Baby Alligators Hatch in Dorset (UK)

Source: Metro.co.uk
A type of alligator has been bred along the Jurassic coast of Britain for the first time in about 30 million years, a breeder said today. Two tiny Cuvier's Dwarf Caiman - a type of alligator - have already hatched and nine more viable eggs are on their way in Dorchester, Dorset.
Reptile expert Jerry Cole said: "Fossil records indicate it's about 30 million years since they were last breeding along the Jurassic coast in Dorset, give or take a few million years. I'm also probably the first private person to breed the crocodilians in the UK."
The 10 inch babies are being fed goldfish and insects to help them grow up to 1.5 metres, when they will feast on rodents. Their natural habitat is the Amazon, and Mr. Cole, of BJ Herp Supplies, plans to keep a couple, with the rest going to zoos and specialist private collectors.
"The babies are miniature versions of the adults, able to do everything from the moment they hatch," said Mr. Cole. "They could give you quite a nasty nip." Mr. Cole has one male and two females, including the mother. He was also the first breeder in the UK to hatch Fiji banded iguanas, earlier this year.
The Cuvier's Dwarf Caiman, Latin name Paleosuchus palpebrosus, is a crocodilian reptile from South America. It is found in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Surinam and Venezuela. It is also the smallest species of the alligatoridae family, reaching up to 1.5 meters long.

Monster Fish Crushed Opposition With Strongest Bite Ever

Chomping champion ... The dunkleosteus measured up to 10 metres long,
weighed 3600 kgs and had armour-plating around its head.
Photo: Reuters / Source: Sydney Morning Herald

Meet Dunkleosteus, a four-tonne, 10-metre, armour-plated fish that was arguably the first king of the beasts. The monstrous fish cruised the oceans [long] ago, preying on creatures much larger than itself, its blade-like fangs adept at tearing its quarry in two.
Using fossilised skull remains, scientists have built up a biomechanical model of the fish's powerful jaw and surrounding musculature, and they say it had the strongest bite of any fish ever to exist.
Philip Anderson's team at the University of Chicago found that the predator's jaws snapped shut with a force of more than five tonnes. The jaws were articulated by a unique mechanism based on four rotational joints working in harmony, they report in the Royal Society journal, Biology Letters, published yesterday.
Dunkleosteus was the first known large predator, pre-dating the dinosaurs. It belonged to a diverse group of armoured fish, placoderms, that dominated the oceans in the Devonian period. Its formidable bite allowed it to feast on other armoured aquatic animals, including primitive sharks and smaller creatures protected by bone-like casings. "Dunkleosteus was able to devour anything in its environment," Dr Anderson said.
While lacking true teeth, the fish used two long, bony blades in its mouth to snap and crush nearly any creature unfortunate enough to encounter it. The bladed jaws, which enabled the beast to take on prey much larger than its mouth, are a feature sharks did not develop until [much] later.
"It kind of blows sharks out of the water as far as bite force goes," Mark Westneat, the curator of fishes at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and co-author of the paper, said. "A huge great white shark is probably only capable of biting at about half that force." He added: "The most interesting part of this work for me was discovering that this heavily-armoured fish was both fast during jaw-opening and quite powerful during jaw-closing. This is possible due to the unique engineering design of its skull and different muscles used for opening and closing. And it made this fish into one of the first true apex predators seen in the vertebrate fossil record."

New Species of Snake Found in North Bengal

Twenty nine species of snakes, including eight new and ten very poisonous [sic] kinds, have been found in Jaldapara and Chilapata forests of North Bengal in an on-going survey.
The survey, being conducted by snake expert Mintoo Choudhury and a group of forest personnel, also found a number of rare species of snake in the two forests, divisional forest officer, Cooch Behar, Manindra Biswas said today. The new species of snakes found would be sent to Kolkata, he said.
A rare species of snake named 'Trinkle' found during the search at Shiltorsha Forest was last seen about 26 years ago, he said.

