Report from the Front with the Foul and Loathsome

Linnaeus, founder of the system of scientific naming of living things, sure didn't like reptiles or amphibians (back then, they were colectively just "Amphibia"), as he makes clear in his introduction to the group:

"Amphibia pleraque horrent Corpori frigido, Colore lurido,  Sceleto cartilagineo, Cute foeda, Facie torva, Obtuto meditabundo, Odore tetro, Sono rauco, Loco squalido, Veneno horrendo; non iraque in horum numerum sese jactavit eorum Auctor." *

 
"These foul and loathsome animals are abhorrent because of their cold body, pale color, cartilaginous skeleton, filthy skin, fierce aspect, calculating eye, offensive smell, harsh voice, squalid habitation, and terrible venom; and so their Creator has not exerted his powers to make more of them."
- Carolus Linnaeus (1758)

Things sure have changed in the past 254 years. Like the War of American Independence, the French Revolution, elimination of the bustle, flying machines, voting women, Prohibition, Lucky Lindy made it, Casey at the bat didn't, the Beatles, and a few other things. Yes, even in the early 21st century a lot of people, maybe even the majority, still agree with Carolus (Carl to his buds!). Too many of our neighbors still find herpetofauna "foul and loathsome". ("Herpetofauna"; now there's a word Carl would have liked.) That attitude is a subject I'll cover another time.

Given that my opinion of herpetofauna is the polar opposite, yin-to-his-yang, of Linnaeus, it comes as a wonderful "so there!" to see that he was way off when he wrote, "their Creator has not exerted his powers to make more of them". His original list of both amphibians and reptiles covered a few score of taxa. But with the massive world exploration and exploitation that followed in the next two centuries, the numbers of both groups has risen considerably. For instance--

There are some 8- to 9,000 species of reptiles described (depending on what taxonomists eventually do about a bunch of 'subspecies'). That's closing in on the number of described birds (11,000-ish) and mammals (3,500). As late as the 1990s a student in a herpetology course would still be taught that amphibians were the smallest group of terrestrial vertebrates, numbering about 3,000 to 3,200. Even so, what Linnaeus called Amphibia had gone from a group that he believed contained few species to a pair of groups with over 12,000! Yes, I respect Carl and all he's done for biology, but I do not like his derisive comments about my favourite creatures.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE. Yeah, the past 20 years have seen a blitz of exploration and reexamination of museum specimens, and added to the number of herpetological species at a possibly unprecedented rate. This next comment is aimed (respectfully) at Linnaeus:

Hey, Carl! Amphibians have cleared the--get this--SEVEN THOUSAND species mark! That's right, and you can read all about it here: (http://robertsprackland.webs.com/).

The more carefully we look, the more we learn, and some of the discoveries are almost unbelievable. Like lots of amphibians do NOT go back to the water to reproduce. The earliest amphibian fossils (relax, Carl, I'll explain fossils to you later) had seven or nine fingers instead of four or five. Cave salamanders eat the dung of other troglodytes. The most noxious poisons produced naturally by living creatures comes from among the smallest frogs. We've discovered "sibling species", creatures that differ in mating calls, time of activity... but look so much alike that there is no physical way to distinguish between them. With 7,000 species, I can't get into all the news here, but there is an incredible world of newly discovered aliens living all around us.

------------------------------------------------

* Want to read the whole Latin text for yourself... you know, go to the original source? Then go here:
Caroli Linnaei, Systema Naturae

So. THIS is the future?

Home computers are remarkable things. It seems that several times each day someone around us remarks about them. That goes for me, too. After all, I'm not a four-letter-word kind of fellow, except of course under the most angry mind-states. To that end, I must credit my home PCs, without which I'd never have learned to cuss like a longshoreman. And that says a lot, because my first full-time paying job ever was (ta da!) longshoreman, and the docks never gave me a scintilla of the sheer cussing vocabulary that my PCs have.

That includes ALL personal computers, by the way, including the near-sacred Macs.

