Snake in Biological News

Venomous sea snakes play heads or tails with their predators

... venom which is among the most toxic known in all snake species. When hunting for food sea snakes ... of the expected tail. It was only when the snake swam away that the first head was clearly seen to ... from a developed defence strategy needed when the snake is probing for prey. Despite being extremely ...

Discovery of a water snake that startles fish in a way that makes them flee into its jaws

... snakes hypnotizing their prey. The tentacled snake from South East Asia has developed a more effective technique. The small water snake has found a way to startle its prey so that the ... the fish's reaction is so predictable that the snake actually aims its strike at the position where ...

World's largest snake discovered in fossilized rainforest

... in the film "Anaconda," the world's biggest snake slithered around northern South America. ... History, unearthed fossil remains of a new snake species named Titanoboa cerrejonensis . ... of existing snakes to estimate that this boa-like snake must have reached 13 meters (42 feet) in length ...

Largest prehistoric snake on record discovered in Colombia

... fossils of a 60-million-year-old South American snake whose length and weight might make today's ... Polly explains: "At its greatest width, the snake would have come up to about your hips. The size ... Florida Museum of Natural History, estimated a snake of Titanoboa 's size would have required an ...

At 2,500 pounds and 43 feet, prehistoric snake is the largest on record

... fossils from a 60-million-year-old South American snake whose length and weight might make today's ... week's Nature . "At its greatest width, the snake would have come up to about your hips," said ... is not particularly unusual, Head estimated a snake of Titanoboa's size would have required an ...

World's biggest snake gives climate clues

... TORONTO, ON. Skeletal remains from an enormous snake that would dwarf Hollywood's anacondas have been ... bus and weighed more than a car. It's the biggest snake the world has ever known," says University of ... to squeeze through a doorway to enter a room. The snake ate giant turtles and crocodiles, whose skeletons ...

Similar survival rates for Pacific salmon in Fraser, Columbia Rivers raises new questions

... salmon from two river basins: the heavily dammed snake and Columbia Rivers and the free-flowing Thompson ... in dam bypasses like those in the Columbia and snake Rivers. The lower Columbia and lower snake Rivers currently have eight major hydroelectric ...

Brown tree snake could mean Guam will lose more than its birds

... ecosystems even further. "The brown tree snake has often been used as a textbook example for the ... most of its native birds after the brown tree snake was introduced by accident from the Admiralty Islands following World War II. The snake has few predators on Guam, so its population ...

World's smallest snake found in Barbados

... in the journal Zootaxa . Hedges found the new snake -- a type of threadsnake -- in a tiny forest ... the basis of its genetic differences from other snake species and its unique color pattern and scales. ... is the smallest of the more than 3,100 known snake species. According to Hedges, the smallest and ...

August 2008 Geology and GSA Today media highlights

... that show why no large earthquakes occur in the snake River Plain. GSA Today 's science article ... USA. Pages 623-626. The basalt-covered snake River Plain and the geysers of Yellowstone ... Strain rates and contemporary deformation in the snake River Plain and surrounding Basin and Range from ...

Detecting the snake in the grass

... ability to very quickly detect the presence of a snake from among a variety of non-threatening objects ... to see how quickly they could distinguish the snake or snakes from the other creatures or natural ... very good at nearly immediately identifying a snake from among the non-threatening images, but ...

Squirrels use snake scent

... rock squirrels (Spermophilus variegates) applying snake scent to themselves by picking up pieces of shed ... Adult female squirrels and juveniles apply snake scent more often than adult males, which are less ... in their burrows at night, or to persuade a snake that ...

Ecologist finds dire devastation of snake species following floods of '93, '95

... 70 percent of the pre-flood population of five snake species, and either eliminated the populations of ... Key to survival" Size. It matters to a snake when floodwaters roar through the environment. ... try to find evidence for the presence of the fox snake at Marais Temps Clair, a northern species not ...

Technology improves salmon passage at hydropower dams

... of juvenile Chinook salmon that pass through the lower 100 miles of the snake River and its three hydroelectric dams survived the trek in the spring of ... The JSATS-tagged fish were released from the Lower Granite Dam on the snake River, where hydrophone receivers in the river picked up small sounds, or ...