Disease Threat From Exotic Pets Could Rival Terrorist Attack

Exotic animals captured in the wild are streaming across the U.S. border by the millions with little or no screening for disease, leaving Americans vulnerable to a virulent outbreak that could rival a terrorist act. Demand for such wildlife is booming as parents try to get their kids the latest pets fancied by Hollywood stars and zoos and research scientists seek to fill their cages.
More than 650 million critters — from kangaroos and kinkajous to iguanas and tropical fish — were imported legally into the United States in the past three years, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service documents obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act. That's more than two for every American. Countless more pets — along with animal parts and meats — are smuggled across the borders as part of a $10 billion-a-year international black market, second only to illegal drugs.
Most wildlife arrive in the United States with no quarantine and minimal screening for disease. The government employs just 120 full-time inspectors to record and inspect arriving wildlife. There is no requirement they be trained to detect diseases. "A wild animal will be in the bush, and in less than a week it's in a little girl's bedroom," said Darin Carroll, a disease hunter with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While exotic pets from Africa, Asia and South America can be cute and fashionable, scientists fear that bacteria and viruses they carry can jump to humans and native animals. Recent statistics raise the alarm.

FROM EXOTIC ANIMALS TO HUMANS:
Zoonotic diseases — those that jump to humans — account for three quarters of all emerging infectious threats, the CDC says. Five of the six diseases the agency regards as top threats to national security are zoonotic, and the CDC recently opened a center to better prepare and monitor such diseases. The Journal of Internal Medicine this month estimated that 50 million people worldwide have been infected with zoonotic diseases since 2000 and as many as 78,000 have died. U.S. experts don't have complete totals for Americans, but partial numbers paint a serious picture:

• Hantavirus, which is carried by rodents and can cause acute respiratory problems or death, has sickened at least 317 Americans and killed at least 93 since 1996.
• More than 600 people have been sickened since 2000 with tularemia, a virulent disease that can be contracted from rabbits, hamsters and other rodents. At least three people have died.
• Three transplant patients in New England died last year after receiving organs from a human donor who had been infected with the lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus from a pet hamster. There have been 34 U.S. cases since 1993.
• More than 210,000 Americans were sickened between 2000 and 2004 with salmonella, and at least 89 died. Most infections come from contaminated food — but up to 5 percent have been linked to pets, especially such reptiles as iguanas and turtles. And last year, at least 30 people in 10 states were sickened with a drug-resistant form linked to hamsters and other rodent "pocket pets."

Some of the scariest diseases to emerge since 2001 also have been tied to exotic animals: One of the first times the deadly Asian bird flu reached the West was in eagles smuggled aboard a plane to Europe. Likewise, severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, is believed to have jumped to people from caged civet cats in a Chinese market. The cats are believed to have gotten the virus from bats.

PARIS HILTON'S BITE, OTHER RECENT THREATS:
Carroll, the disease hunter, knows the dangers well. For the past three years, he has traveled the globe tracing the origins of a monkeypox outbreak in 2003 that sickened dozens of adults and children in the U.S. Midwest. That disease, related to smallpox, is believed to have spread to people from rodents imported from Africa as pets. While no victims died, scientists are eager to understand the disease so they can stop a future outbreak.
Another newly discovered threat involves a current rage among exotic pet owners: a small carnivorous mammal with sharp teeth called a kinkajou. The nocturnal, tree-dwelling animals originally from Central and South America's rain forests have a dangerous bite — as Paris Hilton recently learned. The actress used to carry her pet kinkajou named "Baby Luv" on her shoulder as she partied. This summer, Hilton landed in an emergency room when Baby Luv bit her on the arm. The concern about a bite is real.
In 2005, a kinkajou bit a zookeeper in England on the wrist. The keeper's hand became infected, and she almost lost her fingers, said Dr. Paul Lawson, a University of Oklahoma microbiologist who first identified a new bacterium specific to kinkajous. The first antibiotics doctors prescribed didn't work, so a combination of several was used to stop the aggressive infection. Scientists worry that most Americans are ignorant of the threats, and the government's defenses are limited.

