0 Creature Feature: Thread Snakes.

This picture is MINE...but was done with Field Museum equipment, and is for their use.  

Now for something I actually did: This is the head of a silver snake (Leptotyphlops albifrons), a type of thread snake from Argentina. It took forever to get a picture this good! The (dead) specimen had curled such that the head was hard to spread flat, but great side shots like this were still possible. It even shows the cute white spot at the front of the snake - handy, since the tail and head look very much alike on thread snakes. Just one of the many interesting things one can do by volunteering at the Field Museum!

Thread snakes in general are pretty neat, too. There are a few different families of thread snake, but they have enough in common to comfortably be called the same thing and share an entry page. Collectively, are found almost everywhere except Europe and some of the colder parts of northern Asia. Seeing them at all is a problem; these are secretive, quiet creatures that live in the soil and under rocks. Prepare to get your hands dirty. 

Thread snakes are also called "worm snakes" or "blind snakes," and with good reason. These snakes look like worms, if not burnt noodles. They are not slimy like worms; that should be your first clue if you happen to pick one up. As seen beneath a microscope, however, these snakes have scales, eyes, nostrils, and a spinal cord, just like every other snake in existence. All of them eat eusocial insects, particularly ants and termites, at all stages of life. Some may also be parthenogenic - capable of reproducing entirely without a male. More on that particular thread snake in another entry, though.

From National Geographic. Probably the only pic out there. 

Thread snakes are the tiniest snakes in the world. The smallest snake currently on record is the Barbados thread snake (L.carlae). As the name implies, this species is only native to Barbados, an island in the Caribbean. It is so small that it feeds on termites and their larvae. The adult is small enough to, well, fit comfortably on a quarter. The snake may be on the verge of extinction due to habitat threat, but not very much is known about it at all. It was just discovered and identified in 2008, so give it a bit longer.

Oddly enough, these snakes have the proportionately largest eggs of any snake type. The mother lays only one egg...which hatches into a baby almost half her size. Scientists think that, if the babies were any smaller, they would not be able to eat. The opposite case is true with giant pythons, who can lay clutches of hundreds! Size matters - just ask the people who take home Burmese pythons without realizing how monstrously huge they get.

Source. 

I love volunteering at the Field. I get inspired for so many entries, but only a few of them make the cut. Now, if only I could actually get paid to do things like that photo up top. 

Detail: Creature Feature: Thread Snakes.

0 Creature Feature: Corn Snakes!

Remember when I said I had experience handling reptiles? Well...

These are all my hatchling corn snakes (Pantherophis guttatus; formerly Elaphe guttata). All of the above eggs hatched except for one, which unfortunately could not get out of its shell. They're rather neat little snakes, and one of the more common ones in the pet trade. It's totally worth doing an entry about them, if only because most people won't know what a corn snake is at a glance.

Corn snakes are mid-sized colubrids from the eastern United States, particularly the Carolinas and Florida. Like many snakes, they eat rodents. They are red, orange, and black, with speckled bellies that give corns Despite being called "red rat snakes," they are actually closely related to kingsnakes - one of the most beneficial snakes around, even according to people who hate snakes. They are also quite beautiful, even without a paintjob like my albino hatchies.

BEAUTIFUL normal from Ian's Vivarium!

Hey, speaking of paintjobs, you might notice that the wild-type ("normal") babies I hatched don't quite look like the awesome specimen above. That's because corn snakes exhibit something called "ontogenic color change." In laymen's terms, that means that they change color when they get older. It carries over into other morphs (color phases) too, so one really has to be patient to see what the adults will look like. Those drab normal babies will become bright red and orange in no time; that's part of the fun of corn snakes!

While ball python people have scores of morphs to mess with (the list is terrifying), corn snakes have a plethora of hybrids. "Jungle corns" are used to describe any mix between a corn snake and a kingsnake, and there are a lot of kingsnakes to choose from. One of the most common crosses, however, is with Emoryi's rat snake, leading to what are called "creamsicle" corns. It's almost as if, while insane breeding of ball pythons might narrow the gene pool to the point of being undesirable, the corn snake gene pool is expanding by incorporating other species. Dogs and cats, all over again. I can guarantee that we'll make a blue or green corn snake before a blue ball python, in any case.

That said, however, I still recommend a ball python for the first-time snake owner. There are several reasons for this, and they all come from personal experience. My first corn snake escaped from me and was never found again; likewise, colubrids are generally harder to catch than constrictors, being able to squeeze into a million tiny places. Especially if you have kids who might forget to lock the cage, balls are a better choice. There are millions of unwanted normal males out there for anyone wanting a first snake. Then, color your world with corns.

Detail: Creature Feature: Corn Snakes!

0 Bio-Art: Snakeskin Nails.

***NOTE: Apologies for not doing an entry yesterday. There were two successive power outages that more or less prevented it from getting posted. Tuesday will have a double-header to make up for it. ***

As a person, nail art is one of the few forms of "makeup" I get remotely excited about. Time not withstanding, it's one of the easier types of body decoration out there. I also happen to be a reptile keeper who enjoys the aesthetic qualities and personalities of her serpents. So, naturally, snakeskin as a nail design tool caught my attention.

To clarify, this is not done with the skin of the snake as seen on handbags or shoes. Snakes occasionally shed their entire skins, leaving behind ghostly husks of their former selves that quickly dissolve into nothingness. This habit of appearing dead for a few days and emerging from the shed with a shiny new coat of scales has led the snake to be seen as a symbol of immortality.

