Daily Reptile News

Alligator That Attacked Triathlete Is Captured

ORLANDO, Fla.  – A huge alligator, which attacked a triathlete who was training at a Central Florida lake, has been captured. The official measurement of the reptile is 11 feet, six inches.

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokeswoman Joy Hill says the alligator fits the size, location and behavior profile described by the swimmer.

The gator caught Tuesday morning will be killed. The trapper will process the animal to sell the meat and the hide, which is payment for removing the gator. Trappers will search for more gators in the lake.

Doug McCard was swimming Sunday when he the alligator chomped down on him. The 35-year-old says he swims in the same late every weekend to train for a competition. He suffered five puncture wounds to his right shoulder, another to his hipbone and several more on his back.

Postal worker recognized for assisting snake bite victim

U.S. Postal Service employee Joseph J. Clark doesn’t think of himself as a hero, but he’ll always be one to Cassandra Villano.

On May 16, 2009, while delivering mail on Route 502 in Pittston Township, the 60-year-old rural carrier from Old Forge went to Villano’s aid when she collapsed outside her home after being bitten by what was later determined to be a copperhead.

He sucked the venom from the wound on her left hand and then waited with the young woman and her family until an ambulance arrived.

“I just helped somebody in need,” Clark said. “I saw someone in trouble and reacted.”

On Thursday, Clark will be among seven Postal Service employees from the Northeastern Pennsylvania area honored for heroic acts or good deeds during an 11 a.m. luncheon at the Scranton Post Office on Stafford Avenue.

Villano, now 19, said it is a deserving recognition.

“He’s a very wonderful person – and an exciting guy to get mail from,” she said. “I’m just grateful he did what he did.”

Villano acknowledged her memory of the incident is hazy. She was doing yard work, pulling weeds from beneath a boat behind her family’s home, when she felt something grab her hand. She didn’t realized what had happened until she snatched her hand back and saw the snake.

She now believes she lost consciousness for several minutes before getting up and stumbling to her front yard, where she fell to the ground again. Clark, who had watched Villano and her three younger siblings grow up while delivering the family’s mail for 14 years, pulled up just in time to see her drop and her mother, Melissa, rush to her side.

While Villano lay convulsing and drifting in and out of consciousness, one of her brothers noticed the snakebite. As her father, Eric, spoke with 911, Clark said he took the phone and asked the dispatcher whether it would harm him to try to suck the venom out of her hand.

Although Clark said he has some first aid knowledge and experience, a snakebite was something new to him, and he wasn’t certain what to do. The dispatcher, he noted, “didn’t say not to do it.”

“I proceeded to suck what I could out of there and spit it out,” he said. “It was just instinct, I guess. You don’t know if it helped or didn’t help.”

It was the fourth time in five years Villano had been bitten by a copperhead, a streak of bad luck that leaves both her and her parents at a loss. However, Eric Villano said his daughter is an explorer, the kind of person who is “always turning over rocks.”

“It’s almost like some kind of magnetism,” he said. “It’s something I can’t explain.”

But Villano said it was by far the most severe bite she had suffered and is thankful Clark “had the guts to suck out the venom.”

“I wouldn’t be here today if he didn’t,” she said.

For his part, Clark is uncomfortable with the hero tag and deflected credit to the emergency medical crew that took Villano to the hospital and the doctors who treated her at Community Medical Center.

“I don’t think like that. You just react to the situation and do what you have to do to save someone’s life,” Clark said. “I hope someone would do the same for me if I were lying there. If you see something, don’t drive by. There may be something there you can do.”

Brazil fire destroys snake and spider collection

The curator of the Butantan Institute said the destruction of the entire collection was a “loss to humanity”.

The nearly 80,000 preserved snakes and the thousands of specimens of spiders and scorpions were used in research.

Live animals housed nearby that are used to produce serums and vaccines were not harmed, the institute said.

“The entire collection was lost, the biggest collection of snakes in the world,” curator Francisco Franco said. “It’s a loss to humanity.”

A firefighter said the flammable liquid used to preserve the specimens helped spread the fire.

The cause of the blaze is being investigated.

Some of the specimens in the 100-year-old collection were of rare or extinct species.

Snake Bites Getting Dealier, Anti-Venom Shortages Loom

As venomous snakes go, the coral snake is a clumsy biter. Unlike pit vipers such as rattlesnakes and cottonmouths, which have gruesomely efficient fangs that articulate forward during a strike and inject venom like hypodermic needles, the brightly colored coral snake has small, rear-facing fangs that guide venom into a wound. This process doesn’t always work well–experts estimate that 25 percent of coral snake envenomations are dry bites–which is perhaps why the coral is so unaggressive. The snake is found throughout Florida, as well as in parts of Alabama, South Carolina, Louisiana, Texas and Arizona, but there are generally only about 100 or so bites each year.