THE SCOPE OF THE PROBLEM:
Though such diseases can spread to humans in many ways, the exotic pet trade is a growing concern because of its lack of government oversight and its reliance on animals caught in the wild. The legal wildlife trade in the United States has more than doubled in the past 15 years, the Fish and Wildlife Service said.
Last year alone, there were more than 210 million animals imported to the United States for zoos, exhibitions, food, research, game ranches and pets. The imports included 203 million fish, 5.1 million amphibians, nearly 1.3 million reptiles, 259,000 birds and 87,991 mammals. Imported mammals caught in the wild range from macaque monkeys and chinchillas to wallabies and kangaroos. Only wild birds, primates and some cud-chewing wild animals are required to be quarantined upon arriving in the United States. The rest slip through with no disease screening, except for occasional Agriculture Department checks for ticks. "Taking an animal from the wild and putting it in your child's bedroom is just not a good idea," said Paul Arguin, a CDC expert on exotic animal imports. "We just don't know a lot about the diseases these animals carry."

THE POTENTIAL DISEASES:
The known diseases that can jump from exotic pets to humans are many:

• Rodents can carry hantavirus as well as Bolivian hemorrhagic fever, which causes high fever, muscle pain and severe bleeding in humans and can lead to death.
• Quarantines in 1989 and 1990 helped lead to the discovery of a new strain of the hemorrhagic disease Ebola in some primates. The primates either died or were killed.
• Then there are the mystery diseases, which scientists have yet to understand.

During the 1990s, desert jumping rodents called jerboas were imported to Texas from Egypt as pets, according to Alan Green, a wildlife expert. Many new owners fell ill with a strange rash that defied treatment.

LOOPHOLES IN SCREENING OF LEGAL PETS:
Loopholes abound with legal imports, even when screening and quarantine occurs. For instance, the thousands of monkeys that are imported each year for research from countries like China, Indonesia and Vietnam are quarantined for at least 31 days. While the monkeys are checked for tuberculosis, they aren't tested for other diseases unless they show signs of sickness.
However, monkeys can carry dangerous viruses and bacteria that don't make them sick but can harm people. For example, herpes B virus is a pathogen carried by 80 to 90 percent of adult macaques. The virus may not harm the macaques, but humans can be infected and suffer severe neurological damage or death.
In 1997, a 22-year-old researcher at Emory University's Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta died from herpes B virus weeks after a caged monkey splashed something in her eye. Though the CDC has prohibited importation of most monkeys as pets since 1975, some macaques imported for research are now being sold on the open market. "Whatever researchers are using and importing in great numbers is what we see in the pet trade," said April Truitt of the Primate Rescue Center in Nicholas, Ky. The government acknowledges it doesn't track where animals go after quarantine.

THE CHALLENGE POSED BY ILLEGAL SMUGGLING:
Illegal trade presents another challenge. "If you can think of it, you can get it," said Mira Leslie, a disease expert in Washington state. Smugglers have been known to tape small tubes filled with birds on their legs to smuggle them through airports or to cut deep boxes into car seats filled with exotic wildlife to drive across the Mexican border. Inspectors have been on heightened alert looking for smuggled birds since a man in 2004 smuggled two Crested Hawk-Eagles on a flight from Bangkok, Thailand, to Brussels, Belgium. He had wrapped them in white cloth and stuffed them into handmade, wicker tubes that he carried in a handbag.
Officials later learned that a well-known bird collector ordered the eagles for thousands of dollars. When the birds were tested, they were found to be infected with a strain of the H5N1 bird flu virus. Fortunately, no human was infected.

A BUREAUCRATIC MESS:
America's defenses are a bureaucratic nightmare. Laws are outdated and no single agency is responsible for pre-empting the next outbreak.

• The CDC is in charge of human health and the quarantine of imported monkeys.
• The Agriculture Department has primary responsibility for livestock health and the quarantining of wild bird imports and wild cud-chewing animals.
• The Fish and Wildlife Service is charged with stopping smuggled wildlife and enforcing laws that protect exotic and endangered species.

"The three agencies don't work together," said Cathy Johnson-Delaney, a veterinarian who advised the Agriculture Department during the early 1990s. "We should be screening all critters coming into the U.S. We aren't doing this." The CDC's Arguin acknowledges oversight of wildlife imports is reactive at best, noting that civet cats were banned from sale only after the SARS outbreak and the increased screening of birds occurred only after H5N1 started sweeping through Asia.

