and the deadly
chytrid fungus. Unstoppable and untreatable in the wild, the fungus can kill 80
percent of amphibians within months. The aim is to protect species from the
fungus, possibly by taking animals from the wild and then reintroducing them
when it is safe to do so.
Amphibians are
cold-blooded vertebrates that can live on land but breed and develop into
adults in water. Frogs, toads and salamanders are all amphibians.
The move
follows on from last year’s EAZA Year of the Frog Campaign, which raised
awareness and understanding of the amphibian extinction crisis. Paignton Zoo
donated £3,000 to the campaign and pledged, like other zoos, to build amphibian
conservation facilities.
Bungard said:
“The world needs amphibians — the skins of amphibians produce substances that
kill microbes and viruses, offering us the promise of medical cures for a
variety of illnesses. Amphibians also perform important pest population
control. They are also fascinating, wondrous creatures.”
http://www.newsday.co.tt/news/0,105634.html
THE EXPRESS (Port of Spain, Trinidad &
Tobago) 17 August 09 How to survive a snake bite (Camille
Bethel)
If you are
bitten by a venomous snake, don't panic. There is time.
You will not
die immediately. Public relations officer of the Trinidad and Tobago Medical
Association, Dr Frank Ramlackhansingh, said: "It is definitely
life-threatening but you don't die right away, you have a few hours grace and
it is possible to get the anti-venom in time."
Ramlackhansingh
said although the only toxicology management centre is at the Sangre Grande
District Hospital, "everyone has to be vigilant", when dealing with a
snake bite so that the patient can survive.
He said on
Friday that the patient should be taken to the nearest casualty department and
an urgent call made to the toxicology centre so an ambulance can be dispatched
with the anti-venom for the patient.
Singh said it
was also very important to know what type of snake it is so that the correct
anti-venom can be administered.
"Because
if you don't get the correct one then it is a waste of time. But it is not only
about the anti-venom, the medical support is needed as well."
He said an
intravenous fluid and oxygen also needed to be administered.
Relatives of
42-year-old Gandira Geeta Lochan, who died after being bitten by a venomous
snake last week, claimed that the slow response to treat her at the Sangre
Grande Hospital caused her death.
Lochan's
relatives said she died because the anti-venom was not administered quickly,
although she got to the toxicology centre in time.
She is the
second person to have succumbed to a snake bite for the year.
Victor Neptune
died three days after being bitten by a venomous snake in late February.
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_news?id=161518415
DER STANDARD (Vienna, Austria) 17 August 09 Rettung
für einen Frosch namens "Mountain Chicken" - Antillen-Ochsenfrösche
sind vom Chytrid-Pilz an den Rand des Aussterbens gedrängt worden - Zoologen
gelingt die Nachzucht
London/Jersey
((pte/red)): Ein - nach
Amphibien-Maßstäben - imposanter Körperbau allein ist noch kein Schutz: Denn
während die Aga-Kröte blüht und gedeiht, ist der Antillen-Ochsenfrosch, eine
der größten Froscharten der Welt, stark bedroht. Leptodactylus fallax, so der
lateinische Namen des Frosches, ist durch die so genannte Chytridiomykose, eine
für Lurche tödliche Pilzerkrankung, extrem gefährdet und kommt nur noch auf den
beiden Antilleninseln Montserrat und Dominica vor.
Der
Antillen-Ochsenfrosch ist das größte Mitglied seiner Familie und gehört zu den
größten aller heutigen Froschlurche. Erwachsene Individuen können in
Ausnahmefällen eine Kopfrumpflänge von bis zu 21 Zentimetern und ein Gewicht
von mehr als 700 Gramm erreichen. "Die Ochsenfrösche galten jahrelang als
kulinarische Spezialität in Dominica. Sie wurden aufgrund des wohlschmeckenden
Fleisches unter dem Namen Mountain Chicken angepriesen", so die
Umweltaktivistin Jeane Finucane aus Dominica. Seit 2002 sind sie aufgrund ihres
starken Rückgangs allerdings von den Speisekarten verschwunden. Die Erkrankung
hat die Froschpopulation in zwei Jahren um 80 Prozent verringert. Ursprünglich
waren die Frösche auf sieben Antilleninseln heimisch - rücksichtslose Jagd und
Umweltzerstörung haben allerdings dazu geführt, dass sie nun nur mehr auf
Montserrat und Dominica beheimatet sind.
Erste Erfolge
Hoffnung
besteht jedoch: Der Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust berichtet von Erfolgen bei der Nachzucht.
Durrell hat mit dem Froschzuchtprogramm in Jersey, im Londoner Zoo und im
Parken Zoo im schwedischen Eskilstuna bereits vor zehn Jahren begonnen. Schon
bald nach dem Fund toter Frösche auf Montserrat konnten Herpetologen und
Veterinärmediziner feststellen, dass die Tiere dem gefürchteten Pilz zum Opfer
gefallen waren - Behördenvertreter wurden darin unterrichtet, wie man der
gefährlichen Erkrankung Einhalt gebieten kann. Indessen wurden insgesamt 50
Tiere von Montserrat ausgeflogen und auf die drei zoologischen Stationen
aufgeteilt. Bis jetzt konnten vier Froschpärchen dazu gebracht werden, sich zu
paaren.
"Der
Antillen-Ochsenfrosch hat eine sehr ungewöhnliche Art der Paarung, da er
Schaumnester in Erdlöchern baut", so Durrell-Direktor John Fa. Die Weibchen
legen ihre Eier hinein und die Kaulquappen schlüpfen daraus. "Da Nahrung
sehr knapp ist, legen die Weibchen zusätzlich unbefruchtete Eier, die den
Kaulquappen als Nahrung dienen." Erstmals ist es den Forschern auch
gelungen, diese Szenen zu filmen.
http://derstandard.at/1250003651407/Rettung-fuer-einen-Frosch-namens-Mountain-Chicken
BRISBANE TIMES (Australia) 16 August 09 Three
bitten by snake in Gold Coast bush
Three people
suspected of being bitten by a snake while bushwalking have been winched out of
a forest on the Gold Coast hinterland.
The Queensland
Department of Community Safety (DCS) said a 47-year-old woman, a 14-year-old
girl and another person had been winched out by rescue helicopter late Sunday.
The trio and
one other person were about 10km along a walking track from Binna Burra when
they were bitten at about 12.30pm (AEDT).
The snake
species is unknown.
All three are
breathing, conscious and in a stable condition and are being airlifted to Tweed
Heads hospital, a DCS spokesperson said.
A paramedic
who had been winched in to treat the trio has also now been lifted out by a
second helicopter.
Four State
Emergency Services (SES) volunteers walked the 10km in to assist in the rescue
and to walk out the fourth person along with other bushwalkers who are believed
to have come to the aide of the trio.
HERALD-TRIBUNE (Sarasota, Florida) 16 August
09 Python
prankster shouldn't go unscathed (Tom Lyons)
It might be a
plus that a few people pull off an occasional harmless hoax.
Whether the
hokum involves faked Big Foot evidence, bogus Loch Ness sea creature sightings
or tales of made-up Everglades olfactory encounters with the alleged Skunk Ape,
some tricksters just bring a little more mystery and fun into the world. I can
easily forgive and even appreciate some fibs that should never be taken
seriously in the first place.
But what about
the fraud created by Justin Matthews, a Manatee County guy who makes a big
thing about his role educating kids and adults about wildlife? He takes his
message into schools and seeks publicity and public support for his Matthews
Wildlife Rescue operation in East Bradenton.
It's no secret
now that his biggest publicity-grabbing wildlife rescue moment, one involving
capture of a very big snake in an East Manatee culvert, was a total fraud.
Are we amused?
Sure, lots of us are. It's fun seeing a Steve Irwin wannabe caught in the coils
of his own serpentine scam.
The publicity
hound who spent years seeking coverage of almost everything he did now admits
he totally faked the much-photographed discovery and extraction of a whoppingly
big and scary python not far from a shopping plaza and a day care. He actually
put that snake there. But he admitted it only after a state wildlife
investigator confronted him with evidence that he had recently purchased that
snake from a dealer.
But amused as
I am, I don't think this goofball's embarrassed apology is enough. Williams
should face some sort of sanctions, something well short of being thrown into a
pit of vipers, but something that will make the black mark on his
wildlife-related reputation official.