What the coral lacks in belligerence, it makes up for in neurotoxicity. Unlike bites from pit vipers, which cause immense pain and swelling at the wound site, coral snake victims usually report little pain after being bitten. But the effects begin to show within hours, with symptoms such as tingling sensations in the extremities, dysarthria (slurred speech) and ptosis (droopy eyelids). Then a victim’s lungs shut down. “The venom acts as a neuromuscular blockade to the lungs,” University of Florida professor of medicine Craig Kitchens says. “Without antivenom, you need artificial respiration or you die.”

Unfortunately, after Oct. 31 of this year, there may be no commercially available antivenom (antivenin) left. That’s the expiration date on existing vials of Micrurus fulvius, the only antivenom approved by the Food and Drug Administration for coral snake bites. Produced by Wyeth, now owned by Pfizer, the antivenom was approved for sale in 1967, in a time of less stringent regulation.

Wyeth kept up production of coral snake antivenom for almost 40 years. But given the rarity of coral snake bites, it was hardly a profit center, and the company shut down the factory that made the antivenom in 2003. Wyeth worked with the FDA to produce a five-year supply of the medicine to provide a stopgap while other options were pursued. After that period, the FDA extended the expiration date on existing stock from 2008 to 2009, and then again from 2009 to 2010. But as of press time, no new manufacturer has stepped forward.

Mallika to create hiss-tory

Mallika Sherawat is at the Cannes Film Festival to unveil the promo of her first home production Hissss, along with brother and co-producer Vikram Lamba. She has planned for an unusual event to create a buzz about her film.

On May 16 at the Hotel Majestic on the Cannes croissette, the actress will be seen performing a nag pooja, followed by a dance with a 15 foot python wrapped around her.

Flown in
The 220 pound snake has been specially brought in from the US and Mallika has been rehearsing with it for the last four days.

Apparently the nag puja-dance will be unlike anything ever before seen at the global film festival and market held each year in the south of France.

The source reveals, “Mallika will also unveil the theatrical trailer of her film Hissss by a top Hollywood company and will also announce the release date.”

The actress will wear a specially designed dress by a top designer while her style team, led by Claus Hjelmbak and Ivan Bitton, will style her look. They had also styled her last appearance at Cannes look, when she had walked the red carpet with Jackie Chan for their film The Myth.”

Hissss is an Indo-American production starring Mallika Sherawat, Irrfan Khan, Divya Dutta and directed by Jennifer Lynch. Mallika plays a snake woman in Hissss who comes to wreak vengeance on her detractors.

Lizards facing extinction because of climate change

From geckos and iguanas to Gila monsters and Komodo dragons they are among the most common reptiles on Earth – found on every continent except Antarctica.

But a study of lizard populations worldwide has found an alarming link between extinctions and climate change.

If current trends continue 20 per cent of all species could disappear by 2080, according to the findings published in Science.

The researchers developed a model of risk using lizard numbers and rising temperatures which accurately predicted specific locations in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Australia where local populations have already become extinct.

The drop in the lizard population could cause an explosion in the numbers of insect they normally feed on as well as devastating creatures higher up the food chain which rely on them for food.

Evolutionary biologist Professor Barry Sinervo said: “Our research shows the ongoing extinctions of lizards are directly due to climate warming from 1975 to the present.”

He added: “We did a lot of work on the ground to validate the model and show the extinctions are the result of climate change.

“None of these are due to habitat loss. These sites are not disturbed in any way and most of them are in national parks or other protected areas.”

He said as local populations continue to disappear species extinctions will follow.

“Most of these species currently registering local extinctions will be completely extinct by 2080, unless we change and limit the carbon dioxide production that is driving global warming,” said Prof Sinervo.

The disappearance of lizards is likely to have repercussions up and down the food chain as they are important prey for many birds, snakes, and other animals and they are important predators of insects.

Prof Sinervo, of California University, said: “We could see other species collapse on the upper end of the food chain – and a release on insect populations.”

Biologists have also documented dramatic declines and extinctions of amphibian populations around the world leading to estimates that one-third of species are at risk of extinction.

But Prof Sinervo said these are attributed mostly to the spread of a deadly fungal disease – with a possible indirect link to environmental factors such as global warming.

He began studying extinctions after he and colleague Dr Donald Miles, of Ohio University, noticed a disturbing trend in recent years after he went looking for populations other researchers had studied in the 1980s and 90s – only to find many had disappeared.

In Mexico his team re-surveyed 48 species of spiny lizards at 200 sites where they had been studied between 1975 and 1995 and discovered 12 per cent had disappeared.

To investigate the link with temperature they visited a site on the Yucatan Peninsula where the blue spiny lizard was declining.

After building a device to mimic the body temperature of a lizard basking in the sun and record the temperatures on a microchip they set them in sun-exposed sites for four months in locations with and without surviving populations of blue spiny lizards.

Prof Sinervo said: “The results were clear. These lizards need to bask in the sun to warm up but if it gets too hot they have to retreat into the shade and then they can’t hunt for food.