NO AGREEMENT ON FUTURE SOLUTIONS:
Jasen Shaw, president of U.S. Global Exotics, one of the largest American wildlife dealers, opposes banning exotic animal imports but acknowledges, "It doesn't do the industry any good to have diseases slip through."Quarantine for all mammal imports — which are more likely to carry diseases that jump to humans — could be a solution. Shaw said, however, that the industry would be wary of regulations that were too restrictive. Mass quarantining would be very expensive, he added.
Marshall Meyers, of the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council, which represents the $30-billion-a-year pet industry, advocates a risk-based system. Disease threats posed to humans by other mammals is far greater than those posed by fish, he explained, so tighter regulation on certain species might be warranted.
The CDC convened a meeting this spring to examine the lack of oversight, exploring options but making no recommendations. With no government action imminent, some support a private solution. "We should shift the burden to importers to prove that the animal imports are safe," said William Karesh, a zoonotic disease expert who works with the Wildlife Conservation Society. He suggests exotic importers take out insurance to foot the bill if their animals cause an outbreak."Why should you and I bear the cost of an outbreak when the industry makes all the money off this trade?"

NIU's ‘snake lady' Gets National TV Exposure

Northern Illinois University doctoral candidate Kristin Stanford shows off some of the endangered water snakes she is working with in Ohio. Provided ph

By Aracely Hernandez
Staff Writer

They bite her and they smell, but Kristin Stanford is the biggest cheerleader for the Lake Erie Water Snake. The Northern Illinois University doctoral candidate said she became the “Island Snake Lady” by chance.
When she was working on her master's degree in biology, she spent a summer working with small mammals in Chile and the next summer with garter snakes.
The next year, NIU biology professor Rich King offered her an opportunity to work in Ohio on a project with the water snakes. The project would be another student's dissertation and she would be a field assistant. “He said it would be a good summer job and I'd get involved with some research,” she said.
The students were to put transmitters in the endangered snakes, which are indigenous to an island in Lake Eerie. They would later use a radio to find out the snakes' patterns. But when the other student dropped out of school, King asked her to take over the project.
“When I came out to Ohio (in 2002) it was funny because a lot of residents knew the snake project was going to start,” Stanford said. “They knew it was a student named ‘Terry,' and she was going to be the ‘Snake Lady.'”
Stanford, who is now the recovery plan coordinator for the endangered Lake Erie Water Snake, hadn't even seen a Lake Erie Water Snake, but area residents were calling her the “Island Snake Lady” when she arrived. “Now I am the expert on them,” the 30-year-old Mount Prospect native said with a laugh. “Anyone with water snake questions contacts me.”
The snake is restricted to the island in the western basin of Lake Erie. The area where they live is less than 30 kilometers in diameter, she said. “I had never been to the Lake Erie Islands,” she said. “I didn't even know about them until I came here to work.” And her work is dirty - so dirty it will be featured on Discovery Channel's “Dirty Jobs.”
The show features host Mike Rowe taking on the duties of viewers who submit information about their dirty jobs. Episodes have featured Rowe working with exterminators and roadkill collectors, and on various construction jobs. Stanford said she e-mailed the show after her fiancé Matt Thomas and she watched a show that featured Rowe cleaning up on an Ostrich farm. “He said, ‘your job is dirtier than that,'” she said and laughed. She e-mailed one night and the show's producers called her the next day wanting to know more.
“(The snakes) are definitely not the most charismatic,” she said. “They are fairly aggressive and smelly, hence “Dirty Jobs” is coming out and doing a story about it.” The snakes eat bottom dwelling fish and aquatic amphibians. They live along the shore and go into the water to feed. They are about 4 feet long and weight a couple of pounds each.
“I was warned that they were a little more aggressive than garter snakes,” she said. “I was like, OK. It's going to bite me. As long as it's not venomous I can deal with it.” And for the past four year she has because she wants to keep them from becoming extinct. That species of snake is listed as endangered in Ohio.
“Part of that ... is that the Lake Erie Islands is a tourist attraction and development equals habitat destruction,” Stanford said. “People would see them and typically want to kill them. They were destroying the snake population.”
In August, the camera crew filmed Stanford and Rowe for about 12 hours collecting snakes, which are taken back to a lab to be weighed, measured and tagged with tracking chips. They sometimes have the snakes regurgitate to learn about their diets. And if that's not gross enough, when the snakes are collected they spray their captors. “When you grab them they are musking,” she said. “It means they are pooping and barfing. It's their defensive behavior. When we pick them up there's a combination of poop, urates - their version of urine - and musk on one end and you're being bit on the other end.”
She said the segment, which will be featured on Tuesday's 8 p.m. show on the Discovery Channel is about 15 minutes long. “I'm, like, ‘oh my gosh, what 15 minutes are they going to pick?'” she said. “I hope they don't pick something I said that was really stupid.”

