Daily Reptile News

Pet viper bites Tampa man

TAMPA — A man bitten by his pet viper now faces charges for having the animal in the first place. Jamie DePriest drove himself to St. Joseph’s Hospital on Tuesday after his 18-inch-long pet Gaboon viper bit his left index finger, according to Bay News 9. He was in fair condition late Friday night.

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officers found the snake in its aquarium with no lid at DePriest’s W Anderson Avenue home. He told the authorities he bought the snake in New York.

There second-degree misdemeanor charges against DePriest include failing to cage the snake and keeping it without a permit, according to Bay News 9. The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office is also investigating because two children lived in the home with DePriest and the snake.

Hundred of snakes to be released in Florida

CASSIA — Researchers got the go ahead to start breeding hundreds of snakes on a property in Lake County.

A non-profit group will study and breed eastern indigo snakes on 25 acres in Eastern Lake County near State Road 44.

The snakes are a threatened nonvenomous species, native to the Southeast.

Researchers plan to breed the snakes in Lake County and keep about 200 snakes on the property.

They hope to eventually release a few hundred of the eastern indigo snakes a year across Florida where their populations have dwindled.

Snake on a train: MBTA green line stopped

A reptile forced a delay on the MBTA Green Line.

The D-line train was temporarily stopped yesterday after riders reported that a man aboard had a snake around his neck.

The man had already left when police arrived at the Brookline Village T station.

The MBTA tells the Boston Globe that service was stopped for about 9 minutes.

The T does have a policy allowing small pets to ride in secure carriers, but it says nothing particular about allowing snakes.

Two exotic snakes discovered in Riverdale trash bin

RIVERDALE — Two exotic snakes were found Wednesday in a trash bin in Riverdale, but police have no idea why they were dumped. “We couldn’t even venture a guess,” said Police Lt. James Ebert.

The two snakes, one a South American boa constrictor and the other a red-tail boa constrictor, were found in a trash bin near the Motel 6, 1500 W. Riverdale Road. The snakes had been put in plastic totes then tossed into the bin, Ebert said.

Riverdale and South Ogden Animal Services removed both snakes from the bin, but a South American boa constrictor had died.

“They were both in great health,” until they were dumped, said James Dix, founder of Utah Reptile Rescue Service, who took the living snake after it was rescued. “The (smaller) one had basically died from heat and suffocation, but the larger one was still alive. It got the container open and escaped and was loose in the dumpster. That’s what kept it from overheating and dying.”

Dix said the animal service workers had to climb into the trash bin to retrieve the snake. “They saved its life,” he said.

Dix said anyone who has a reptile they can’t care for can call Utah Reptile Rescue Service at 801-860-2497 instead of killing the creature or throwing it away.

“There’s no reason for someone to do that,” he said. “Please call us. There is no reason for this.”

He added that the person who dumped the snakes could face some serious legal issues if they are caught.

“They can be charged with animal cruelty,” he said. “You can be charged with a felony now. It doesn’t have to be a dog or cat.”

Dix said animals that are rescued are generally kept in the facility, used in exhibits or transported to another area if it is an illegal animal such as an alligator.

He said the snake that was rescued Wednesday will have a home with Utah Reptile Rescue Service after it is checked out by a veterinarian.

Congressman understands importance of lowly reptile

Congressman Jack Kingston of Savannah took a razzing last week when he went to south Georgia looking for a snake.

Website commenters had a ball when WMAZ-TV of Macon followed Kingston’s search for an endangered Eastern indigo snake.

Someone quickly barked: “ANY snake in our yard is an endangered species.”

Other comments read more like our letters to the editor.

“Heck, all he had to do was come to Macon,” said one. “There are plenty of snakes here in City Hall. Not to mention all of his friends in Washington. The largest of them all is Obama!!!”

And, of course, it got personal.

“What about the snakes in his head? He should have them studied.”

The bespectacled Republican couldn’t help but crack a joke about his search for the harmless indigo, one of the largest snakes in North America.

“They’re so much more pleasant than the crowd in Washington,” he told the TV station.

Kingston, rated by some as the most conservative member of Congress, looks like a typical guy with a wife, four children, two dogs and two cats. But what about those snakes?

“It’s golf for one guy, fly fishing for somebody else, it’s snakes for me,” he told WMAZ.

