Slice of the Jungle

10/22/2021

Amazing little creatures.

07/06/2021

The rising of Matariki in the night sky signifies the beginning of the traditional Māori New Year, and is a cause for celebration and reflection.

Thinking about our native h**petofauna there is one species that stands out as encapsulating this occasion.

The Hura-te-Ao gecko (Mokopirirakau galaxias) - (https://www.reptiles.org.nz/h**petofauna/native/mokopirirakau-galaxias)

To us this beautiful species represents Matariki, not only through its patterning, which is reminiscent of the stars in the night sky (where it gets its latin name "galaxias"), but also what it represents. As the te reo māori name given to this species refers to the breaking of dawn, we also believe that the discovery and recognition of these beautiful taonga, and the amazing work that many of our h**petologists carry out on a day to day basis, will pave the way for better protection and the beginning of a golden age in New Zealand h**petology.

📷 Samuel Purdie

12/01/2020

Yellow-bellied skinks have been known to lay eggs and give birth, but they've never done both in the same litter before.

10/31/2020

10/21/2020

Showing off the pre-vacation cut.

10/21/2020

Awesome Black Rat Snake from June that I found in Fahnestock.

08/10/2020

08/01/2020

Absolutely incredible geckos. Have you ever seen one in person? This is a great closeup look.

Seriously, these amazing geckos will really make you jealous! Check it out here: https://youtu.be/Mvw8IIc6tb4

05/02/2020

Please help us support Leland Ward who is currently in intensive care. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family. He is a tremendously hardworking individual, and always has a smile on his face. Get well soon Leland.

01/15/2020

12/17/2019

11/20/2019

The Magic Gecko

🦎🦎🦎

In 1974, a 36 year-old Karl Heinz Switak bought a new car – a Chevy Blazer – and aimed it south. He’d requested a two-month leave from his job at the Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco and, joined by his girlfriend Carol, brother Dirk, and life-long friend George, set sights on 1000 miles of new pavement on Baja California’s Highway 1. A cold and foggy Bay Area morning bid them farewell on June 16th, and just three days later the four would pull into the sleepy town of San Ignacio – a true desert oasis on the edge of a lagoon bordered by palm thickets where they made camp.

Their first night of searching produced just a handful of road-killed snakes: a couple rattlesnakes, a whipsnake and a banded sand snake. The next day, however, would be different: on Thursday, June 20th they’d make h**petological history.

It started relatively uneventfully, with the team spotting some introduced Bullfrogs (Rana catesbeianus) and a Two-Striped Garter Snake (Thamnophis hammondii). As night fell, Karl and George encountered an adult Baja California Rattlesnake (Crotalus enyo) followed by a subadult Mexican Rosy Boa (Lichanura trivirgata). A half-hour later, Karl saw what he thought to be a road-killed rodent and George stopped the car for a closer inspection. As he approached the unidentified object on the pavement, Karl realized it was a large gecko, but one unlike any he’d seen before. It was huge, and he jokingly referred to it as a leopard gecko. The pair returned to camp and showed off their finds.

The strange gecko accompanied the team alive for the remainder of their trip, following them to the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula and foregoing the specimen shipment in La Paz for fear it’d die or be lost in shipping. The gecko and team took the ferry to mainland Mexico and eventually the Big Bend area of Texas where the lizard was shipped from El Paso to gecko expert, Robert Murphy.

Murphy’s analysis concluded that not only was Karl’s gecko a new species, but it was so anatomically different that it warranted its own genus: Anarbylus, a latin term meaning “without shoes” and a reference to the lizards’ unique toes. In October of that same year, the world was introduced to Switaki’s Barefoot Gecko (Anarbylus switaki).

A specimen secured at an unknown time by Charles Shaw of the San Diego Zoo from near Borrego Springs was published just a year later in 1975 and was the first evidence of the species’ presence in the United States though it wasn’t officially recognized until 1982 when Fritts et. al. reported multiple records for San Diego and Imperial Counties. The decades that followed would produce multiple specimens along much of the northern half of the Peninsular Range and the species, though secretive, is now relatively well known.

The specimen shown here was photographed by the HERP.MX Field Team during a fall trip to Baja California.

11/11/2019

https://www.tropicalh**ping.com/articles/new_geckos_galapagos.html

Read the press release about the two and a half new species of leaf-toed geckos that have been discovered in the Galápagos Islands.

08/15/2019

Corn snake eggs are cooking! Thanks Joe for the help with incubation. The eggs were dimpling, meaning they were a bit too dry. After watching Joe’s video I added the sphagnum moss and they’re no doing fine now.

@ Kent, New York

12/07/2018

Geckos can run straight up a wall, but it’s their ability to run across water that makes them truly weird.

11/19/2018

This was a very exciting find for us! Commonly seen in captivity but not so much in the wild. Leopard gecko (Eublepharis macularius), north India.

07/18/2018

Yesterday was world snake day. Check out what this little guy found, a tiger rat snake.

07/08/2018

I went bowl deep, he went Nutella deep. @ Gateway National Recreation