#I LOVE herpetology

[theancientdarkbeauty]

Snake

Oh my god man I love snakes!!! Do you want a really cool snake?? Jokes on you, you get one anyways!!!

This is the Boomslang (Dispholidus Typus)!! It is in the family of Afro-Arabian Colubrids (A family of snakes that live in the Sahar Desert that is incredibly diverse!) Other species within the Colubridae (Not specifically Afro-Arabian) family are the Red-Lipped Herald Snake, the Northern American Racer, and, perhaps goofiest of all, the Common Sipo (Look a a picture of those fellas when you have the chance)

My favorite thing about the Boomslang species is that they are the most venomous opisthoglyphous (rear-fanged, features above) snakes in the world!! This means that the snake that famously killed Professor Karl Patterson Schmidt, who was studying the species at the time, is more closely related to my little snakey son, a Mexican hognose named Hermes, than to other largely feared African snakes, such as Black Mambas or Cobras!

While their diet mainly consists of other lizards as well as birds, they occasionally eat their froggy cousins and rodent adversaries. They reproduce Oviparously with clutches of about 10-25 eggs. They are diurnal and largely live in trees, hedges, and bushes.

The effects of their venom is the nastiest thing about them. They make you bleed from EVERYWHERE! first to go are your mucus membranes, such as your nose and gums. Then your eyes, then your... yknow your OTHER places. However! Don't fret too much! The Boomslang, while blindingly fast and incredibly aggressive, also has an antivenom! It is produced in South Africa.

In short, if you see a striking green fella lock eyes with you, puff out VERTICALLY (not horizontally like a cobra), run for your life! (Agressive Boomslang Above)

Thank you for coming to my Snake talk! if you want to hear about more snakes, please feel free to ask! All information found was found off of mainly The Book of Snakes (authored by Mark O'Shea) and Snakes of the World (which was ALSO authored by Mark O'Shae. Needless to say, if anyone out there knows a Mark O'Shae or if he sees this, please can we talk I love your work for the Herpetology community) All pictures found from looking up "Boomslang" in the Google Search Engine (be careful for AI out there folks!)

Keep in mind, while I am studying Herpetology, I am no scientist! If you want to know more about snakes, I suggest seeing if your local college has a herpetology lab!! Bias be damned, every herpetologist I've met has been a little awkward, but always happy to talk about snakes and their other cousins with 3 chambered hearts!

[theancientdarkbeauty]

GOD this idiot is SO COOL I LOVE HERPS

KEEP DOIN WHAT UR DOIN MANNNN

Trick or treat :3 🐍🐍🐍

Happy Halloween! Here's a slithery treat...

Kenyan Sand Boa aka Egyptian Sand Boa (Eryx colubrinus), aberrant color/pattern, family Boidae, found in northern and eastern Africa

photograph by @coldblooded_syndicate

[markscherz]

Is there any frog species you have a grudge against?

Meet Gephyromantis (Phylacomantis) pseudoasper

Peak calling activity? Between 3 and 4 am 😡

Its preferred perch? The canvas of my tent 🙃

The decibels of its call? Jet-engine levels 🫨

The sound? Fuckin' Star Wars lasers.

[learnyouabiology]

Fun Fact: Hognose snakes are dramatic lil guys!

I am particularly fond of the snakes known as hognose snakes, and my reasons are both understandable and correct.

This is a hognose snake:

(They received their name by having the sweetest lil snoot to ever require a boop – image source)

They use these adorable snoots to burrow under sandy soil using a sort of nuzzle-y motion. They then use these burrows as a place to sleep at night, hibernate in the winter, and lay their eggs. 

(you could say they’re into... the Underground Scene! ...ok yeah i’ll show myself out – image source)

Plus, they come in a variety of delightful colours!

We've got brown! Beige! Yellow! Black! Red! Orange! Tan! Kinda greenish! Orange again!

(pretty sneks! – Here’s all the image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)

And, to be clear, the snakes pictured above are wild snakes. No selective breeding by humans in these noodly bois! At least, not in these specific individuals. probably. I guess a few of them could be escapees... 

But most importantly: These snakes know the true meaning of DRAMA

Hognose snakes are actors, first and foremost. When they feel threatened, the first thing they do is puff out their neck into a hood. 

(like cobras, this hood is made by FLEXING THEIR NECK RIBS. which: gross – image source x)

This superficially makes them look like a cobra, but what they’re actually trying to do is make themselves seem bigger, and therefore scarier. Possibly those dark spots on their neck helps with that! 

Any resemblance to real-life Eurasian cobras, real or fictional, is purely coincidental

Also, it makes its mouth do this:

(Snakes that SCREAAAAAAAM. – image source)

honestly, if I didn’t already know that hognose snakes were harmless, this would ABSOLUTELY make me leave it the hell alone 

But if all of that^ is unsuccessful at scaring away the predator, the hognose snake pulls its signature move: playing dead

If you think that is a lame signature move, then you are wrong, because hognose snakes put EVERYTHING into their performance and I love them for it.