At some time in everyone's life, assuming they are living in the First or Second World, the computer upon which so much depends will freeze, lose a file, erase an important document, send the wrong email ("Sorry, boss!"), secretly download pornographic sites, secretly upload important personal information, engage in a data-searching Mobius loop, release wisps of white smoke from the tower, accidentally (and, thank's to Murphy, at the absolutely worst possible time) send live video camera images to someone on your Skype, or, best of all, crash. I no longer doubt that whatever the source of the chips inside, some must be potato chips, and others programmed by a black-box outfit called Kamikaze Electronics.

This isn't a subject I intended to include on my blog, but I've been having  wrestling match with my PC. Even after running four programmes that condense files, toss duplicate files, and otherwise "streamline and speed up" the processing, my time from click to result is still slower than my grandmother running uphill backwards--and she passed away in 1986!

So there it is. My rant. Now please excuse me, my PC has informed me it's time to learn some new cuss words. Today, we cover the letter "P".


You can order a copy of my new book, GIANT LIZARDS, 2nd EDITION (2009) by clicking here!

So proud of being so dumb

WHAT happened to the once esteemed idea that each generation wanted its offspring to be better than they? My parents, and theirs, and theirs, all wanted the children to be better educated, live better lives, have better opportunities. And then something odd happened; Americans began to see educated Americans as a threat, as if having actual knowledge was a danger to Life, Liberty, and the American Way. This isn't just odd, it's tragic.

I remember back when Bill Clinton was running against George Bush, the Elder, for president. As one of many "filler" stories, the press wanted to know about favourite cookie recipes of Barbara Bush and Hillary Clinton. Mrs Bush complied with cutesy press coverage and smiling youngsters. Ms Clinton, however, responded that she didn't make time for baking, that she had a (law) career that took much of her time. The result was a remarkable barrage of insulting responses to Ms Clinton, who had dared pronounce against motherhood, baking, children, and the sanctity of a woman;s place in the kitchen! Egad!

And as I watched the scene play out, I wondered: Who, among the many parents of daughters, would NOT be proud to have them attend a prestigious university, become scholars of note, attain law degrees, and procure a career and income that would pretty much guarantee that they would have a better, n more rewarding life than themselves? Who would tell a daughter who had been accepted to Harvard or Princeton that, no, they really should stay home and learn to crochet and bake cookies?

Ah, but Ms Clinton is not THEIR daughter. Bill Clinton is not THEIR kin. He's just one of the annoying, demented, Eastern Ivy-League Ivory-Tower Know-It-Alls. One of those people who think that because he's had access to the experience and tutelage of some of the finest and most educated people alive, he is somehow determined to undermine everything American for his own glory. Or so it seemed then.

Now, the GOP is still belittling the Ivory-Tower types, and the ones doing so ARE Ivory-Tower types! Bush I and II, and Mitt Romney are all products of those dreaded, communist towers of erudition, Harvard and Yale. It is an intellectual atrocity that they slander the almae matri that provided them the switch from silver spoons to golden ladles, but to then rile the electorate and have them believe that the pols were NOT part of that Academic Elite is almost unbelievable! Or at least it should be unbelievable; but the decades of fervent anti-intellectualism has taken its toll. Americans are getting... well, I'll just say they are not keeping up intellectually with much of the rest of the world. On the one hand, Americans decry the movement of jobs abroad, while they simultaneously lie prostrate across the road to the progress that they demand. 

"Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge," wrote the late scientists and prolific author Isaac Asimov. It is sad that this attitude, that ANY opinion is as valid as one based on facts, is growing like a fungus among us, and I am not sure that enough people with the same concern will do anything to reverse it. 

"All it takes," wrote Edmund Burke, "for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing." Equally true, it seems, is that all it takes for ignorance to flourish is for educated men -- and women -- to do nothing. Judging by the puny resistance ignorance faces today, it would seem that we have plenty of good people happy to do nothing.

So, you see, there is SOMETHING that, in this recession, we have in plenty. Too bad. 