It's not just
the time his false account cost for firefighters and wildlife officers that
bothers me. It is more the risk involved in putting that very live snake there,
and also the promotion of unjustified parental terror that a child might now be
crushed by a python if kids are allowed to play in their own yard.
Dave Lueck,
whose job is removing nuisance animals and who bills himself as "The
Trapper Guy," says Matthews has given a black eye to an industry that has
enough image problems.
"We're
licensed professionals," Lueck said, not, as some assume, "yahoos in
a pickup truck."
Matthews'
claim that he was just trying to create awareness of the python problem doesn't
even qualify as a weak excuse, Lueck said. There has been plenty of publicity
for honest accounts of pet pythons being released and now thriving in the
Everglades, he said, but around here, pythons aren't much of a problem and
might never be.
"I get
one or two boa or python calls a year," he said, and even those usually
turn out to be for snakes too small to be a serious worry.
So there's no
excuse for a wildlife "expert" concocting that scary fraud. Matthews
did it to publicize himself, and he now deserves help on that from the state,
in the form of a court appearance. I'm sure the press will cooperate.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20090816/COLUMNIST/908161058
DENVER POST (Colorado) 16 August 09 Living
with rattlesnakes for neighbors (Gordon MacKinney)
I was standing
in my slippers near the tall grass alongside our driveway when Luci, our border
collie mix, having finished her business, bounded past me through the grass
toward the house. From the area she had just disturbed, three feet to the left
of my bare calf, came a sudden but steady hiss, like air escaping from a tire.
For an
ignosecond I wondered if one of those defunct plastic irrigation lines buried
among the weeds was somehow venting. No way. Even before
"rattlesnake" was fully spelled out on the whiteboard inside my dull
morning brain, I found myself quick-stepping to the right.
While my
personal exposure to rattlesnakes has been blessedly limited, my wife, a
veterinarian, more frequently manages their carnage: dog faces swelling to
triple their normal size until tissue starts dying off. Antivenin comes with no
guarantees except the price of $900 per dose. Oh yes, and rattlesnakes can
kill.
We don't live
in a remote Red Feather Lakes cabin or on prairie east of Severance, but rather
in a foothills neighborhood with block parties and trick-or-treating.
Nevertheless, nearby Lory State Park dispatches critters into our yards and, on
occasion, garages and garbage cans.
Since arriving
17 years ago, we've coexisted nicely with our wild friends. Only recently have
they posed a threat. We caught glimpses of coyotes lurking among the tall
grass, and puzzled over their motivations. We surmised the answer later when
our housecat, having squeezed through a door left ajar, never returned.
We've become
accustomed to some dangers. Each kid is trained to distinguish a normal spider,
the kind that appears in the bathtub or dangles from the mantle, the kind that
deserves to be scooped into a cup and released outside "to go find his
family," and the one that's jet black, has two unusually long legs on the
front, and has a red hourglass on her tummy.
Other dangers
come out of the night suddenly. Recently, around 11 p.m. our daughter let out
Luci and immediately began shouting, "Oh my God!" — not unusual for
an expressive 14-year-old describing the most mundane situation, but the family
scrambled nevertheless. On the front porch was Luci, tail tucked and wild eyed,
snorting spasmodically, and whipping her head frantically, tossing off globs of
foam from her mouth. She had cornered a skunk near the kids' sandbox and taken
the blast point-blank. Before she could bolt into the house — the worst-case
scenario — I restrained her outside while my wife blended the baking soda, dish
soap and vinegar that would eventually neutralize the devilish stench.
We've tried to
practice live-and- let-live. After all, 30 years ago our neighborhood was just
Soldiers Canyon, not Blue Spruce Drive and County Road 25G. The wildlife owned
the place. However, my John Muir sensibilities were challenged two years ago
when the first rattlesnake showed up on the driveway, near a 7-year-old
artist's chalk drawing. Then, parental concern shouted down "but they were
here first." I ran over the snake with the minivan, but have felt guilty
ever since.
This time,
armed with a rake and the garbage can used for diapers, the one with the top
that clamps down tightly, interloper confronted interloper. Other than one
moment when he wriggled free of the rake prongs, flopped to the asphalt and
began striking the air, I kept the sound of my heart in my ears to a dull rush.
Once he was clamped in the dustbin, I walked deep into the state park, the
snake sounding like a lit fuse, and released him unharmed.
Next up for
the kids: a discussion about the difference between friendly snakes and those
that require Mommy or Daddy to take them far away "to go find their
families."
http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_13059448
CLEVELAND LEADER (Ohio) 16 August 09 4-Foot-Long
Snake Found On Street In Merrimack - Police: Snake Possibly Discarded, Escaped
From Cage
Merrimack,
N.H.: Are you missing a snake? Officials
in Merrimack hope anyone who knows where a 4-foot-long snake found on a street
belongs will call with information.
Merrimack
police were called to Center Street, where a passerby reported finding the
red-tailed boa.
Police said
they believe the snake may have been someone's pet and could have been
discarded in the area, or it possibly escaped from its cage.
If you have
information regarding this investigation, Merrimack authorities ask you to
contact animal control Officer Elizabeth Geiger by dialing 603-420-1812.
http://www.wmur.com/news/20418931/detail.html
THE STAR (Kansas City, Missouri) 16 August 09 Python
captured in St. Joseph may become KC resident (Emily Van Zandt)
A 9-foot
Burmese python captured last week in St. Joseph may soon become a Kansas City
resident.
City workers
in St. Joseph first spotted the snake in Riverfront Park. They notified
animal-control officers, who searched the area for two days but couldn’t find
the serpent. After speaking Wednesday with media at the park about the snake,
officer Stephen Norman decided to look for the python one more time.
“Just as I
rounded the corner right by the river, I found it all sprawled out on a
concrete landing, sunning,” Norman said.
He and a
fellow officer captured the snake, which Norman estimated to be 18 pounds and 5
or 6 years old.
“It’s
extremely docile and in very good condition,” said Norman, who thought the
python was probably an escaped pet.
The snake is
being cared for at an animal-control facility, but Norman said the facility was
not used to housing such a large animal. If an owner doesn’t claim the reptile
soon, the snake will be given to the Kansas City Herpetological Society.
Society
treasurer Mike Humphrey said the group would see whether one of its board
members could care for the snake until someone willing to adopt it could be
found.
“You don’t
want a Burmese python to go to someone who’s inexperienced,” Humphrey said.
“Typically, they’re really good snakes, but they’re large. When you get them,
they’re small and cute, but they start growing and all of a sudden you don’t
have a cage or space.”
Humphrey said
it was not uncommon for a female Burmese python to reach 18 feet in length.
Norman said
the condition of the snake meant it probably wasn’t loose for long.
Burmese
pythons have become an invasive species in the Florida Everglades, with at
least tens of thousands loose, according to state wildlife officials.
Some
researchers think the snakes could travel north, but it is unlikely the
cold-blooded animals would be able to survive a Midwestern winter, Humphrey
said.
A 9-foot
python wasn’t the only unusual capture that St. Joseph animal control officers
dealt with recently.
Officers
recently captured a 5-foot boa constrictor outside a Wal-Mart. It had escaped
and gotten underneath its owners’ car, slithering out when they stopped at the store.
The owners
picked up the snake later in the week.
http://www.kansascity.com/115/story/1387394.html
TIMES RECORDER (Zanesville, Ohio) 16 August
09 Lake
Erie water snake making a big comeback (James Proffitt)
South Bass
Island: Those water snakes aren't so
endangered any more.
In 2003, when
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service approved a five-year plan to bolster the
small population of Lake Erie water snakes, officials hoped the species would
recover by 2013.
Carolyn
Caldwell, administrator of wildlife management and research with the Ohio
Department of Natural Resources, said the snake population has exceeded
expectations.
"The
population estimate currently exceeds 10,000," Caldwell said. The snake is
listed by state officials as endangered, and by federal officials as
threatened.
The snake,
which grows to an average length of 3.5 feet, is found only on the nine Ohio
islands. A close cousin, the northern water snake, is found along the shores of
the mainland.
The goal in
2003, Caldwell said, was to see a sustained population of 5,555 Lake Erie water
snakes.