(they’re serious, they’ll do it!  – image source)

((I’m actually going to stick the rest of this under a read-more, bc the pictures of the alive-and-physically-fine hognose snakes do kind of look like a legitimately-dead hognose snake, if you don’t know what to look for. 

So, uh: cw for a snake being too good at pretending to be dead))

Behold: a series of completely healthy, unharmed snakes!!!

(to help with their self-esteem, we ask that you at least pretend to believe that they are dead – image sources 1, 2, 3, 4)

Honestly, the photos don’t do it justice. Here’s my favourite video of the whole wonderous performance: 

But to review:

There's writhing! There's dramatic noises! There's flipping onto their back and opening their mouth wide and letting their tongue hang out! There's excreting a combination of  intentionally smelly substances!!! Truly a master of the art of being left the hell alone (*^▽^*)

(yep. deeeeefinitely dead. not just faking it. nothing worth eating here! – image source)

Personally, my favourite part of this is how they insist on rolling onto their back, even when they are rolled back onto their stomach. 

Seriously, if you try to roll them right-side-up, they will flip back over. It's as though they believe that a good, proper dead snek MUST be on its back, obviously.

(truly fearsome – image source)

Sadly, the hognose snake may have made itself too scary, according to humans.

Out of fear, these snakes are commonly killed on sight 😔. I once heard someone proudly brag about how they’d killed a dozen cobras! In southern Ontario! Where cobras do not live! This is both extremely frustrating and deeply sad.

(safe enough to hold! although maybe don’t, just because this snake IS probably experiencing mortal fear, which is not a good feeling – image source © Dean Stavrides)

So just to highlight: hognose snakes are completely harmless. They’re just pretending to be fearsome!

(not that people should be killing venomous snakes either, imo. Let the danger noodles LIVE THEIR LIVES)

(i is baybee, pls do not hurt me – image source)

And now some bonus facts to help raise us out of that downer:

Hognose snakes are toad specialists! Their favourite food is toads, which is unusual, because toads are poisonous. Hognose snakes deal with this by force of will and also, at least two amino acid substitutions, maybe (Mohammadi et al. 2016). Possibly a few other things help with this, also (Feldman et al. 2016).

(is snek eat toad? or does toad wearing cape of snek? impossible to tell, really – image source)

Also, I have a confession: hognose snakes... are venomous. Technically.

(itty bitty little fangs at the veeeeery back of their mouth!  – image source)

They are known as rear-fanged snakes, which means they have fangs aaaall the way at the back of their mouth. The venom they produce seems to be toad-specific, and is considered to be harmless to humans unless you happen to have an allergy but that's the exception rather than the rule

(the two hognose species. They are both baybee, but in different ways actually there might be more than two species but these are the two i’ve actually learned about so ALL WELL   – image source)

Also, hognose snakes are big cowards NOT aggressive and I've never even heard of anyone getting bit by a one (outside of one feeding mishap, which we can all agree was an ACCIDENT). 

The series of events that would need to occur for you to be envenomated are so unlikely and bizarre that I assume you would have to be TRYING to get bit.

This has been Fun Fact Friday, bringing you the forbidden noodly boys to try and keep them a little more safe!

.....................................................................

Sources, because I know me and SO DO YOU:

Averill-Murray, R. C. (2006). Natural history of the western hog-nosed snake (Heterodon nasicus) with notes on envenomation. Sonoran Herpetologist, 19(9), 98-101.

Buchanan, Scott W.; Timm, Brad C.; Cook, Robert P.; Couse, Richard; Hazard, Lisa C. (2017). Spatial ecology and habitat selection of eastern hognose snakes. The Journal of Wildlife Management, 81(3), 509–520. doi:10.1002/jwmg.21218 

CHS: Canadian Herpetological Society https://canadianherpetology.ca/species/species_page.html?cname=Eastern%20Hog-nosed%20Snake

COSEWIC. 2021. COSEWIC assessment and status report on the Eastern Hog-nosed Snake Heterodon platirhinos in Canada. Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. Ottawa. xi + 45 pp.  https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/species-risk-public-registry/cosewic-assessments-status-reports/eastern-hog-nosed-snake-2021.html

Cunnington, G. M., & Cebek, J. E. (2005). Mating and nesting behavior of the eastern hognose snake (Heterodon platirhinos) in the northern portion of its range. The American midland naturalist, 154(2), 474-478.

Feldman, C. R., Durso, A. M., Hanifin, C. T., Pfrender, M. E., Ducey, P. K., Stokes, A. N., ... & Brodie Jr, E. D. (2016). Is there more than one way to skin a newt? Convergent toxin resistance in snakes is not due to a common genetic mechanism. Heredity, 116(1), 84-91. 

 Jared, C., Luiz Mailho‐Fontana, P., & Maria Antoniazzi, M. (2021). Differences between poison and venom: An attempt at an integrative biological approach. Acta Zoologica, 102(4), 337-350.

