Jonathan Crowe

Over the past few years we’ve lost most of our snakes to old age. It’s slightly nuts that our oldest snake, Pretzel, is still with us. She was the first corn snake I got, 25 years ago today, and the first snake I got as an adult; and she’s managed to outlive most of the snakes we got since then, to the point where she’s also our last corn snake: we lost Trouser last year at the age of 23 or so, and LMA (aka Ella Mae or Little Miss Adorable), who was a lot younger than that, earlier this year. Despite health issues from Giardia to seizures, Pretzel has turned out to be Little Miss Indestructable; she’s what Martha Argerich would be if she were a corn snake. See the above photo, taken this afternoon: at some point she lost a bit of her tail tip (which isn’t surprising or worrying).

I’m not actually sure how old Pretzel is, because she was at least a young adult when I got her, which means she’s 27 or so at a minimum. That’s a lot for a corn snake. She’s ridiculously hale for the moment, but in our experience snakes can go downhill awfully quickly and without much warning. It’s unlikely that she’ll be around in five years’ time, but neither is it impossible; it’s at least theoretically possible that she ends up being our last snake, period. I’m not sure that would surprise me.

See the post I wrote for Pretzel’s 20th gotchaversary, most of which is still applicable; it also has a bunch more photos.

Mirrored from Jonathan Crowe.

Because venom is complex and differs from species to species, there’s no broad treatment for snakebite: only various monovalent and polyvalent antivenoms that target a single species or group (e.g. similar snakes by region, like North American pit vipers). A new study published in Science Translational Medicine raises the possibility of a universal antivenom, based on monoclonal antibodies rather than animal serum.

Researchers tested a human antibody against the venom of four elapid snake species—the many-banded krait, black mamba, monocled cobra and king cobra—and found that it was almost completely effective at blocking the three-finger toxins (3FTx) found in all their venom. Less so with king cobra venom, owing, the researchers think, to other toxic components found in that snake’s venom. It was still more effective against king cobra venom and black mamba venom than standard antivenom treatment, and just as good against monocled cobra venom. (Animal testing was involved, and mice in the control group did not have a good day. Look: snakebite kills 100,000 people a year.) This study focused on a single antibody and a group of toxins found in a single snake family, and there are a lot of other toxins to deal with (again: venom is complex), so that universal antivenom is still a ways off. But it’s looking a lot less impossible.

I can’t imagine an eventual treatment based on monoclonal antibodies to be cheap—the monoclonal antibodies currently used to treat autoimmune disease sure as hell aren’t—but then antivenom tends to be either expensive (in the U.S.) or scarce: there’s a global shortage of the stuff, and for some species there isn’t actually an antivenom available.

Mirrored from Jonathan Crowe.

Local snake identification groups on Facebook have been reducing the number of snakes being killed out of fear, Emily Willingham reports for Scientific American. The work of snake ID groups, such as Facebook’s Snake Identification group or Reddit’s r/whats­this­snake subreddit, has been covered before (see Sierra in 2017), and now that I no longer respond to snake ID requests myself, I point people to these very groups. The interesting twist here is that these are local groups, focusing on a specific region (e.g. north Texas). Not only is local expertise more relevant and reliable (r/whatsthissnake gets ID requests from every continent), but a local group might also help someone get on-site assistance (not every snake problem can be solved remotely).

Mirrored from Jonathan Crowe.

Among the businesses hardest hit by the pandemic are those that do reptile education and displays. In the Ottawa area, both Little Ray’s and Reptile Rainforest are running fundraisers to help them keep their doors open. (You can support them at those links.)

As I see it, the problem is (at least) twofold:

1. Reptile education and outreach is fundamentally tactile. It cannot be done remotely: the whole point of the operation is to at least be in the same room as the scary beastie, if not touch it. I cannot stress enough the good that can be done, in terms of overcoming phobias and promoting wildlife conservation, by a friendly snake in a friendly environment.
2. It’s a business with a lot of overhead: you have to feed, heat and house the animals regardless of whether you’re allowed to open to the public. Some of those animals can be very expensive to feed, heat and house—and let’s not even talk about vet bills. And at the scale of Little Ray’s, which I believe has something like 900 animals, those overhead costs add up to a substantial amount (on the other hand, Darren at Reptile Rainforest is a one-man operation).

