A new species of Galápagos iguana has scientists tickled pink.The pink iguana, named after its salmon-colored skin, lives only on the Wolf volcano on the island of Isabela.
Charles Darwin did not visit the volcano on his travels to the Ecuadorian island chains in the 1830s, so the creature remained undiscovered until 1986, when it was spotted by park rangers. Only now has it been recognized as its own species.
Never mind the 40-foot snake that menaced Jennifer Lopez in the 1997 movie "Anaconda." Not even Hollywood could match a new discovery from the ancient world. Fossils from northeastern Colombia reveal the biggest snake ever discovered: a behemoth that stretched 42 to 45 feet long, reaching more than 2,500 pounds.Pretty impressive that a snake that heavy could exist. Imagine the muscles needed to move it around."This thing weighs more than a bison and is longer than a city bus," enthused snake expert Jack Conrad of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who was familiar with the find.
"It could easily eat something the size of a cow. A human would just be toast immediately."
Lizard Games. Take an island in the Bahamas, add a predatory lizard called Leiocephalus carinatus, and the results are immediate. Males among the lizard's favorite prey, Anolis sagrei, soon became longer-legged, so as to better flee after drawing predatory attention during mating displays. In contrast, more sedentary females became larger, making them harder to ingest — a neat display of sex-specific selection pressures.
Butch the tortoise, who gets around, is back home in Cupertino.The 150-year-old reptile turned up Monday morning in the front yard of his home, following a mysterious six-week disappearance that left his owners, Penny and Chuck Carle, shell shocked.
...
The Carles suspect that someone snatched Butch from the yard and then returned him when the reptile began growing lethargic, as tortoises do as winter approaches. But they don't know for sure, and Butch isn't talking.
A college student working the night shift at a Venezuelan zoo is dead after letting a 10-foot python out of its enclosure.
Javier Hernandez manages the small zoo at Caracas' General Francisco de Miranda Park. He said Monday that 29-year-old Erick Arrieta violated park rules by letting the Asian python out early Saturday.
The biology major was found strangled to death, with a snake bite on his left wrist.
The python turned up down the hall.
Ensatina eschscholtzii eschscholtzii - Monterey Ensatina taken in Garrapata State Park 2006.
Loki showing off a Ball Python
Carlos giving the answers to all those questions
North American Wood Turtles looking out at the exhibit hall.
Snake collector Matt Wilkinson of Portland grabbed a 20-inch rattler from the highway near Maupin, and three weeks later, to impress his ex-girlfriend, he stuck the serpent in his mouth.
He was soon near death with a swollen tongue that blocked his throat. Trauma doctors at the Oregon Health and Science University saved his life.
"You can assume alcohol was involved," he said. Actually, not just beer. It was something he called a "mixture of stupid stuff."
The earliest evidence yet of modern ears in terrestrial vertebrates has been discovered in reptile fossils from central Russia, paleontologists say.Photo by Flickr user cwulmer used under a Creative Commons license.
The animals may have been among the first nocturnal vertebrates, using their advanced hearing and large eyes to communicate with each other and hunt insect prey at night.
This would have given them a niche during a time when Earth was crowded with animals.
The reptiles lived 260 million years ago, during the Permian period, which lasted from 299 to 251 million years ago.
That's about 50 million years earlier than modern ears were thought to have developed in terrestrial vertebrates.
If anyone can shed some light on why parthenogenesis always results in all male clutches please do share as I do not understand why this is neccessarily true. If parthenogenesis were to happen in humans, the offspring would have to be female. I know that varanids lack a X-chromosome like most mammals, but why all males? It makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint, but the cell biology is confusing.I had assumed that the offspring would all be females as they contain only the genetic material of the mother, but was stuck on mammalian biology. New Mexico whiptail lizards which reproduce entirely by parthenogenesis are all female, as would be required if that this is the sole method of reproduction, so I assumed that Varanids would be the same in the reptile world. Turns out the answer is that instead of an XX (female) XY (male) sex determination like whiptails, Varanids have a WZ (female) ZZ (male) WW (non-viable) sex determination. I do not know if temperature plays a role in sex determination in either of these genus like it was shown in Pagona vitticeps.
It had previously been assumed that an animal's gender could be determined either by genes or by temperature as an embryo develops but not by both.This is a very interesting finding. It really will revolutionize the way biologists look at sex determination, especially in reptiles and maybe even in birds.
In the case of the central bearded dragon, it appears that temperature can override genes that trigger male development.
The study is reported in the current issue of the journal Science.
Heat Deactivates Sex Gene
Eggs incubated at higher than normal temperatures of 93.2 to 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (34 to 37 degrees Celsius) produced a strong bias toward female hatchlings, which outnumbered males by about 16 to 1.
The researchers linked this gender bias to a sex-determining gene that was deactivated when the lizards' nests became unusually warm.
This process results in female offspring, because the key gene was discovered on the so-called Z sex chromosome, of which male lizards have two and females only one.
Deactivation of the gene therefore turns a male (ZZ) into a female (WZ).
I visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium for the second time since the new exhibit opened and it is really nice. The otters are of course the main attraction. They are damn cute and quite playful. River otters really do display well. If you just cannot wait to see the otters then head on over to their webcam.Shorter showers and less-frequent showers also save water. So does reusing water, buying an on-off garden hose nozzle, running washing machines and dishwashers only when full and turning off the faucet while shaving and toothbrushing. Also good is building a backyard rainwater cistern which, Pogorelskin said, is a fancy name for an old trash barrel.
As for the double-occupancy shower, deputy operations chief Pam Jeane of the Sonoma County Water Agency said a drought is no time to be shy. The government fully approves of whatever consenting adults do to reduce consumption.
"Absolutely,'' she said. "Shower with a buddy. Everything helps.''