Caldwell said
part of the species' recent success can be attributed to an increase in
available food, including the round goby, an invasive species that showed up in
Lake Erie from the Black and Caspian seas
"As the
goby population has increased," she pointed out, "so has the
snake."
Caldwell said
the snakes also have made use of manmade structures installed on many island
shores. People have been kinder to the snakes as well, she said.
"We've
seen a decline in persecution by the human population," she said.
"Even though they're not endearing, they do have a place."
Kristen
Stanford, a doctoral candidate at Northern Illinois University and a researcher
at Ohio State University's Stone Lab at Put-in-Bay, agrees.
"They're
not harmful," Stanford said, "and they're part of island
heritage."
Stanford said
the earliest known maps of the Lake Erie islands called them the "Islands
of Serpents."
The round
goby, she affirmed, has definitely helped out the threatened snakes.
"The goby
and snake populations are very closely related," Stanford said. "They
can eat about one million gobies each year."
Stanford said
the snakes' goby consumption may also be helping gamefish such as large and
smallmouth bass.
"We're studying
that right now," she said.
One factor
that helped the snakes, which no one anticipated when the recovery project
began in 2003, was Stanford's appearance on the Discovery Channel's show
"Dirty Jobs."
"It
definitely helped," said Stanford, who starred, along with the feisty
snakes that vomit and poo when confronted, in an episode in 2006.
"We
estimate the number of people who were exposed to the show at 20 million people
worldwide," she said. "It was kind of cool and kind of weird."
Stanford is
happy a snake with only a 40-kilometer range is now known by people all over
the world.
While Caldwell
said the TV show was good, Stanford put a lot of hours in long before the
episode was shot and aired.
"She was
living and working on the island long before the show," Caldwell said.
"She's done a lot of hard work and outreach."
Stanford is
working with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service to remove the snake from the endangered and threatened lists.
"The Lake
Erie water snake is a huge success story," Caldwell said. "We've seen
a species recover -- that in and of itself is newsworthy."
UPI 16 August 09 Start
of Fla. gator season faces protest
Belle Grade,
Fla.: Demonstrators say the official
start of alligator hunting season in Florida marks the beginning of an
unnecessary and cruel practice.
The South
Florida Sun-Sentinel said Don Anthony, spokesman for the Animal Rights
Foundation of Florida, criticized Saturday's start to the Florida Fish and
Wildlife Conservation Commission's annual alligator harvest.
"It's
bloody, it's brutal and it's barbaric and it's not necessary," Anthony
said. "It's about placating a handful of people who are hunters."
Seven
protesters were on hand Saturday to wave signs in opposition of the annual
hunting season, which runs until Nov. 1 in Florida.
While state
officials estimate the alligator harvest results in the death of nearly 7,000
gators, protesters say such estimates are not representative of the true death
toll.
The Sun-Sentinel
said protesters also question the commission's stance that the harvest is
intended to control the state's alligator population, suggesting the hunting
season is instead a way for the state commission to earn funds by selling
required hunting permits.
"There is
a healthy alligator population in Florida and one that can sustain a
hunt," said Tony Young, a hunting expert for the FWC.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/08/16/Start-of-Fla-gator-season-faces-protest/UPI-22701250448134/
DER SPIEGEL (Hamburg, Germany) 16 August 09 Großeinsatz
am Badesee - Polizei fahndet nach Krokodil (Marina Antonioni, ddp)
Pressath
(DDP): Ein angeblich in einem Badeweiher
gesichtetes Krokodil hat am Samstag Polizei und Wasserwacht im bayerischen
Pressath in Atem gehalten. Eine große Suchaktion mit etwa 55 Einsatzkräften
wurde eingeleitet - blieb allerdings ergebnislos. Zwei 15 Jahre alte Mädchen
hatten die Polizei verständigt, weil sie das Reptil am Freitagabend gegen 21
Uhr gesehen haben wollen.
Sie hätten in
einem Gebüsch am Weiher ein auffälliges Geräusch gehört, berichtete ein
Polizeisprecher. Als sie sich näherten, sei nach ihrer Darstellung ein etwa ein
Meter langes Krokodil daraus hervorgekommen, in den Weiher gekrochen und
abgetaucht.
Am
Samstagmorgen erläuterten die Mädchen der Polizei direkt am Badeweiher noch
einmal ihre Beobachtungen. Dass es sich bei dem Tier um den heimischen Biber
gehandelt haben könnte, der ihnen wohl bekannt sei, schlossen die Schülerinnen
aus. Vielmehr habe das von ihnen beobachtete Tier eine spitze Schnauze gehabt,
sei braun-grünlich gewesen und habe über zwei Höcker auf dem Kopf verfügt.
Da die
Schilderungen den Polizisten glaubhaft erschienen, wurde der Badeweiher
abgesperrt und Kontakt mit einem Reptilienfachmann des Tiergartens Nürnberg
aufgenommen. Dabei habe man sich nach dem Verhalten und den
Nahrungsgewohnheiten derartiger Reptilien sowie möglichen Gefahren erkundigt,
berichtete die Polizei.
Wasserwacht
bleibt wachsam
Da nicht
ausgeschlossen werden konnte, dass möglicherweise ein Krokodil von einem
Unbekannten ausgesetzt wurde und man für den Nachmittag bei sonnigem Wetter
wieder mit Badegästen rechnete, wurde schließlich eine Suchaktion eingeleitet.
Zunächst nahm sich dabei eine Beamtin mit einem Polizeihund das Ufergebüsch
vor, ohne aber außergewöhnliche Entdeckungen zu machen.
Anschließend
übernahmen die örtlichen Wasserwachten mit fünf Einsatzbooten die Krokodilsfahndung.
Mit Paddeln versuchten sie, das mögliche Reptil aufzuschrecken und ans Ufer zu
treiben. Als auch dies ergebnislos blieb, wurde die Suche gegen Mittag
abgebrochen und der Weiher in Absprache mit dem Pressather Bürgermeister Konrad
Merkl wieder für den Badebetrieb freigegeben.
Weiterhin
sollte der Weiher am Wochenende aber von der Wasserwacht beobachtet werden,
"um weiteren verdächtigen Wahrnehmungen sofort nachgehen zu können".
Ausdrücklich lobte die Polizei das Verhalten der Mädchen. Es sei absolut richtig
gewesen, sich in diesem Fall an die Polizei zu wenden.
http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/gesellschaft/0,1518,643053,00.html
DAILY ADVANCE (Elizabeth City, N Carolina)
15 August 09 City alters 911 snake call policy - Police to pick up serpent dispatches
(Reggie Ponder)
In the wake of
a controversial incident involving a water moccasin in a citizen’s home, 911
emergency communications will now dispatch the Elizabeth City Police Department
to calls involving snakes, according to a city councilor who serves on the 911
Committee.
Third Ward
Councilman Rickey King, a member of the 911 Committee, told his fellow
councilors at Monday’s City Council meeting that he would mention the snake
incident at the 911 meeting Tuesday night. King confirmed Friday that the issue
had been discussed at the meeting Tuesday and that a new policy calls for the
city’s Police Department — rather than Animal Control — to respond to snake
calls.
The Police
Department has equipment for handling snakes, and officers are trained to
respond to the calls, King said.
Councilwoman
Betty Meggs said during the council meeting that a woman had called her because
she had telephoned 911 regarding a water moccasin in the house and no one had
been dispatched to help her.
Meggs said the
woman, a nurse for an elderly man in a home on Rivershore Drive, had fought the
snake herself and suffered bruises on her arms from bumping into furniture as
she was fighting the snake. The snake was a two-and-a-half-foot water moccasin,
she said.
“If that’s not
an emergency I don’t know what is,” Meggs said.
Councilwoman
Jean Baker, who like Meggs represents the 1st Ward, where the snake incident
took place, said she also had received a call about the incident and was very
concerned.
Third Ward
Councilman Daniel Evans said he also hoped something could be put in place to
allow a response to a snake emergency.
City Manager
Rich Olson said the protocols were being changed to allow a response to a snake
incident at someone’s home.
The Daily
Advance was unable to reach Pasquotank-Camden 911 Director Ed Conran for
comment on the policy.
http://www.dailyadvance.com/news/city-alters-911-snake-call-policy-777666.html
ISLAND PACKET (Hilton Head Island, S Carolina) 15 August 09 'Loco' gator escapes after going swimming off
Hilton Head beach (Renee Dudley)
Call this the
one that got away.