(To read my related article, visit:
Dr. Robert Sprackland. 2005 A Nation Left Behind Or A Nation Placing Itself Last. EzineArticles (December, 08), http://ezinearticles.com/?A-Nation-Left-Behind-Or-A-Nation-Placing-Itself-Last&id=109957) 

Edward Cope's 170th Birthday

One-hundred seventy years ago today was born Edward Drinker Cope, arguably the single most influential American herpetologist of the nineteenth century. Though his primary passion was paleontology--he was a powerhouse discoverer-namer of many North American dinosaurs--he was a prolific author in the fields of ichthyology and herpetology. So great is his influence that in 1913 the newly formed American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists named their journal in commemoration -- Copeia. Cope named dozens, possibly scores, of reptile and amphibian genera and species, the most well-know, perhaps, being the Gila monster.

Much has been written about Cope, and I doubt that I could add anything new. But older herpetologists know and revere the man and his works. The younger generation would do well to learn a bit about him. He may very well have been America's first professional herpetologist, and for that alone he deserves remembering.

Please help me out: Tell Animal Planet to stop promoting Rattlesnake Republic and the slaughter of rattlesnakes

My Facebook friend and fellow herpetologist Sara Viernum has used the remarkable petition-creating site (change.org) to lead an attack on the barbaric and inhumane rattlesnake roundups that still, somehow, survive in many U.S. States. I am offering you, here and now, a chance to vote on this issue that should be near and dear to ALL of us.  

NO LIVING CREATURE SHOULD HAVE TO ENDURE THIS KIND OF TORTURE! 

You don't have to LIKE rattlesnakes to DISLIKE such cruel and inhumane treatment of ANY animal.

You don't have to LIKE rattlesnakes to be a humane human being!

So, PLEASE: Stand up and be counted!!!

THANK YOU!

http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-animal-planet-to-stop-promoting-rattlesnake-republic-and-the-slaughter-of-rattlesnakes

U.S.A.: Land of the Deprived and the Home of the Trembling Fearful?

From the time I was 15 years old, I have seen the rise and growth of laws and regulations that had the good intentions of protecting our planet's wildlife. I have also seen the same degree of excessive restrictions, ill-informed criteria, and self-serving politics transform the good intentions into near mindless pandering. We who work with (or try to) reptiles, amphibians, and other wildlife have been the objects of considerable harassment as the varies regulations become selectively enforced. We are a minority group, with very little political presence, and a very conspicuous passion. That translates into the people in power easily being able to think, "Well, this group is easy to attack, like scary things, and has no ability to hurt my re-election!" I wrote about the specifics many times over the years, most recently in the second edition of my book, Giant Lizards:

-->

"...the emphasis given to arresting and prosecuting people with live animals is not warranted by either threat to society or to the animals. When I was reviewing CITES numbers for a report, I found out that, for 1984, of 1,066,502 Nile monitors imported into the United States, only 988 were for the pet trade. That amounts to less than one live lizard per 1,000 skins imported for the leather trade. Similarly in that same year, of 545,031 water monitors imported, only 1,797 were live animals, or just 30 for every 1,000 skins. This unreasonable disparity might be explained by the far greater financial influence wielded by the designers who produce fashionable leather garments and accessories, or it may reflect the fact that one headline certainly trumps another. Consider these two samples, and decide which one makes a better newspaper headline:

“Wildlife officials nab cobra and monitor at airport”

“Wildlife officials nab 1,500 illegal wallets”

[You may purchase your own copy of Giant Lizards at: http://www.amazon.com/Giant-Lizards-Definitive-Breeding-Monitors/dp/0793805813/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339865181&sr=1-1&keywords=sprackland+giant+lizards] 

Well, the Python Ban has passed at the Federal Level, followed by similar exotic animal ownership bans at state and local levels. MY objections to the ban extend far beyond my right to own a python (which I do not; I neither have nor intend to have any large snakes in my home, so understand that PYTHON ownership is NOT the main issue I oppose) are these:

1) I am opposed to the elimination of yet another freedom in a supposedly free country;

2) I am opposed to legislation being passed based on faulty/incomplete science; the government papers on the putative dangers caused by invasive pythons is refuted by many non-governmental scientists, including some of the most knowledgeable python researchers on the planet (http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/python-ban-moves-forward-despite-questionable-science-78949462.html);