The first technique I heard of involved, somehow, heat-cracking the snakeskin. My immediate thought was that this would make fragile, lacy skins shrivel up and burn after just a few minutes. Maybe this was just in order to sanitize the sheds, but it did not make initial sense. It makes more sense after seeing how it was done in this video:



The technique is actually simple, albeit time-consuming: cut some shed skins to the parameters of your nails and stick 'em on, sealing them with either a fancy sealant like Terri has or, for us cheapasses, with clear nail polish. Try it with a colorful undercoat if you're feeling creative; the hint of brown or gold natural in pigmented sheds looks quite cool. (Yes, I just tried some of my own sheds on my nails.)

The bitch of the treatment is the price: 300 USD and over two hours' worth of time. Also, you'd think that this woman could market it better; just call it "dragon nails" instead of snakeskin and a whole new pile of money would appear. Plus, it's Year of the Snake; this woman should be rolling, just for finding a use for a skin that most people would toss into the trash.

P.S.- Yes, there are easier, cheaper ways to get the snakeskin look. I found a few red herrings while looking for that link.

Detail: Bio-Art: Snakeskin Nails.

0 Creature Feature: Chinese False Cobra.

Well!  Today is the first official day of the Chinese Year of the Snake! What better way to celebrate than do kick things off with a Chinese snake, eh?


(This photograph belongs to its rightful owner. They are very lucky to have such a gorgeous, rare snake!)

This will probably be the first look at a Chinese False Cobra (Pseudoxenodon bambusicola) for many of you. It's native to the cool mountain forests of China. The species is rear-fanged venomous, so handle with care. In the wild, it feeds almost exclusively on frogs. This habit carries over into captivity.

The reasoning behind it being a false cobra is simple: like a cobra, this snake can flatten out a few ribs and raise its head. As Tom Crutchfield, one of the few people who works with these snakes, says, they're "the best monocled cobra mimics. Ever." 

Other than that, this snake is hard to find information on. This is largely because it's all but unheard of in the pet trade. You really have to know someone who's seen one, then done the homework, go to China and pray to Nuwa (China's local snake-bodied deity) that you can snap a pic, or randomly find it in a reptile magazine. Some Indian reptile guides also cover this species. Other than basic field information, very little is known.

These are not beginner's snakes. For starters, yes, they are venomous. There are only a select few people who will breed them, which means either spending a lot of money or getting parasitized wild imports. Finally, they only eat frogs, and nobody has found a way around it. That means no buying mousecicles for Chinese false cobras. Even pros have trouble keeping this shy, fairly docile snake alive. Please try something like a kingsnake or ball python before getting into cobras of any kind!

Just between you and me, I should have done a blue or more black snake for this entry. Happy Year of the Snake- don't worry, snakes guard your money like dragons do their treasure!

Detail: Creature Feature: Chinese False Cobra.

0 Megafauna Week: Intro + Titanoboa.

 Pinch, punch, last week of the month! You know what that means: It's a Theme Week! This month's theme is MEGAFAUNA. Let me say it in bigger letters:

MEGAFAUNA!!!!

Megafauna, in general, means "any animal larger than a human that has not been domesticated." The term can apply to both extant and extinct species. The term is usually reserved for giant, extinct animals that were much larger than their modern day counterparts. Giraffes, elephants, and many other famous African animals are also properly megafauna.  Believe it or not, the aurochs, the ancestor to the modern cow, was megafauna. We have bred cattle down a lot, and they're still pretty darn big. 

That said, there will be a lot of extinct creatures this week, too. Megafauna tends to vary inversely with human population - that is, the more humans there are in an area, the less megafauna there will be. There are a number of reasons for this.The most obvious is that humans are a lot like wolves in that anything big against us falls to coordinated effort. Less obvious things include competition for resources and habitat destruction (which kinda falls under "resources," in retrospect). Basically, humans and megafauna do not mix well.

So, without further ado, onto the first member of the heavyweight class:

Surprise, surprise: this week is starting with a giant snake. For those of you who have not seen this monster, its name was Titanoboa and it died out long before humans walked the Earth (so your hands are clean). The only known species, Titanoboa cerrejonensis, was found in the coal mines of Columbia.

Titanoboa was a giant, even among modern giant snakes. It was 48 feet long and weighed over 2,500 pounds. To put things in perspective, the longest snake, the reticulated python, is at least 10 feet shy of that. It was about as wide as a garbage can, if not slightly bigger. As for how dangerous it was, I believe the following demotivator makes the point best:

(Disclaimer: I love giant snakes.)

The discovery of a snake this big tells us a few very important things about its environment. For starters, there had to be prey big enough to accommodate such a large snake; large snakes need large food, after all. Huge reptiles also tend to live in tropical climates, meaning that Columbia was still hot millennia ago.

Before you ask, no, this snake did not eat dinosaurs. Titanoboa appeared in the Paleocene, around 60-58 million years ago. That is the time directly after the period when dinosaurs went extinct. If there were dinosaurs for it to eat, they would have been the stragglers from the KT event that refused to evolve into birds. The Paleocene had plenty of large mammals, birds, and reptiles for Titanoboa to feed on regardless.

Pop culture loves picking on giant snakes, and Titanoboa is no exception. The Smithsonian has a rather extensive page on Titanoboa, including what it would take to support one in a zoo. Primeval: New World also featured a Titanoboa, overlapping it with a Native American legend. Giant snakes are pretty common in folklore; who's to say that someone didn't discover Titanoboa before modern science? 

Detail: Megafauna Week: Intro + Titanoboa.