A 12-foot
alligator -- perhaps one of the largest ever spotted on Hilton Head Island --
was sighted around 8:30 Saturday morning in the ocean directly in front of the
Sea Pines Beach Club.
Despite a
five-hour effort, the big reptile eluded capture by one of Hilton Head's best
gator trappers and two of his employees.
Late Saturday,
it was still in the ocean near Hilton Head's southernmost point, according to
Joe Maffo, owner of Critter Management.
The incident
has left Maffo, a locally-renown gator catcher, with his first defeat.
"I had a
100 percent track record catching gators in the ocean," Maffo said shortly
after leaving the beach Saturday afternoon. "In 14 years, this is the
first one I never caught."
Maffo said
there are usually about five gators that must be caught in the ocean off Hilton
Head each year.
There have
been six so far this year, he said. It's unclear how long the lagoon dwellers
can survive in saltwater, Maffo said.
Gators
sometimes stray to the ocean if they're driven from their home lagoon by a
bigger gator, by floods or if they're injured.
Mark off the
bigger gator theory from the list.
"Nothing
ran him out of where he lived," Maffo said. "I don't think there's a
bigger gator out there that chased him out of his home. I mean, this guy was
huge."
In fact, this
guy may not even be local.
Maffo said he
believes the gator may have come from Daufuskie or Tybee island because it is
rare that such a large specimen is found on Hilton Head.
That leaves
floods and a possible injury behind the gator's move.
Heavy
afternoon storms have soaked the area for more than a week.
And Maffo
noticed some peculiar things about Saturday's gator.
Maffo said the
gator's head appeared to be cocked to the left, indicating it may have
sustained a neck injury and perhaps was hit by a car.
A gator's
instinct is to go to the nearest water after being injured.
The reptile,
which was about two-feet wide, occasionally could be seen breaking the water's
surface.
Maffo said its
behavior was the most unusual he'd ever seen.
It thrashed,
flipping its tail and body -- things "they don't even do in lagoons,"
Maffo said.
It stayed
about 50 yards from the shoreline, then quickly swam out about 400 yards from
shore, staying mainly in front of the Sea Pines Beach Club. Moments later, it
would return closer to the beach.
Gators caught
in the ocean generally stay in one spot because they're exhausted from swimming
in tidal waters, Maffo said.
"That
thing is loco," Maffo said. "Nothing he did made any sense."
Shore Beach
Service lifeguards kept beachgoers at a safe distance from the water as the
gator lurked in the ocean. Swimmers were not allowed within several hundred
meters of the capture activity.
Ralph Wagner,
director of Shore Beach Service, said just after Maffo left the scene Saturday
afternoon that the area would be open to swimmers as long as the gator could
not be seen.
Lifeguards
moved their chairs closer to the water so they could more easily spot the
roaming reptile.
One boy, who
brought a pair of binoculars to the beach to look for sharks, looked for the
gator instead.
Around 1 p.m.,
several hours after it was first sighted, the gator began to swim south.
Maffo said he
last saw the gator around 2 p.m., near the blue water tower about two miles
south of the beach club. It was about 300 yards from shore, he said.
Maffo said if
the gator is spotted again, he'll be back.
He was
philosophical about his now tarnished record.
"It was
fun. I'm so sorry I couldn't catch him," Maffo said.
http://www.islandpacket.com/news/local/story/935889.html
SCIENCE NEWS (Rockville, Maryland) 15 August
09 Vol 176 #4. Venom
hunters- Scientists probe toxins, revealing the healing powers of biochemical
weapons (Laura Sanders)
When the
monitor lizard chomped into Bryan Fry, it did more than turn his hand into a
bloody mess. Besides ripping skin and severing tendons, the lizard delivered
noxious venom into Fry’s body, injecting molecules that quickly thinned his
blood and dilated his vessels.
As the tiny
toxic assassins dispersed throughout his circulatory system, they hit their
targets with speed and precision, ultimately causing more blood to gush from
Fry’s wound. Over millions of years, evolution has meticulously shaped these
toxins into powerful weapons, and Fry was feeling the devastating consequences
firsthand.
“I’ve never
seen arterial bleeding before, and I really don’t want to ever see it again.
Especially coming out of my own arm,” says Fry, a venom researcher at the
University of Melbourne in Australia.
To unlock the
molecular secrets of venom, Fry and other researchers have pioneered a
burgeoning field called venomics. With cutting-edge methods, the scientists are
teasing apart and cataloging venom’s ingredients, some of which can paralyze
muscles, make blood pressure plummet or induce seizures by scrambling brain
signals. Researchers are also learning more about how these toxins work.
Discovering
venom’s tricks may allow scientists to rehabilitate these damaging molecules
and convert them from destroyers to healers. Venom might be teeming with wonder
drugs, for instance. After all, a perfect venom toxin works with lightning
speed, remains stable for a long time and strikes its mark with surgical
exactitude — attributes that drugmakers dream about.
Already,
toxins from a Brazilian viper have provided the key molecule for blood
pressure–lowering drugs known as ACE inhibitors, and a medication based on cone
snail venom alleviates types of chronic pain that even morphine can’t touch.
George Miljanich, a researcher who helped develop the snail-derived drug, calls
venom an “amazing soup” with “great potential as a source of new medicine.”
What’s more,
researchers are stepping back in time to understand how the toxic proteins that
make up venom evolved in different animals, revealing details on how beneficial
proteins may have been recruited to the dark side and eventually become toxic.
Such studies are also finding rapidly mutating toxin genes and describing how
unique environmental conditions shape venoms in different animals.
Despite the
occupational hazards, “It’s a great time to be doing this kind of research,”
Fry says. “With the techniques we have today, it’s astounding what we can
learn.”
What makes a
venom
The “amazing
soup” that is venom brims with proteins and smaller pieces of proteins called
peptides. “Snake venom is virtually all protein, thick as honey,” says
Christopher Shaw, a biological chemist at Queen’s University Belfast in Northern
Ireland. Figuring out the long list of ingredients in these potent mixtures,
and understanding the genetics behind the ingredients, are big challenges —
ones that new research approaches are helping to address.
A
multinational project called CONCO represents one effort to document venomous
genes. In collaboration with the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md.,
CONCO scientists are now sequencing the entire genome of the project’s
namesake, the venomous marine cone snail Conus consors. Its genome is about the
size of the human genome.
“The
sequencing is moving ahead nicely,” but it is no small task, says Reto
Stöcklin, a venom researcher at Atheris Laboratories in Geneva who leads the
CONCO project.
With the
decoded genome in hand, researchers will be able to quickly learn details about
any toxin in Conus consors venom. “Once you have a genome, it makes it easier
to know what you’re looking at,” says Baldomero Olivera, a cone snail expert at
the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. But just because an organism’s DNA
has the gene for a protein, that doesn’t mean the gene is active and the
protein is produced. “As for which compounds you actually find in venom, there
is much more play than we realized,” says Olivera.
To figure out
which proteins and peptides are present in venom, scientists turn to several
other approaches. One method relies on identifying messenger RNA, molecules
created from DNA that carry a gene’s instructions to the cell’s
protein-building factories. Messenger RNA analysis was used to profile the
toxins made by the Komodo dragon, a lizard only recently shown to be venomous.
“With the techniques we have, we can point out what the dragon is making at the
time, and say with absolute certainty,” says Fry, who led the analysis, which was
published online May 18 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences (SN Online: 5/18/09). “We can almost obtain more data than we can
process.”
In a study
published online July 1 in BMC Genomics, researchers used a similar
approach to identify toxins in the scorpion Scorpiops jendeki. The scorpion
venom had 10 types of compounds that scientists already knew about, but
surprisingly, nine unknown classes of molecules also turned up. These mystery
molecules are unlike anything else in venom, the researchers write.
Researchers
including Stöcklin rely on mass spectrometry, in which small pieces of proteins
are identified by their motion through an electromagnetic field. This process
results in a “chemical fingerprint,” which can be used to reconstruct the
compounds in venom.