3) I oppose the use of pythons for fear-mongering and the release of inaccurate and downright false hyperbolic media reports; we in herpetology have fought long and hard to reduce the general fear of snakes in our society. The media reports foster new fears that are at best overly exaggerated and largely non-existent (http://www.humanesociety.org/news/press_releases/2012/04/loose_python_houston_statement_042812.html);

4) I oppose the idea that rights - ANY rights - are limited or revoked for all because of the abusive or negligent actions of a very few;

5) I am opposed to legislation and regulation being implemented in violation of the established procedures required prior to enactment of such rules; (https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=210869022265803)

6) I oppose the ban because it establishes precedent for easy elimination of additional rights, further restrictions on legitimate animal-keeping, and passing conspicuous "headline" legislation against minority groups (as in there are fewer python keepers than, say, gun owners);

7) I oppose any legislation that is of such minor importance because of money, personnel, and other resources it takes away from far more serious issues, especially in times of troubled economics;

8) I oppose enactment of Federal rules where, at best, state legislation is far more appropriate;

9) I oppose legislation for which enforcement, barring exceptional cases, is nearly impossible, and;

10) I oppose legislation that turns a long-standing legitimate activity into one that will turn a great many otherwise law-abiding citizens into criminals.

I am tired of the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave being chipped away into a Land of the Deprived and the Home of the Trembling Fearful!

THAT is why I am so actively fighting the Python Bans and related proposed laws and regulations.

--Robert George Sprackland, Ph.D.
Herpetologist, author, teacher, and, apparently, defender of liberty and rationalism.

Expos: Substitute for Spring Herpetology Exploring?

It is finally March in the Northern Hemisphere, and with it come hopes for an early spring (meaning warmer, drier weather) and the renewal of the annual cycle of reptile expos. Expos can be enjoyable, giving us the chance to talk herpetoculture with other aficionados, see a variety of fascinating creatures at close quarters, and, for many of us, to lighten our wallets in a way we find less difficult than, say, forking over the car payment. This is so different from the spring rituals of the time when I was a young reptile collector, and it saddens me to realize that the current generation will not experience spontaneous field collecting.

Here's what I (we?) miss. The freedom to just put on some wading boots, grab a few old pillow cases and jars, a few other odds and ends, and take off into the local bush. On a given night I might encounter several species of frogs and toads, a salamander or two, and, along the roads basking on warm asphalt, a few snakes. There they were, to be photographed or collected. No permits were needed, and no laws broken to follow my passion. The generation before me -- the likes of Conant, Smith, Ditmars, Allen, Kaufeld -- did the same thing, and for decades. Their meet ups, sometimes planned and sometimes by chance, provided time to exchange information, see unusual specimens, and just revel in being the Big Game hunters of the small. Some of the stories from their exploits are wonderful memories (I particularly like the tale of the lavender rat snake), especially because the included native wildlife, local people, and local habitats. What could beat the tale of Ross Allen when he was extracting a large Eastern Diamondback Rattler from a gopher hole only to find the head coming up behind him -- he thought the snake he was pulling by it's tail was the ONE he saw going into the hole. His description of wondering what to do next (drop the snake he had by the tail and try catching the other, keep the one by the tail and "dance" to keep away from the second, or try to catch both??) was true comedy.

Now what have we? At Expos, we share stories about what one person did to breed a new leopard gecko morph in a terrarium and how so-and-so has bred out the first black and purple Goth morph of a ball python in a terrarium. Certainly interesting and even noteworthy, but where's the story? Where's the adventure, the unexpected, the learning we get by facing our creatures in their habitats? Those few lucky blokes who do still manage to get out and about are either academically-funded anachronisms or hands-off photographers. For then rest of us...  there are Expos. I am NOT putting Expos down; far from it, they are the new "spring herping" much as Facebook has replaced mailing letters and electric power is the new camp fire. They are different, and bring different things to our experiences. After all, I never found a good deal on an old reptile book in a swamp! And just because something is both different AND good doesn't mean I can't still miss something else, old and wonderful, that I too long took for granted.