It’s a very particular business model, in other words: one that doesn’t necessarily fall within the parameters of government supports, one that can’t pivot to remote/online, and one that can’t simply shut down and wait the pandemic out. Hence the problem.

Mirrored from Jonathan Crowe.

European wall lizards (Podarcis muralis) have invaded Vancouver Island. Traced to a release by a roadside zoo that closed down in 1970, the lizards’ island population is now estimated at between 500,000 and 700,000. While some people enjoy having the lizards around—we don’t have many of them in Canada—it’s still an invasive species capable of doing damage. “Hanke assesses the threat to B.C.’s ecosystems as ‘an eight, if not a nine.’ He worries for native species such as the sharp-tailed snake, the Pacific chorus frog and the northwestern alligator lizard. The wall lizard feasts on them all.”

Mirrored from Jonathan Crowe.

At Photography Life, wildlife photographer Nicholas Hess explains why he photographs snakes, and explains a few of his techniques. He’s very good at it. He’s been at it for a decade. And he’s 19 years old, which means he started, wow, really young. Here’s his Flickr account.

Mirrored from Jonathan Crowe.

“The snake is as much symbol as animal, and this oversaturation of meaning prevents us from seeing the snake clearly. In reality, they are gentle, healthful to the environment, ‘more scared of you than you are of it,’ a sort of tragic hero of the ecosystem that is, when gazed upon without malice, beautiful. I might argue that the contemplation of a snake qua snake […] delivers us past, for a moment, our paralyzed understanding of things and into a configuration of mind from which we might briefly remember how much of what we know is sculpted air and rumor, and how much direct experience of an animal, of any thing, might open our eyes to new possibilities of interpretation or, better yet, to the possibility of resisting interpretation altogether. Perhaps we might let the weight of meaning slip away, revealing only coiled matter. Long and lithe, complexly imbricated, strange: Here is contact. Let it grip you. With your fingers, touch its scales.” —Paul McAdory, “How My Pet Snake Taught Me to See,” The New York Times Magazine.

Mirrored from Jonathan Crowe.

Reptile taxonomy has been upended in recent decades by studies that use mitochondrial DNA—and only mtDNA—to reorganize and subdivide existing species into new groups. In a point-of-view piece for Herpetological Review exploring the usefulness and validity of subspecies as a concept, David Hillis argues against this practice, pointing to a mismatch between mtDNA and intergradation zones, and new studies looking at nuclear gene flow that disagree with mtDNA findings, thanks to which taxonomic changes based on mtDNA are beginning to be reversed. [Andrew DuBois]

Mirrored from Jonathan Crowe.

On Friday Google posted a Doodle in honour of what would have been Steve Irwin’s 57th birthday. PETA, the Westboro Baptist Church of animal rights, decided to use this opportunity to take a swipe at Irwin (who died in 2006) on Twitter. The usual backlash and fulminations ensued.

Irwin’s legacy is complicated. He did a lot of real conservation work behind the scenes, but his brash, loud animal wrangling made conservationists uncomfortable: he operated at an uneasy intersection of conservation, education and showmanship, and lots of people felt he emphasized the last one too much.

Immediately after he died in September 2006, those people took shots at him and his work, suggesting that getting killed was a kind of karmic revenge. In response, I wrote a blog post that I’m reprinting below. Unless you were following me 12½ years ago, you probably haven’t seen it. Given the recent flareup, I think it might be worth another airing.

The worldwide reaction to Steve Irwin’s death has been swift, strong and usually sympathetic, but it’s inevitable that some people are insufficiently socialized that they cannot help but take a shot at the recently departed and the circumstances of his death.

Jason Calacanis says that the Discovery Channel killed him because of its focus on televising risky encounters with wildlife; Germaine Greer says that the stingray attack was the animal world extracting its revenge. The sentiment behind these posts occurs elsewhere, and can be distilled into one of two arguments: Steve Irwin was an irresponsible thrill seeker; Steve Irwin was a cruel tormentor of animals. Either way, it’s poetic justice—in other words, he got what was coming to him—and the commentariat, whether in the op-ed pages or on the blogosphere, thrives on poetic justice the way it revels in Schadenfreude.

My response to those espousing these arguments is simple: You have no idea what you’re talking about.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mirrored from Jonathan Crowe.