Taking venoms’
fingerprints has allowed researchers to make surprising finds about how venom
composition can vary, even venom that comes from the same animal. For instance,
in a study published in the Journal of Proteomics, Stöcklin and his colleagues
showed that the composition of venom milked from live C. consors differed
greatly from that of venom taken from dissected C. consors venom glands. The
team hypothesizes that — similar to a snail ejecting venom in natural settings
— the milking allows the cone snail to control venom composition by inserting
some toxins into the venom and keeping others out.
Researchers
have found venom glands to be a rich source of information, not only for
discerning differing molecular makeups of venoms (as in the cone snails), but
also for anatomical comparisons. Such analyses could shed light on the
evolution of various venomous creatures. In the Komodo dragon study, Fry and
colleagues used an MRI scanner to reveal an intricate and unusual array of a
dozen venom ducts, more than in other venomous lizards. The results show how
the dragon’s venom system may have evolved from other, older lizard species,
and help solidify the notion that Komodo dragons kill their prey with a
combination of a powerful bite and venom injection.
Such a glimpse
into the predatory life of a venomous creature has opened a research floodgate.
“We’ve been chucking everything into the machine,” says Fry. “Vampire bats,
cone snails, spiders, octopuses, you name it, we’re chucking it into the
machine now and getting incredible images of the glands.”
Camilla
Whittington of the University of Sydney focuses her studies on the platypus,
one of just a handful of venomous mammals. “Venom in mammals is very unusual,
and to see how it evolved is interesting because it might lead to insights
about mammalian evolution,” says Whittington. Publishing last year in Nature,
she and others used data from the platypus genome to show that some platypus
toxins evolved independently from those in snake venom.
Even though
platypus venom and snake venom arose separately, the way it happened might have
been similar. Many researchers think that the genes for normal, “good” proteins
may have been duplicated by accident, leaving the second copy free to encode what
turned into a havoc-wreaking venomous molecule. For instance, immune system
proteins called defensins, which normally help fight off invading pathogens,
were turned into molecules with the ability to slice up “good” proteins in
victims (usually other platypuses or dogs), Whittington and her colleagues
suggest in their report.
To be king of
the hill in any given environment, though, venomous animals are often forced to
invest in more than one weapon. “It’s like investing money in a business. No
one puts all their money in a single option. It’s best to diversify,” says Juan
Calvete, a venom researcher at the Institute of Biomedicine in Valencia, Spain.
“It’s the same philosophy in nature. A cocktail of toxins is better suited as
an arsenal that can be used in quite different environments.”
One way
proteins diversify is through mutation. Some genes that code for venom proteins
mutate faster than genes that code for most other proteins. A report published
online June 30 in BMC Evolutionary Biology shows how a special mutation process
in toxin genes causes some snake venom proteins to change rapidly. Called
accelerated segment switch, this process can make a venom toxin recognize a
different target, leading to greater variety and utility.
In a study
published last year in the Journal of Proteome Research, Calvete and
colleagues found that venom from Bothrops
asper pit vipers in Costa Rica differed depending on the population’s
geographical location. Snakes that lived on one side of a steep mountain range
had markedly different venom profiles from those of snakes on the other side.
In the same way a particular Southern twang identifies a Texan, the composition
of venom can reveal where a snake hails from, Calvete says.
The customized
toxins in venom also make up a vast collection of potential weapons against
diseases. “Venomous animals have an extraordinarily rich history in this
regard,” says Fry. “If you know anybody that takes high blood pressure
medication, odds are they’re taking a class of compounds called ACE
inhibitors.” The founding member of this class, says Fry, is a modified toxin
from a pit viper — “one of the biggest, meanest, most horrible snakes in South
America.”
Another
example comes from the cone snail Conus
magus. In 2004, ziconotide, a drug based on the snail toxin
omega-conopeptide MVIIa, was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
to treat chronic pain. Years earlier, Olivera had given Miljanich cone snail
toxins to help with experiments on nerve cell signaling. In the experiments, conducted
at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and later at Neurex
Corp. in Menlo Park, Calif., Miljanich and his colleagues recognized that the
omega-conopeptide MVIIa toxin blocked a specific protein crucial for moving
pain signals through the spinal cord to the brain. Interfering with this
protein, called the N-type calcium channel, offered a way to stop some kinds of
pain better than even morphine.
“We’ve taken
advantage of 50 million years of evolution of those N-channel toxins,” says Miljanich,
now the CEO of the pharmaceutical company Airmid Inc. in Redwood City, Calif.
Miljanich and his team at Airmid are currently working with a sea anemone toxin
that has potential as a therapy for autoimmune diseases such as multiple
sclerosis, psoriasis and type 1 diabetes. This toxin, he says, appears to halt
rogue immune cells that are attacking the body’s own tissue. The team is
tweaking the toxin by adding or removing chemical groups to make the molecule
more stable and effective.
A growing number
of researchers are exploring the wealth of molecular resources venoms offer.
“We don’t want to leave any potential source [of medicines] off our radar,”
Miljanich says.
Beyond
treating medical conditions, venom toxins may offer clues to deeper mysteries
about the body and brain. “Venom has turned out to be very useful in telling us
what’s important about how the nervous system works,” says Andres Villu Maricq,
a neurobiologist and geneticist at the University of Utah.
While
screening dozens of toxins from the fish-hunting cone snail Conus striatus,
Stori Jensen, a student in Maricq’s laboratory, hit upon one that inhibited a
brain process called desensitization, which alters brain cell activity by
dampening nerve cell cross talk. The toxin, the researchers found, clamps open
a pore that is usually shut in the desensitized brain, making the cell respond
to certain signals from other cells it normally would ignore.
Understanding
how brain cells communicate and having a precise way to interrupt some of those
messages may offer new ways to look at neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s
disease in the laboratory, says Maricq. “There were really no fresh
approaches.”
In the wild,
C. striatus venom causes fish to spin around, as if chasing their tails,
although Maricq says he doesn’t yet know exactly why. The team, which included
Olivera, named this new toxin con-ikot-ikot, which means “spinning” in
Filipino, and published the results June 9 in Current Biology.
Olivera and
other toxin hunters aim to identify more such molecules and figure out how they
work. This is the next great challenge for his research, he says. “What we
would like to do is be able to explore the whole biodiversity of venomous
snails,” says Olivera. “This opens up the possibility of a huge group of
compounds that could be interesting. In my case, we’ve suddenly realized that
looking at cone snails, what we’ve been looking at is only scratching the
surface.”
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/46016/title/Venom_hunters
MERCURY
NEWS (San Jose, California) 15 August 09 Demand
drops for alligator skins (Janet McConnaughey)
New Orleans
(AP): As conspicuous consumption loses
some of its cachet during the recession, the swamp's most conspicuous consumers
have less to fear from humans.
Instead of
taking the half-million alligator eggs from marshes and swamps that they had in
recent years, alligator farmers are expected to pull in 30,000 this year, with
a final tally in December. And state wildlife officials expect the 2009 harvest
of adult gators, which begins Aug. 26, to amount to a small fraction of last
year's 35,500.
Nobody's
buying, said Rapides Parish nuisance-alligator control officer Ron Guy.
He's among
more than 60 people around the state who get called if a gator wanders out of
its bayou and into a local golf course or backyard.
Their pay is
the right to sell the skins.
Gators brought
Louisiana farmers and hunters $71 million in 2007, modest revenue even at that
peak.
This year,
revenue is expected to be closer to $10 million in 2009, a drop like locals say
they've never seen.
"My
father was in the fur and alligator business. I started buying fur and
alligators when I was 13 years old," said Wayne Sagrera, 65, who has about
75,000 alligators at Vermilion Gator Farm in Abbeville. "I've seen some
slowdowns. But nothing to compare to this."
The people who
are still buying expensive accessories have shifted away from conspicuous
consumption — for instance, Jimmy Choo is selling obvious faux-crocodile as
well as the real thing, fashion consultant Robert Burke said.
"There's
certainly a sensitivity in the luxury market of anything that is too much
luxury, and alligator would fit into that category," Burke said.
His income
from hauling off nuisance alligators let Guy leave construction work six years
ago, but he's back now — and running out far less often for alligators.
"Instead
of going on every call as soon as it comes in, you prioritize them," Guy
said. "If it's under a car in the Sonic parking lot, you've got to
go."