“At the extinct sites in the Yucatan, we found that the hours per day they could be out foraging had collapsed. They would barely have been able to emerge to bask before having to retreat.”

Prof Sinervo used these findings to develop a model of extinction risk based on maximum air temperatures, the physiologically active body temperature of each species and the hours in which a lizard’s activity would be restricted by temperature.

The researchers found climate change is occurring too rapidly for lizards to compensate with physiological adaptations to higher body temperatures.

Prof Sinervo said: “We thought we’d see evolution occurring in response to climate change but instead we’re seeing extinctions. Beyond a certain point the lizards can’t adapt.

“We’re predicting 40 per cent of local populations will go extinct – and that will translate into roughly 20 per cent of species going extinct by 2080. If we begin reducing CO2 output now, we might be able to hold that to 6% of all species.

“Several species in Mexico face an eminent risk of extinction. But there are many other areas in which biodiversity is more poorly known and we probably have already lost species to climate warming in these areas.”

“There are critical hot spots such as in Mexico and the equatorial tropics around the world. In Mexico, the number of species lost by 2080 could be as high as 60%.

“The reason has to do with the rate of climate change in these areas and also because there are a lot of lizard species on isolated mountain ranges.

“These species will likely be going extinct at a rapid rate because they are adapted to cool environments and have a low body temperature. As climate warming really kicks in many of these areas of biodiversity will be devastated.

“We point out in our paper that all of the tropical areas are experiencing very high rates of local extinction.

“However, even in Europe the common lizard is going extinct at the southern margin of its range where 30% of the populations are now extinct.

“This is because it has evolved a relatively low body temperature and it has been getting hotter in southern Europe.

“In our article we also point out that lowland species have likely driven a number of higher elevation species extinct in Mexico.

“Thus, as widespread species expand because cool habitat is getting warmer, they will accelerate the decline of high elevation endemic species.

“This is a very severe effect in addition to the thermal extinctions per se – in other words it is now just too hot for the cool adapted species.

“I have a son who like me loves lizards – and dinosaurs. What an incredibly sad fate to have such splendid biodiversity lost because of our own inability to limit CO2 emissions. I personally am doing everything I can to lower my CO2 footprint.”

Many of the extinctions projected for 2080 could be avoided if global efforts to reduce emissions are successful, but the scenario for 2050 is probably inevitable, said Prof Sinervo.

He said: “The extinctions are happening really fast. I’m watching new populations go extinct every year.”

Racine zoo staff help rescue reptiles

It was 9 a.m. when Jay Christie got the call: Milwaukee authorities had a building filled with reptiles, and they needed help to clear them out.

“We can be there in an hour,” said Christie, president and CEO of the Racine Zoo.

He loaded crates, pillowcases, empty kitty litter containers, a pinch grabber, snake hook and four pairs of tall rubber boots into the zoo’s van, and drove to Milwaukee. He stopped on the way to pick up Billie Henderson, the zoo’s reptile specialist.

Christie had heard there were as many as 500 reptiles in the building at 2323 S. 13th St., on Milwaukee’s south side.

Milwaukee Area Domestic Animal Control Commission had pulled some animals out of a home a few blocks away, after police stumbled across the collection of snakes, turtles and crocodiles during an unrelated investigation.

The building on 13th Street had even more animals inside.

There were security cameras on the corners of the building and over the doors. A trash bin outside was chained shut. Officers put on masks and respirators before going inside.

Christie and Henderson went in a few minutes after arriving. When they came out, Christie said the scene inside was one of a “classic hoarder.”

“You could only see 2 to 3 percent of the floor,” he said. “It was piled up with every imaginable piece of junk.”

Clothing, boxes, and containers holding the hundreds of reptiles filled the three floors of the building – basement, main level and upper story.

Some of the animals were loose, Christie said, including one of the largest – a crocodile, possibly protecting a nest.

A photographer with the Milwaukee Police Department shared a few shots from his camera – a large, scaly tail snaked through the frame.

That crocodile, Christie said, was probably six feet long.

He said there were snakes, turtles and “crocodilians of various sizes,” including American alligators, a dwarf Cayman and crocodiles of Mexican and Chinese varieties. There were large constrictor-type snakes, he said, and snapping turtles that probably weighed upwards of 100 pounds.

None of the animals appeared to be dangerous, he said, though “the largest crocodile is going to be a handful.”

Christie said they had not found any dead animals after several hours in the building.

“The conditions are inferior,” he said. “It’s very disappointing, disheartening and sobering all at once.”

In the middle of the work, Christie said, he hadn’t had much of an emotional response, but that it was “troubling to think about how long they may have been there.”

It is not clear exactly where the hundreds of animals will go from here, Christie said.

“Certainly the Racine Zoo and Milwaukee Zoo are unable to keep this many reptiles in their collections overnight,” he said.

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