The TV snippet was sent to me by a friend from Ridgeland who collects snakes. He’s involved with the unusual goings-on at the place visited by Kingston: the 4,000-acre Mopani Preserve in Telfair County. That’s where Project Orianne is based, with scientists and other professionals working to save the snake with a host of partners, from government agencies and universities to conservation groups and a giant power company.

The project is named for a little girl who got to touch one of the smooth, bluish and gunmetal black indigo snakes and pleaded with her father to help save them.

This they are doing through land protection, land management and restoration, inventory and monitoring, captive breeding, reintroduction, and research programs.

“If indigo snakes are successful in an area,” my friend said, “everything that is supposed to be there is successful.”

What if we could say, “If mankind is successful in an area, everything that is supposed to be there is successful?” Things like oysters in the May River.

It requires a point of view that mankind, while dominant, is part of a bigger picture.

It’s sort of like Congress, and all the commenters screaming back and forth. Maybe Kingston can go back to Washington and show them how to care more for America than their own political species. If they don’t, we the people will become as endangered as a snake in a south Georgia yard.

Lizard venom offers hope for Parkinson’s disease patients

A trial is underway at University College London Hospitals in UK to establish whether the drug ‘Exenatide’ could be used to treat patients with the progressive .

A synthetic version of this drug, originally found in the saliva of the Gila monster, is already an approved treatment for patients with diabetes.

However, laboratory evidence suggests it could also arrest the neurodegenerative process that causes Parkinson’s disease – potentially leading to a cure. Four independent groups around the world (including colleagues at the School of Pharmacy, London), have shown that this drug can improve symptoms of Parkinson’s and rescue in five different rodent models of the disease.

Dr Tom Foltynie, consultant neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and , who is leading the trial, said: “This is an incredibly exciting project. At present there is no cure for Parkinson’s disease and the drugs currently available only relieve the symptoms, but do not arrest the underlying progressive neurodegenerative process.

“We will be studying a tried and tested drug which is used for the treatment of diabetes and are hopeful it will arrest the neurodegenerative process for Parkinson’s and provide new hope of a cure for this disabling condition.”

People with Parkinson’s don’t have enough of a chemical called dopamine because some in their brain have died. Without dopamine people can find that their movements become slower so it takes longer to do things. There’s currently no cure for Parkinson’s and it is not yet known why people get the condition. Parkinson’s doesn’t directly cause people to die, but symptoms do get worse over time.

Six million diabetics worldwide inject Exenatide in the abdomen, thigh or arm, 30 to 60 minutes before the first and last meal of the day to control their glucose levels.

It works on a receptor in the gut and pancreas but is also known to act on a receptor in the brain. Dr Foltynie’s research, funded by the Cure Parkinson’s Trust and involving 40 patients in an initial phase, will seek to establish whether the effects previously seen in animals are reproduced when these receptors in the brains of Parkinson’s disease patients are stimulated by subcutaneous injections of this drug.

Australian lizards on verge of evolutionary leap

Scientists observing a small group of Australian lizards very closely, believe they may be watching evolution happen right before their eyes.

A variety of Australian skink – like snake but with four tiny legs – is slowly starting abandon egg laying and beginning to give birth to live offspring like a mammal does.

Skinks in the mountainous region of New South Wales have almost entirely moved to live birth. But the same species living in the lowlands along the coast are far more likely to lay eggs containing their young.

The subject was discussed in the latest issue of the Journal of Morphology.

According to a 1999 study that looked at the transition that some lizards are known to make from egg-laying to live-birth, the evolutionary step only travels in one direction. Once a species begins giving live births, it never goes back to egg-laying.

Researchers speculate this could be because it’s easier to keep offspring protected from the elements and predators if they are inside the mother’s body, even if that means a more taxing draw of nutrients and energy from the mother.

Some researchers have suggested the transition from egg-laying to live-birth might not be as difficult as it initially appears.

Some skinks, they argue, simply retain the egg in the uterus for a longer period of time to protect it from colder external temperatures. The longer the egg is kept in the uterus, the thinner the shell becomes. When a skink is born live, all that remains of the shell is a thin membrane, which the mother helps the baby break open.

The cold explanation cites a 1996 study and explains why the mountainous skinks are making the leap to live-birth faster than their lowland counterparts.

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