Herps--reptiles and amphibians

A fossorial (from Latin fossor, "digger") animal is one that is adapted to digging and life underground such as the badger, the naked mole-rat, or the mole salamanders.

A few weeks ago my daughter caught a baby Eastern Milk Snake. A very pretty little snake, looked just like this:

We decided to try to make it a pet and gave it a nice little terrarium home, but after a few weeks we were never able to get it to eat anything, so we had to let it go.

I contacted a friend who is a snake breeder and he said he's never been able to get this particular species to eat either (at the baby stage). Most of the King Snake Genus eat other snakes or lizards, but we don't have any lizards here in New Hampshire, so I'm guessing these little guys eat Salamanders. Unfortunately we couldn't find any Salamanders, so we never got to test the theory.

It was a very pretty little snake, bright colors and interesting pattern. Hopefully it'll be able to find it's own food.

Black mamba, one of the fastest snakes in the world. It's also the longest venomous snake in Africa. Natives refer to it as the Kiss of Death. The death rate for someone bitten by a black mamba who is not treated immediately: 100%.

The snake itself is not black; the inside of its mouth is black.

There are many African legends about this snake, which is one of the reasons why it is the most feared snake in Africa although there may be other more deadly snakes. One legend: They chase their prey, including people, who are not their prey but the snake gets pissed off and follows. Not true.

There's loads of picture of snakes with cute hats out there.

Burmese snake priestess kissing king cobra as part of a Buddhist religious ritual, demonstrating a total recognition and acceptance and identity with nature. I think this derives from the Buddhist myth of the the Buddha and Mucalinda relationship. The Buddha sits under the Bodhi tree prior to his enlightenment, and under the tree is a burrow where a gigantic cobra lives, Mucalinda. The snake crawls out of the burrow, raises its body, spreads its hoods--it has multiple hoods and heads so you know it's mythical--and lowers them over the Buddha to protect him from the elements, animals, and insects. This is said to represent nature's homage to wisdom. Nature recognizing itself.

Mucalinda with Buddha. Thailand sculpture.

Bkue-tongue skinks. Tiliqua scincoides. Favored as pets because of their docile nature and adaptability to captivity.

Concerning the aforementioned blue-tongue skink: when I was working in a reptile house in a large zoo, we had a specimen kept in the keeper's area in a cage without glass, so you couldn't see what was inside. These lizards are so tame that you could hold them in the palm of your hand, and they wouldn't struggle at all.

One of the keepers brought a member of the public with her small son, who had a fear of reptiles, in the keeper's area to see and perhaps handle the docile animal and allay his fears. Next to the skink cage was a cage with Cyclura rileyi, a rather large, hyperactive, type of iguana. Of course the keeper opened the wrong cage, and Cyclura rileyi lept out onto the people setting back the child's therapy a few years.


Bahamian rock iguana Cyclura rilyi

Oof! poor kid...

At the zoo I worked at the reptile house was in the same building as the bird house. There was a walk-in rainforest on two levels. It was pretty bad because they couldn't grow the plants well because of too much water from a waterfall. But a bird keeper showed me a mynah that someone had donated. On the second level the bird would fly down onto the railing next to us. The keeper carefully cradled the mynah in his hands and tossed it up and out into the air. The bird kept its wings closed until it reached the top of the arc then opened them and glided back to the railing to do it over again. It loved doing that and even allowed me to accomplish the same act.

Sometimes I would walk into the rainforest and throw handfuls of crickets to the birds. Of course I would do this on the sly when they're weren't other reptile keepers around because they can be reptile chauvinistic, paying too much attention to the birds was somehow disloyal. Yes, just because you like snakes doesn't make you a good person, believe it or not.



Mynah

"Ask the average person his views on snakes and he will, within the space of ten minutes, talk more nonsense than a brace of politicians."
Gerald Durrell, "Menagerie Manor"

Gavials--Gavialus gangeticus

Gavials are my favorite of the crocodilians, though I've never seen one, a deficiency I mean to remedy, as they have some at the Ft. Worth zoo.
They are strictly fish eaters with their slim snout easily slicing through the water.

Gavials are found on the northern Indian subcontinent, but are critically endangered because of the immense pressure of human overpopulation with fewer than 235 individuals remaining in the wild.

My first look at a gila monster occurred at the Bronx Zoo in the reptile house. I thought that someone had carelessly dropped a beaded bag into the exhibit. Wrong. It was a lizard. In fact I learned that it's a venomous lizard native the the American south west.

I always thought these were gharials. I just looked it up. Gavials and gharials are the same thing. Live and loin.

I always liked the term gavial because it's similar to the Latin name and it's easier to remember.

The term gharial derives from an Indian word for "pot" or "gourd" or something referring to the growth that occurs on the snout of the males. I think it's a sort of resonating chamber for making territorial or courtship calls.

Anyway, I really like these animals, and they're completely innocuous to humans.

I always think of the thing on their noses as donuts. (I'm not all that scientific). In the same vein, I don't know Latin, so gharial had as much meaning for me as gavial.

Snake

I saw a young snake glide
Out of the mottled shade
And hang, limp on a stone:
A thin mouth, and a tongue
Stayed, in the still air.

It turned; it drew away;
Its shadow bent in half;
It quickened and was gone

I felt my slow blood warm.
I longed to be that thing.
The pure, sensuous form.

And I may be, some time.

by Theodore Roethke

Grace Olive Wiley with pet rattlesnake.
This is not trick photography. She tamed these snakes, and she was a true snake priestess.