The secret of a snake's slither

... snake locomotion may seem simple compared to walking or galloping. But in ... most friction with the ground and therefore maximize thrust. In this way, snake slithering is not unlike human walking--we, too, shift our weight from ...

Australia's most endangered snake might need burning

... Conserving Australia's most endangered snake might mean lighting more bush fires, ecologists have proposed. The last ... that active management is required if the nation's most endangered snake species is to be saved from extinction," Dr Webb said. Such management ...

The evolution of aversion: Why even children are fearful of snakes

... Some of the oldest tales and wisest mythology allude to the snake as a mischievous seducer, dangerous foe or powerful iconoclast; however, ... photographs on a computer screen and were asked to find either the single snake among eight flowers, frogs or caterpillars, or the single nonthreatening ...

Magnetic snakes control fluids, gravity-defying droplets, and solving a dragonfly mystery

... the flow of the surrounding fluid. Current incarnations of the magnetic snake are a few centimeters long, but the team envisions much smaller versions ... recent experiment shows that the speed of the water flowing along the snake depends on how quickly the magnetic field alternates. To make a ...

Naming evolution's winners and losers

... Alfaro said. In contrast, there are more than 9,000 bird species, more than 5,400 mammal species, approximately 5,500 frog species, some 3,000 snake species and 5,200 lizard species, Alfaro said. The number of frog species, although it sounds high, is about what Alfaro would expect, given ...

New Report Just Published: World Solid-State, Fiber, Gas and Dye Lasers Market Report

... Bright Solutions Signs Agreement with BFi II-40 Zecotek Signs Marketing Agreement with Toyo II-41 RPMC Inks an Agreement with Arete II-41 snake Creek Partners with Alps II-41 Zecotek Laser Enters into Agreement with Fujikura II-41 Powerlase Forms Partnership with NUI Galway II-42 ...

New species of phallus-shaped mushroom named after California Academy of Sciences scientist

... drewesii is not the first species to bear Drewes' name. A small moss frog native to South Africa ( Arthroleptella drewesii ) and a blind worm snake from Kenya ( Leptotyphlops drewesi ) were described in 1994 and 1996, respectively. Over a span of forty years, Drewes has embarked on 36 ...

Scientists announce top 10 new species, issue SOS

... On the list are a pea-sized seahorse, caffeine-free coffee and bacteria that live in hairspray. The top 10 new species also include the very tiny (a snake just a slither longer than 4 inches or 104 millimeters), the very long (an insect from Malaysia with an overall length of 22.3 inches or 56.7 ...

Scientists announce top 10 new species; issue SOS

... On the list are a pea-sized seahorse, caffeine-free coffee and bacteria that live in hairspray. The top 10 new species also include the very tiny (a snake just a slither longer than 4 inches or 104 millimeters), the very long (an insect from Malaysia with an overall length of 22.3 inches or 56.7 ...

Monitoring water through a snake's eyes

... spectrum." Such an instrument can be used to detect hazardous chemicals, pollutants and threats in the water, "seeing" water in the same way as a snake does. The special fiber sensors make it possible to monitor the quality of water in a remote location, such as a lake, a river, or a pipeline, and ...

Snakes and how they helped our big brains evolve

... of directing attention. A social activity (no one points when alone) dependent on fast and accurate localization, pointing would have reduced deadly snake bites among our hominin ancestors. It might have also figured in later human behavior: Snakes, "The Fruit, the Tree, and the Serpent" eloquently ...

UF scientist tapped by Howard Hughes Medical Institute to pursue 'best ideas'

... limbs develop along the trunk was published in the journal Nature in 1997. He went on to discover the molecular basis for loss of limbs during snake evolution and the role of Hox genes in the origin of jaws findings that were published in Nature in 1999 and 2002. Since arriving at UF in ...

10 new amphibian species discovered in Colombia

... South America, including a salamander ( Bolitoglossa taylori ), a rain frog ( Pristimantis pirrensis ), a small lizard ( Ptychoglossus myersi ) and a snake not yet identified. "Once more we confirm we are leaders in natural diversity and not only in our region but in the world. Without a doubt this ...