Demand for crocodilian
leather, including the large alligator and crocodile skins used for handbags
and the caiman leather used for cowboy boots, dropped more than 40 percent
worldwide between the first quarter of 2008 and first quarter of 2009,
according to Choon Heong Koh, executive director of Singapore tannery Heng Long
International.
Demand for
small, farmed hides used for watchbands fell even more dramatically — 80
percent or more, he said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
Luxury watches
are "such a high-end item — when those people stop spending money you get
real nervous," said Dave Travers, owner of Sebring Custom Tanning in
Sebring, Fla.
Even John
Price — whose Insta-Gator Ranch and Hatchery in Covington gets 40 percent of
its income from tours, including egg-hatching tours that start in mid-August
each year — has suffered.
He usually
raises about 1,500 alligators a year to sell their hides. Instead of collecting
1,500 eggs this year from the wild, he collected 200 — and those are largely
for people who want to hold eggs while they hatch.
"We have
customers who have booked the right to hatch an alligator. I don't want to call
them back and say, 'Sorry, we're not doing it,' " Price said.
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_13131164?source=rss&nclick_check=1
KGW (Portland, Oregon) 15 August 09 Oregon
python owner claims errant snake
Eugene,
Ore.(AP): The owner of a 10-foot-long
Burmese python found on a Eugene-area road has come forward to claim it. And
Lane County Animal Services says the snake owner says he plans to give the
snake to someone who can care for it better.
The snake
story began Tuesday night when a 16-year-old driver with a learner's permit
accidentally backed over the snake as he and his father tried to figure out
what was in the road.
Police were
called and Officer Lori Barnes grabbed hold of the reptile to keep it from
slithering away. A veterinarian checked the snake and said it was fine despite
the car encounter.
Animal
Services Officer Bernie Perkins had described the snake as docile and
well-tended as he issued an appeal for its owner to step forward.
http://www.kgw.com/news-local/stories/kgw_081509_news_python_found.e2251f84.html
IRISH TIMES (Dublin, Ireland) 15 August 09 Yellow-bellied
slider turtles from the US could spell peril for Irish wildlife (Fiona
Gartland)
Ireland needs to
guard against an invasion of yellow-bellied sliders – no, not the evasive
political species from Kildare Street, but the semi-aquatic turtle species from
the US.
It seems at
least one of the creatures was spotted on the banks of the Dodder in Dublin
recently taking a stroll in the sunshine. And while the image made for a good
photo, the creature should be seen on riverbanks in Florida rather than near an
Irish waterway. Ireland has no native species of freshwater turtle.
The
yellow-bellied slider (Trachemys scripta
scripta) ranges from southeast Virginia to northern Florida. It is farmed
there in large quantities and sold in pet shops all over the world.
The creature
is an omnivore and will eat a wide variety of plant and animal foods. And it
can grow to a length of 28cm (11in).
Colette
O’Flynn, research officer with the National Biodiversity Data Centre at
Waterford Institute of Technology, said the occurrence of sliders in Ireland is
probably a result of pet owners releasing them into the wild. She warned,
however, that releasing foreign species into the wild is not a good idea.
“People often have good intentions when releasing unwanted pets, but they may
not realise they can indirectly cause serious harm to our precious native
wildlife,” she said.
She said the
intrepid amphibians may be able to take advantage of Ireland’s changing
climate, which could help invasive species survive and establish.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0815/1224252587153.html
TORONTO STAR (Ontario) 14 August 09 Why our
turtles are in trouble (Tess Kalinowski)
They call him
"the monster." One look tells you why.
At 10
kilograms, he is the biggest snapping turtle among dozens veterinary technician
Maureen Lilley has nursed back to health in her three years at the Toronto
Wildlife Centre, and she won't even attempt to lift the big guy.
A jigsaw-sized
wound is gouged into its shell, probably by the underside of a car.
Tough to
imagine driving over the monster without feeling like you hit a boulder - but
it's possible, speculates Nathalie Karvonen, director of the Downsview centre,
which takes in 30 to 60 turtles among the 5,000 animals that arrive there
annually.
"Sometimes
it's an accident. People feel terrible and do everything they can to help.
Other people aim for them," Karvonen said.
The monster
was picked up on Highway 28 north of Peterborough.
Summer is high
season for turtles at shelters like this one. That's when turtles leave their
swampy homes to lay eggs in sandy areas, frequently by the side of rural roads.
They lumber across the asphalt only to be injured or killed by cars carrying
cottagers rushing to commune with nature.
It's a major
reason snapping turtles, like other southwestern Ontario species, are in
decline.
But rescue
centres are trying to bolster turtle populations by tending to one injured
specimen at a time, mending their shells and incubating eggs so the young
animals can be released into the wild when they hatch.
Few survive to
adulthood, but those that do tend to be long-lived and reproduce for decades.
"Rehabilitating
an individual adult can make a real difference to a population," said Gina
Varrin, a volunteer with the Kawartha Turtle Trauma Centre in Peterborough.
A turtle that
can't hold up its head when it comes to a rescue centre probably has bad
internal injuries and won't live.
"But of
the ones that make it past the first day, 90 per cent survive to be released
again," according to Varrin.
A snapping
turtle is surprisingly fast if it feels threatened, extending its long neck and
delivering a devastating chomp to an attacker.
But that
doesn't help when the threat is a car.
"If
there's a little crack (in the shell) sometimes it will repair itself. If it's
a serious injury and there's pieces missing, then no, they can't survive like
that. They really do need their shells to protect them, to keep them warm (and)
cool," Karvonen said.
In a nearby
room, heat lamps shine on a row of tanks that hold turtle eggs. The sex of the
animals will be determined by the temperature at which the eggs are incubated.
Females hatch from eggs incubated at a higher temperature.
A snapping
turtle being kept in a pool near the monster's produced 42 eggs. One tank holds
13 eggs extracted from a pregnant Blanding's turtle found with her head crushed
at the side of the road. The mother didn't survive, but it's hoped one of the
hatchlings might replace her.
All turtles
are X-rayed when they arrive at the centre to determine if they have internal
injuries and if they're carrying eggs, said Sue Carstairs, a vet who works in
both Toronto and Peterborough.
Using a dental
instrument to probe the scarred shell of a painted turtle, Carstairs said,
"Turtles do have remarkable healing abilities, but it's very slow."
When they have
healed, turtles are released as close as possible to where they or the eggs
were found.
http://www.thestar.com/article/681140
CAPITAL GAZETTE (Annapolis, Maryland) 14
August 09 Source Say: Fear the turtle - especially if it can climb your steps
When Kathy
Schaffhauser glanced out her front window one morning last week, something
caught her eye: an uninvited visitor ascending the stairs.
A snapping
turtle she estimated was 14 or 15 inches long was on the seventh step of the 10
leading to her Crofton home.
"It has
climbed up there himself, I assumed," she said.
Schaffhauser's
husband wasn't home, and she didn't know what to do. As she stood outside,
contemplating her options, Mark Powell and his son, Frank, pedaled by. She
pointed out the shelled visitor to the Powells, who stopped their bicycles to
take a look, she said.
Mark Powell,
whom she had not met before, offered to remove the turtle from her steps. True
to its name, the turtle snapped at Powell as he carefully moved it, but Powell
managed to escape unscathed, and released the wayward reptile behind
Schaffhauser's home.
Schaffhauser
lives along the Walden Golf Club and said she often sees small turtles and
other wildlife at the nearby water hazard. Her husband also feeds a variety of
birds at their home, she said. But to see a snapping turtle climbing the front
steps was decidedly unusual.
Kevin Barrett,
an area supervisor at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore, said snapping turtles are
pretty common in this area, but they generally don't come up on land. The
turtle that climbed up Schaffhauser's steps was likely a female looking to nest
and lay eggs, he said."When they decide they want to go somewhere, a
couple steps aren't going to stop them," Barrett said.
Snapping
turtles can be dangerous, Barrett said, and their long necks make it possible
for them to bite directly behind themselves.
"They can
definitely hurt you," he said.
Schaffhauser's
guest is a pretty large adult, Barrett said, and the larger the turtle is, the
harder he or she will bite.
The best bet
for anyone who encounters a snapping turtle is to either leave it be or find
someone who has experience dealing with the reptiles to help, Barrett said.
