A large (10ft+) Burmese python being attacked by an alligator.
This alligator has a catfish stuck to the roof of its mouth. It's apparently been like this for a day according to some photographers I met.
Wild albino
I thought this was so cool! I very rarely get to see the two species side by side.
This observation is for the one lucifuga on the left.
Looks to be consuming a toad. Odd sight this time of day
Taking advantage of the toads breeding with the onset of warm weather. Was swimming around with the toad in its mouth for at least 10 minutes, before evantually take 2 to swallow it down. The surrounding toads seemed unbothered and continued to call.
Just your typical Uta with no scales.
This appears to be a tiny baby albino Anolis capito. It was perched on the metal handrail of a trail fence at Arenal Volcano National Park.
Fila Chonta population on privately owned preserve. I have been monitoring this population since 2004. The available suitable habitat is small (approximately 600m of riparian habitat), steep and difficult to access. Thus far 22 unique individuals have been identified, including three juveniles and a gravid female - indicating that successful reproduction takes place still. Bd is present in the area, in Atelopus varius and in sympatric amphibians but the surviving Atelopus appear to be healthy.
As my 1000th observation submitted to iNaturalist, here is something a little different and unusual from my archives.
My colleagues and I took this photograph of an actual original and unique X-Ray (physical "hard copy") film made in the Emergency Room of the University hospital in which I worked night shifts back in 2002. It was the regional center for medical treatment of snake bites in north central Florida.
This snake had bitten someone late at night, roughly in the vicinity of Cross Creek, southeast of Gainesville, as I remember, and the snake was killed and brought to the E.R. as proof of the species of poisonous snake that had inflicted the bite, for antivenom administration purposes. There were a couple different types of antivenom then, and they usually took a little time to reconstitute or prepare. All pit vipers in Florida inject similar venom when they bite, but it is different from that of the Coral Snake for instance, which is North America's only native Cobra. Having the actual body of the snake delivered to the E.R. is not absolutely necessary of course, but it does insure correct identification as to species, for whatever that may be worth, at the time, and in later analysis.
While identifying a snake from an X-Ray photograph may be a little unusual, it is not so difficult in this case as some might imagine. After all, here is a very large Pit Viper, totally without tail rattles, in Alachua County Florida.
Just how big was it? Coiled up as you see, it almost doesn't fit on a piece of film that was 11 by 14 inches in size. The snake's head, distorted a bit by the trauma of its demise, alone is nearly 3 inches long, measured directly on the film itself. The snake's coiled body, head to tail, can be measured on the original film by laying a piece of string on the image, tracing the course of the backbone. At 58 inches, or 4 feet 10 inches (147 centimeters) then, this a pretty large snake as Water Moccasins go.
What's more, one of the reasons we X-rayed it at all was that it had clearly recently eaten something. It had a large bulge in it's stomach, down about a third of it's body length, just past its air-filled lungs that are visible on the film as well defined darker shapes. We found the bulge was a big fish with a large blunt bony head, very visible swim bladder, which we took to be a catfish, though we lacked an Ichthyologist amongst the E.R. staff of course. I can follow the fish's spine for quite a ways in the image, but lose it somewhere along the snake's lung in the extreme right of the picture. We did not, in any case dissect the snake in the E.R. Nor did we weigh it, unfortunately. For all I know, the patient, who survived with the help of our treatment, took the dead snake and its last meal home with him when he was discharged.
The Technician that made the actual exposure for us on film, at my request, wrote the details of the exposure for future reference on the film itself, which, though the film suffered damage when it was stolen from my vehicle inside a locked briefcase and dumped out in a back alley and further mistreated both by the thieves and the weather, I can still read most of what he wrote with a "magic marker":
"40(or 46) MA
1 MAS
56 KV"
Are there any X-Ray Tech's out there who can confirm that that is in fact a good exposure for a big dead snake?
A typical Payne's Prairie eastern king snake. They were common 50 years ago, when the prairie had huge numbers of water loving snakes. Over a thousand snakes (mostly banded water snakes and Florida green water snakes) were often run over and killed on a given night in the summertime on the two major highways that cross the basin, and eventually the snake populations crashed. Now, there are far fewer water snakes and perhaps no king snakes at all.
Abundant under rocks at high elevation.
Weird puffy individual
First record for inaturalist
Three stripes down the carapace, lines on face, relatively small size, webbed feet
Wild caught individuals being raised by a local. Hopefully they will be well cared for and eventually released.
Out of the hundreds of these I've seen, this was the reddest individual I've ever seen.
Private property - location obscured, but even actual pin is intentionally a bit inaccurate (county is correct).
eating a dead white winged dove.
Pine Lake. Both turtles are Northern Red-bellied Cooters. The smaller one is a juvenile.
Rajasthan Inde
Keoladeo NP
softshell turtle was caught and gator grabbed it - watched it come right out of the water
Partially amelanistic individual; found in twilight zone of cave.
cottonmouth snake stalking a softshell turtle
I was leading a birdwatching trip through the mountains just below the cloud forest at El Triunfo, Chiapas, Mexico. We were near a location known as Canyon Honda when this green pit viper was found coiled on a small limb along the trail. I had seen this species in this area once before, in 1987 and I have one poor quality slide of that animal as well. This location is at an elevation of ca. 1530 meters. This animal was identified from my photos by herpetologist Dr. Jon Campbell of the University of Texas at Arlington a number of years ago. It was formerly known as Bothrops ornatus I believe. In 1987, I was able to visit personally with Dr. Miguel Alvarez del Toro, a noted Mexican herpetologist, who identified my 1987 observation as that species.
Attempting predation of larval Pseudotriton ruber (it was struggling to handle it and kept getting washed downstream).
Espécie reintroduzida
Se observan dos especies la Coral (Micrurus Nigrocinctus) depredando una Corredora panza de salmón (Mastigodryas melanolomus)
Mudsnake eating a two-toed amphiuma. This observation is for the mudsnake. Once in a lifetime observation.
Spotted coachwhip with young gopher tortoise in its mouth. Took one more step and coachwhip took off, dropping gopher tortoise. Cleaned up tortoise and let it go at a little distance after consulting with professional rehabber.
Recently encountered remnant individual on the Bolson Tortoise Appleton translocation program. Found in the road at 4:05 pm on Audubon's Appleton-Whittell Research Ranch (PRIVATE) property with permission. The following week we encountered Borderlands Program Coordinator/researcher Myles Traphagen attempting to relocate it. Contact him for details about updated research initiatives!
Nueva ubicación de Sibon lamari en Turrialba
DOR
SB00022
Sp
Platters
Platter 3