Liu, C., Chen, Y., Zheng, Y., Bo, J., Yang, C., Xu, S., & Zhang, S. (2022). Wear Resistance Improvement of Keeled Structure and Overlapped Distribution of Snake Scales. Journal of Bionic Engineering, 1-11. Citing abstract.

Mohammadi, S., Gompert, Z., Gonzalez, J., Takeuchi, H., Mori, A., & Savitzky, A. H. (2016). Toxin-resistant isoforms of Na+/K+-ATPase in snakes do not closely track dietary specialization on toads. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 283(1842), 20162111. 

 Nature Conservancy of Canada: https://www.natureconservancy.ca/en/what-we-do/resource-centre/featured-species/reptiles-and-amphibians/eastern-hog-nosed-snake.html

Plummer, M. V., & Mills, N. E. (1996). Observations on trailing and mating behaviors in hognose snakes (Heterodon platirhinos). Journal of Herpetology, 30(1), 80-82.

Rouse, Jeremy D.; Willson, Robert J.; Black, Ron; Brooks, Ronald J.  (2011). Movement and Spatial Dispersion of Sistrurus catenatus and Heterodon platirhinos: Implications for Interactions with Roads. Copeia, 2011(3), 443–456. doi:10.1643/ce-09-036     

Seburn, D. 2008. Recovery Strategy for the Eastern Hog-nosed Snake (Heterodon platirhinos) in Canada. Species at Risk Act Recovery Strategy Series. Parks Canada Agency, Ottawa. vi + 24pp.

Schwartz, V. & D. Golden (2002). Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians of New Jersey. New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife

VHS: Virginia herpetological society http://www.virginiaherpetologicalsociety.com/reptiles/snakes/eastern-hog-nosed-snake/eastern_hognose_snake.php#:~:text=Heterodon%20is%20derived%20from%20the%20Greek%20words%20heteros,meaning%20%22broad%20or%20flat%22%20and%20rhinos%20meaning%20%22snout%22

Young, R. A. (1992). Effects of Duvernoy's gland secretions from the eastern hognose snake, Heterodon platirhinos, on smooth muscle and neuromuscular junction. Toxicon, 30(7), 775-779. https://doi.org/10.1016/0041-0101(92)90013-U

Young, B. A., & Morain, M. (2003). Vertical burrowing in the Saharan sand vipers (Cerastes). Copeia, 2003(1), 131-137.

SARA: threatened https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/species-risk-public-registry.html

[randomtheidiot]

Reptile owners will talk about their pets like “Oh he’s so sweet and smart, he knows his name and he’s the most loving and sensitive creature I’ve ever owned and I just can’t get over how intelligent he is” and then they show me the little guy and he looks like this.

[averysmolkirbo]

Creechurs with the same vibes

these are two of my favorite looking animals ever. the bird creechur is the Potoo and the snake creechur is the Arabian Sand Boa

The potoo is a bird with possibly the most mouth to head ratio ive ever seen with massive derpy eyes. Every picture of these creechurs is either derpy or slightly unsettling.

The arabian sand boa is probably my favorite snake of all snakes and snake like things. Just look at him. He looks like a sock puppet. and like a child poorly drew a snake and it became real. I cant describe how much i live this stupid little thing. He looks so incredibly derp and there is NO picture i can find on google that looks even SLIGHTLY intimidating. he's so pathetic andndumb looking i love him.

[cicada-heart]

test print of a lil frog stamp inspired by the green frogs that live in the pond at my parents house 🐸✨ she needs a few touch ups but i’ll definitely be making some frog patches and prints soon!

etsy

[frangonzalezorigami]

Old photo of my origami frogs.

[jedimasterhyladae]

my favoritest little guy at the shedd aquarium

[frog-ology-secondary]

hello tumblr I’m a frog scientist and I heard you like frogs here so I’m here to share frog content if that’s okay

my first contribution is to inform you all that Carl Linnaeus hated frogs. Like, really hated them:

"These foul and loathsome animals are abhorrent because of their cold body, pale color, cartilaginous skeleton, filthy skin, fierce aspect, calculating eye, offensive smell, harsh voice, squalid habitation, and terrible venom; and so their Creator has not exerted his powers to make more of them." - Carl Linnaeus, Systema Naturae 1758 (Translated from Latin)

idk what went down between Linnaeus and a frog but dude was traumatised

also here is a photo of one of my science frogs, his name is Granny

[gay-fieri-05]

Just wanna say, anytime I hear someone say “kill all snakes” or “kill all insects/arachnids” I wanna furiously throw them into a wall

[markscherz]

The eye of Uroplatus garamaso, the new gecko species my colleagues and I described yesterday. Check out that weird pupil! Four little diamonds in a chain.

[feralriverwater]

Guys look at this cool tree i found one time, it's bark is weird looking.

And here's are some snails I found in a pond too

And here's some salamanders as well

[stitchy-face]

Skink Stickers! 🦎💙

They have arrived!! These little guys are going out to anyone who joins one of my mail tiers for the first time 💌

[bird-btch-rambles]

I made a friend!