HERALD-TRIBUNE (Sarasota, Florida) 14 August
09 Faked
snake capture opens up a can of worms (Dale White)
Justin
Matthews admits that he loves the limelight.
And for years,
the Manatee County man has done his best to draw it to himself by capturing
rogue wildlife, including giant snakes, always making sure a TV camera or
newspaper photographer was in range.
Such was the
case on July 25, when he pulled a 15-foot python from a culvert in East
Manatee.
Except he didn't
really capture a wild 15-foot python.
Matthews
admitted Thursday that he staged the capture -- and he made his admission at a
press conference, of course.
"Everybody
makes mistakes," said Matthews, 47, owner of Matthews Wildlife Rescue, as
he stood Thursday near the storm drain where he "captured" the python
last month. "This is a mistake I made."
The admission
came just a few hours after the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation
Commission reported that, when confronted by an investigator, Matthews confessed
that he placed his pet snake in the drain.
Commission
spokesman Gary Morse said the agency will explore whether Matthews could be
charged with a misdemeanor for not having the snake microchipped even though he
had owned it for a month.
Matthews is
unlikely to be charged with any other offense because he never actually
abandoned the snake, Morse said. "He never let the snake out of his
control and he has a permit to exhibit."
Matthews said
he chose the storm drain so that he could be at one end of the pipe and his son
in the ditch on the other side. The culvert is beneath a dead-end road near a
shopping plaza at Bradenton's 53rd Avenue East and 33rd Street.
"I didn't
want to take any chances with the snake getting loose," Matthews said.
Matthews said
he will comply if firefighters, who were summoned to the scene as he spent an
hour trapping the snake, send him a bill for their time.
Matthews said
he never staged a capture before, but he got the idea after watching wildlife
shows on cable TV in which he believes most of the captures and rescues are
orchestrated.
"I wanted
to figure out a way to bring more awareness," Matthews said, referring to
Florida's problem with people who release pet pythons into the wild.
Matthews said
he bought the snake he named Sweetie for $200 from Southeast Reptiles in Tampa.
He believes
someone there notified authorities after seeing the snake on TV.
Morse
confirmed that the wildlife commission got a tip that the python was Matthews'
pet. The agency will not reveal its source except to say the person is someone
"close to the reptile industry," Morse said.
Information
from the Tampa Tribune was used in this report.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20090814/ARTICLE/908141026
SOUTH FLORIDA SUN SENTINEL (Miami, Florida)
14 August 09 Gator harvester turns to pythons and iguanas to spur his business.
(Deborah Acosta)
Iguanas and
pythons have invaded South Florida, and while the state struggles to control
the infestation of the non-native species, one man says he has a solution: Skin
'em.
Brian Wood has
harvested and sold alligator products for 21 years. He sells gator hide to high
fashion companies like Prada, Gucci, Hermès and Salvatore Ferragamo. But with
his business off because of the recession, Wood has decided to branch out into
iguana and python hides as well.
"They're
non-indigenous, they're feral and they're multiplying by the hundreds,"
said Wood of both species.
Wood, who owns
All American Gator Products based in Hallandale Beach, the largest processor of
alligator goods in South Florida, said his business is off about 20 percent
this year.
"Alligator
hide is like the diamond of leathers," said Wood. This year the demand for
luxury goods, according to Bain & Co., is expected to plummet 10 percent,
bringing the price of gator leather down from $50 per foot in 2007, to about
$12.
But economics
isn't the only thing driving Wood. Ever since people began buying the exotic
pets -- and turning them loose in the wild -- iguanas and pythons have been
multiplying in South Florida's climate. And both have become a nuisance;
iguanas destroy landscaping and sea walls, and pythons disturb the delicate
ecosystem of the Everglades.
But both
animals make for great leather products, Wood said. And that's not all; iguana
meat also makes for great meals, he said.
"They
call it the chicken of the trees, absolutely delicious," said Wood, who
added that iguana is considered a delicacy in South America.
He and his two
sons began experimenting with iguana hides two months ago, when they launched
IguanaCatchers.com, a business that removes nuisance iguanas from people's
properties. So far he's collected about 100.
"It's
like Jurassic Park," he said of some backyards.
Wood charges
about $300 to remove the iguanas, and then he plans to sell the meat and hides.
The meat would sell online for $15 a pound, and tanned hides would cost between
$50 and $80. He also plans to make wallets and bags from the hides, with
wallets starting at $100, half the price of alligator wallets.
Iguanas are
endangered in other countries, but in South Florida they're feral pests and are
not protected under state law -- so it's perfectly legal to hunt and kill them.
Wood also
plans to harvest pythons that have been multiplying in the Everglades.
Currently snake experts have volunteered to catch and kill the nuisance
pythons, whose numbers are thought to be around 150,000 and growing. Catchers
kill the pythons, check their stomachs for eggs, and then bury them.
But Wood sees
money in those pelts. He's willing to pay hunters between $100 and $150 per
python.
Terry Parlier,
the owner of Parlier Associates, a gator processor in Clermont, thinks that
it's a good idea to put these animals to use.
"I hate
it when they kill an animal and throw it in the dump," he said.
"That's just wasteful for any kind of wildlife."
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/iguana-skins-081509,0,6881220.story
EVENING POST (Bristol, UK) 14 August 09 Bristol
snake owner claims cat stalked python
A Bristol man
whose 13ft snake ate a neighbour's cat claims the tabby must have been stalking
his python.
Darren
Bishop's 10-year-old Burmese python Squash swallowed four-year-old tabby Wilbur
after the cat ventured into Mr Bishop's back garden in Upper Sandhurst Road,
Brislington.
Wilbur's
owners, Martin and Helen Wadey, have since launched a campaign to change the
law so that the snakes are officially classified as dangerous animals, with
owners required to hold a licence.
Their petition
on the 10 Downing Street website has already attracted 3,500 signatures, after the
Bristol Evening Post's story about the incident made headlines as far away as
New Zealand.
But speaking
to the Post yesterday, Squash's owner said that although he is
sympathetic to his neighbours' loss, he believes Squash could not have hunted
Wilbur and that the cat must have made the first move.
He says he is
a responsible owner, although he conceded that the snake had once given him the
slip and escaped to a neighbour's coal shed.
Mr Bishop has
owned the 80kg snake since it was around six weeks old and six inches long. The
35-year-old excavator driver bought it for around £100, and keeps it in an
enclosure indoors.
He says he
only lets it into the back garden when it is sunny, and then he keeps a close
eye on the python, usually checking on it every 10 minutes.
Mr Bishop
said: "I've always had a fascination with them – they are unique
creatures.
"I've
always been a dog owner but it's not fair to leave a dog at home all day.
Snakes can be left at home.
"I've had
her 10 years and we've lived here for eight years.
"She only
got out once, five years ago.
"We never
used to lock the back door and she managed to get out into the neighbourhood,
so we printed up some fliers and handed them out.
"We had a
lot of phone calls asking if it was a joke. We rang the RSPCA and the police,
then two days later a neighbour said he had found her in his coal shed."
Mr Bishop said
since then he has locked the back gate and put Squash in a more secure tank.
Speaking about
the incident involving Wilbur on June 25, he said: "Squash met this cat;
he (Mr Wadey) is saying she may have been actively hunting her but a python
can't actively hunt.
"Cats sit
up on the wall. There's no way she can stalk a cat, they always know she's
there.
"I've
seen cats stalking her, I've had to throw stones to stop them having a go.
"All they
can see is her head and they are not sure if they can kill her or not.
"Normally
they think better of it. I know what cat it is, if I go 'psst', they usually go
away."
Mr Bishop said
Squash came back into the house as the sun went down and he noticed a bulge in
her stomach, and spoke to Mr Wadey the next afternoon.
Mr Bishop
said: "I had to tell him that my snake's eaten his cat. He said I didn't
apologise, but I did.
"I
offered him a cup of tea, he had a look around for 20 to 25 minutes, and I
answered any questions. He has a right to know – I decided to co-operate.
"He asked
if a friend from the RSPCA could scan the snake, I said OK, then when he left
he said something about the police."
Mr Bishop said
once the police had been mentioned he wanted legal advice before co-operating
any further.
The RSPCA came
round the next day but instead of letting them in, Mr Bishop scanned the snake
himself and told them there was a micro-chipped animal inside, shortly after
the incident.