Transporting juvenile salmon hinders adult migration

... Christopher Peery and Steven Lee at the University of Idaho tracked the movement patterns of adult salmon and steelhead trout along the Columbia and snake rivers in Washington and Oregon. They found that, when compared to fish that migrated naturally, transported juveniles had lower survivorship as ...

Zoologists: Sea snakes seek out freshwater to slake thirst

... gain water, the snakes' salt gland may help the snakes with ion balance moving excess salts from the bloodstream, Lillywhite said. Some sea snake species living in dry regions may already be suffering as a result of climate change. Lillywhite said a colleague in Australia, which is in the midst ...

Scientists achieve first tracking of salmon from headwaters in Rockies through Pacific to Alaska

... Rivers. Among the many studied, two tagged juveniles survived a 2,500 km trip that took more than three months - from the upper reaches of the snake River (a tributary of the Columbia River) in Idaho, out to sea then north along the continental shelf to Alaska. The two swam about the same ...

Tiny invasive snail impacts Great Lakes, alters ecology

... Europe in the late 1800s. It is found in Japan, but when the snail arrived there is unknown. The first mud snail found in the U.S. was in 1987 in the snake River, Idaho, but the species did not appear in the east until 1991 in Lake Ontario. The western and eastern U.S. populations are separate episodes ...

American Chemical Society's Weekly PressPac -- July 9, 2008

... Bridgeport, New Jersey 08014 Phone: 856-467-6316 Fax: 856-467-6317 Email: bielski@ptcvalue.com ARTICLE #4 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE snake venom tells tales about geography Journal of Proteome Research Just as people give away their origins by that southern drawl or New England ...

Project succeeding to relocate Caspian terns

... from the Columbia River Basin. Research revealed, for example, that a single colony of 500 pairs of Caspian terns consumed one-third of all the snake River juvenile steelhead that attempted to migrate past the tern colony during a drought year. "The key to limiting the conflict between protected ...

New species discovered in Brazil

... Station, a 716,000-hectare (1,769,274-acre) protected area that is the Cerrados second largest. The lizard, of the Bachia genus, resembles a snake due to its lack of legs and pointed snout, which help it move across the predominantly sandy soil formed by the natural erosion of the escarpments of ...

UC San Diego researchers eliminate drug discovery bottleneck

... at each stage using mass spectrometry. This work is an extension of an award-winning automated approach Bandeira and colleagues used to reconstruct snake venom peptides. Our Recomb 2008 paper represents the first demonstration of de novo sequencing of nonribosomal peptides. Without knowing the ...

Priming scientists for successful media interviews

... interviews with nearly a dozen scientists who have successfully navigated print, radio, and television interviews. The scientistsincluding the Island snake Lady, Kristin Stanford, recently featured on the Discovery Channel show, "Dirty Jobs"share advice and experiences on a number of topics, including ...

Which came first, the chicken genome or the egg genome?

... and demonstrated that it works equally well for a set of seemingly unrelated biological problems including DNA fragment assembly, reconstructing snake venoms, and now dissecting the mosaic structure of segmental duplications. In the future, the researchers plan to continue their exploration of ...

Does the victim affect snake venom composition?

... and studied two types of protein toxins. The three-finger toxins (3FTx) and the phospholipase A2 (PLA2) enzymes are the main components of sea snake venom. Although the sea snakes studied lived in very different aquatic environments, the toxins examined were similar in both and the genes ...

New animal and plant species found in Vietnam

... continuous undisturbed forest cover for thousands of years, and, as a result, offer unique habitats for many species, said WWF experts. The new snake species, called the white-lipped keelback, prefers living by streams where it catches frogs and other small animals. With a beautiful yellow-white ...

How cancer spreads by aggregating platelets

... to the top one percent of papers reviewed in significance and overall importance. Suzuki-Inoue and colleagues had previously discovered that the snake venom rhodocytin stimulates platelet aggregation by binding to a protein called C-type lectin-like receptor 2 (CLEC-2) located on the surface of the ...