Prairie Ring-necked Snake (Diadophis punctatus arnyi), Harding County, New Mexico. Photo by Andrew DuBois. Creative Commons licence.
Five (relatively recent) things make a post:
- BBC Earth on snake fungal disease: “In a few species snake fungal disease is having a truly devastating impact. ‘The main species I look at is a rattlesnake called the eastern massasauga,’ says Allender. ‘They have a 92.5% mortality rate from the disease.’”
- Wildlife biologist Andrew DuBois takes great photos of wild North American reptiles and amphibians. See his Flickr and Instagram accounts. I’m fond of the garter snake shots, of course, but the species coverage in general is quite comprehensive. (Spadefoots! Ensatinas! Thread snakes!)
- On Quora I answered a rather dumb question: How would you defeat a large snake that decided to attack you? “The short version: I wouldn’t need to, and if I did need to, I wouldn’t be able to.” Read on for the long version.
- Maclean’s asks what’s killing the animals at Calgary Zoo — they’ve had a rash of sometimes-bizarre deaths, most recently seven penguins. But one stood out, at least to me: “one zookeeper resigned after starving a corn snake to death.” I have kept and raised dozens of corn snakes. They’re the easiest snake out there. As I said on Twitter, “if a zoo can’t keep a CORN SNAKE alive — something 8-year-olds manage to do all the time — that’s a serious red flag.”
- Many snakes, including hognose snakes and European grass snakes, feign death as a defence mechanism. I didn’t know that indigo snakes did it too — at their size, I didn’t think they needed to.
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