"I
understand he's upset, anybody would be, but he's treated it like someone's
killed his child.
"At the
end of the day it's not a child, it's a cat.
"Legislation
is there to protect humans. Pitbulls aren't dangerous animals because they eat
cats, it's because they've mauled humans.
"Cats are
killers as well but they don't keep them in 24 hours a day."
BRADENTON HERALD (Florida) 14 August 09 Staged
python capture backfires on wildlife expert - Matthews owned the 14-foot snake
he ‘caught’ in area (Vin Mannix)
When Justin
Matthews captured a 14-foot Burmese python on July 25, the news went
nationwide.
“I didn’t
expect it to blow up like it was,” he said Thursday.
It blew up,
all right.
Matthews had
staged the entire capture.
Confronted by
Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission, the well-known wildlife
expert and owner of Matthews Wildlife Rescue and Education admitted it was a
publicity stunt.
According to
an FWC investigation, Matthews, 47, bought the 100-pound snake from Southeast
Reptile Exchange in Tampa a month before he “captured” it from a concrete
drainage pipe near 51st Avenue East and 33rd Street East.
“We had a tip
the situation may not be as purported,” said FWC spokesman Gary Morse in
Lakeland. “An unfortunate lapse in judgment led to the abuse of public assets,
and he’s violated a public trust.”
The FWC hasn’t
filed charges, but the investigation is ongoing.
Matthews, a
frequent visitor to area schools with his critters, admitted Thursday to
inserting the snake into the pipe, then calling the Bradenton Herald and
BayNews 9.
Firefighters
from Southern Manatee Fire Rescue were also at the scene.
“I made a
mistake and I apologize for it,” Matthews said. “My intention was to bring more
attention to the problem of Burmese pythons being released. I’ve always been
able to get publicity when things happen. As far as it being ethical? I made a
mistake. I’ve never done it before and won’t do it again.”
Joe Fauci,
owner of Southeast Reptile Exchange, was skeptical when Matthews purchased the
snake June 26.
“He said he
was using it for education and it didn’t seem right,” Fauci said. “Then when I
saw him on TV, I knew something was up. I mentioned it to the FWC. I told them
I bet it’s staged.”
Reaction to
the news about the staged rescue included disappointment and disillusionment.
Southern
Manatee Fire Rescue Chief Foster Gover was not pleased and will wait for the
FWC investigation outcome before seeking restitution.
Workers at
Bayshore Animal Hospital, where the snake was scanned for a microchip that
didn’t exist, expressed shock.
“I never
would’ve thought he’d do something like that,” employee Terry Russell said.
“We’re sorry to hear about it.”
So was Dean
Mixon, owner of Mixon Fruit Farms where Matthews holds tours at a wildlife
preserve.
“I don’t agree
with what he did, but that was on his own and affects his credibility more than
anything,” Mixon said. “He’s done a good job for us, but that is separate from
this issue.”
Nita
Turlington was surprised to hear about the staged python rescue, too, but
pointed out Matthews came to her home late at night to capture a five-foot
python after she called for help.
“That wasn’t
staged, believe me,” the East Manatee resident said. “I’m sorry to hear about
that (the 14-foot python), because it had a lot of people here in a frenzy.”
Matthews says
he regrets it.
“If I upset
some people, I hope they realize I did it for a positive reason,” he said. “I
do apologize to the public.”
http://www.bradenton.com/847/story/1639157.html
LE DAUPHINÉ LIBÉRÉ (Grenoble, France) 14 August 09 Un
Python royal dans le salon
Au milieu du salon de Julien et Pauline trône un terrarium qui abrite
une femelle python royal. Âgée de 4 ans et grande de 1 m 20, la belle se laisse
volontiers manipuler. Seuls les gestes brusques éveillent quelques craintes
chez le reptile qui préfère de loin en ce début de journée la tranquillité de
ses cachettes. Les sorties sont réservées pour la nuit.
Une attention particulière est nécessaire
S'occuper de dame python demande finalement peu de temps : nettoyage de
son lieu de vie et nourrissage tous les dix jours. Ce serpent a la
particularité de tuer par constriction. À son menu des souris vivantes que
Julien achète en animalerie et confie une par une aux bons soins de son animal
de compagnie. Une attention particulière est portée à la nourriture car elle a
la digestion fragile. Elle a déjà effectué un séjour en clinique spécialisée à
Valence. Julien confie « C'est vrai que pour la soigner ce n'est pas évident.
Elle est restée presque quatre mois là-bas et à son retour nous avons dû lui
faire des piqûres et c'est une opération assez délicate. »
Né en captivité au Togo, ce python royal a été acheté en animalerie pas
plus gros qu'un lézard. Un plaisir
offert à toutes les bourses (quelque 100 €), puisque moins chère qu'un chien ou
un chat de race. La morsure de ce python royal est douloureuse mais pas
venimeuse, ces animaux restent toutefois à ne pas mettre entre toutes les
mains. Si le serpent demande moins de travail qu'un chien à sortir tous les
jours, il faut tout de même être au fait de son mode de vie. Le terrarium de
Julien se partage en deux zones. L'une chaude contient une gamelle d'eau qui
entretien une humidité de 50 à 70 % et une température de 26 à 32 °C et l'autre
froide pour permettre au serpent de réguler sa température. Autre subtilité, la
période de mue. Il faut entre 5 et 10 jours à dame serpent pour faire peau
neuve. Pendant ce temps, les propriétaires ne doivent pas lui proposer de
nourriture.
Julien est passionné de serpents depuis tout petit, il explique « Ca m'a
toujours branché. C'est un copain au début qui m'a prêté un terrarium puis il
m'a conseillé. Je la sors régulièrement pour le plaisir de la toucher. C'est
sûr que le contact n'est pas le même que celui que l'on peut avoir avec un
animal de compagnie plus classique. »
Sapeur-pompier volontaire et grand baroudeur (voir notre édition du
dimanche 2 août) Julien aimerait accueillir un boa constrictor. Long de quatre
mètres et plus délicat à vivre au quotidien, ce serpent ne plaît guère à
Pauline. La compagne de Julien a tout de même vaincu sa peur et arrive à
soigner le python royal en son absence.
http://www.ledauphine.com/index.jspz?chaine=27&article=176229&xtor=RSS-27
JOURNAL DU JURA (Bienne, Switzerland) 14 August 09 Un
python en balade près de Schaffhouse
Un python molure de 2,5 mètres de long a été découvert dans le jardin
d'une maison à Neuhausen, dans le canton de Schaffhouse. Le serpent, qui n'est
pas venimeux, était à l'affût devant une cage contenant des cochons d'Inde.
Il a été capturé par un expert de la police schaffhousoise. Le serpent,
qui pèse 15 kg, n'est pas blessé et les cochons d'Inde sont saufs. Le python
molure est originaire d'Asie du sud-est. Il peut mesurer jusqu'à 6 mètres de
long.
La police ne sait pas à qui appartient le serpent. Il faut une
autorisation pour posséder un tel animal.
http://www.journaldujura.ch/Nouvelles_en_ligne/Suisse/57297
LIECHTENSTEINER VATERLAND (Vaduz) 14 August 09
Schaffhauser Polizei fängt
Tigerpython
(SDA) Eine 2,5 Meter lange Pythonschlange hat sich
in Neuhausen am Rheinfall in den Garten eines Reihenhauses verirrt und vor
einem Meerschweinchenstall auf die Lauer gelegt. Ein Reptilienexperte der Kantonspolizei konnte das Tier einfangen.
Neuhausen am
Rheinfall. – Die Schlange blieb dabei unverletzt, die Meerschweinchen kamen mit
dem Schrecken davon, wie die Kantonspolizei mitteilte. Bei dem eingefangenen Tier handelt es sich um einen dunklen Tigerpython
(Python molurus bivittatus). Die südostasiatischen Würgeschlangen sind ungiftig
und können bis zu sechs Meter lang werden.
Das
Schaffhauser Exemplar war knapp halb so gross und wog 15 Kilogramm. Für die
Haltung solcher Schlangen ist eine Bewilligung notwendig. Wem das Tier gehört
und ob ihr Halter eine solche Bewilligung besass ist noch unklar.
http://www.vaterland.li/index.cfm?id=16175&source=sda&ressort=home