Dirty Jobs
“Dirty Jobs,” featuring Northern Illinois University research associate and doctoral candidate Kristin Stanford's work with the Lake Erie Water Snake, airs at 8 p.m. Tuesday on the Discovery Channel.

Smuggled Reptiles Intercepted at Manila Airport

By RAINIER ALLAN RONDA
The Philippine Star
A Hollywood thriller almost became a reality when a 41-year-old woman bound for Bangkok was arrested after more than 100 snakes and other deadly reptiles were found in her luggage by Customs and airport security personnel at the Manila airport. Erlinda Vergara of Bacolod City was arrested at a baggage check-in counter at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Centennial Terminal at around 10 a.m. Tuesday. She was booked on Philippine Airlines flight PR 730.
Air travel marred by vicious reptiles is a new type of nightmare popularized recently by the movie "Snakes on a Plane’’ starring Samuel Jackson. Customs examiner Cairoden Mangaron said he noticed something suspicious and seemingly moving inside Vergara’s big suitcase when it passed through a baggage x-ray machine. When he opened the bag, Mangaron found 52 plastic bottles containing different kinds of snakes and reptiles. Some of the creatures were dead.
A partial inventory by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources Wildlife Trafficking Monitoring Unit agents at the NAIA Terminal II showed the creatures consisted of 50 monitor lizards, 39 cobras, two iguanas, 16 big vipers, and eight small vipers. Theodore Agir of the NAIA-DENR-WTMU said the inventory was incomplete because some of the seized creatures were venomous and required expert handling.
Vergara later told police the suitcase was only entrusted to her by a friend from Bacolod City, whom she declined to name. Vergara, it was learned, arrived at NAIA Terminal II on a domestic flight from Bacolod City, early in the morning. Agir said the security procedures at the Bacolod City airport should be reviewed because of the failure of security authorities there to stop Vergara’s smuggling attempt. Vergara faces criminal charges for illegal trafficking of endangered animals and for violation of Customs laws.
Agir said the seized reptiles are classified as endangered species under the Convention on the International Trade on Endangered Species and Wildlife. International law bans the cross border transport of such creatures unless an importation permit is secured from authorized agencies such as the DENR.

Snake Venom Used to Help Stroke Patients?

Saint Louis University Tests Medicine Made from Snake Venom to Treat Stroke Patients
(HealthNewsDigest.com) ST. LOUIS -- Can a medication made from snake venom help a patient recover from a stroke? Saint Louis University is participating in a clinical trial designed to find the answer to the question. Currently, patients who have had a stroke must act quickly and get to the hospital within three hours to receive tPA (Tissue Plasminogen Activator), which is the only FDA-approved treatment that dissolves blood clots for those who have had ischemic strokes.
The medication under investigation at Saint Louis University – ancrod – will be given to patients within six hours of their stroke, which may double the time window when they can be treated. Those patients who can’t receive tPA may qualify for ancrod, which may be given longer after the onset of a stroke.
Ancrod reduces the amount of fibrinogen, a sticky protein that binds molecules together to form blood clots, in the body. Clots in blood vessels block the flow of blood into the brain and cause ischemic strokes. Researchers are testing the medication derived from the venom of the Malayan pit viper because it specifically attacks fibrinogen.
“Reducing the fibrinogen in the blood reduces clot formation and also improves blood flow within and to the brain,” says Salvador Cruz-Flores, M.D., associate professor of neurology at Saint Louis University and the principal researcher for the study. “Some evidence suggests that ancrod’s action on fibrinogen also may prevent stroke-causing clots from extending and indirectly may help destroy them. By stopping clot formation and destroying clots that already have formed, we hope to improve the blood flow to the part of the brain suffering a stroke. The idea is to protect the brain tissue and limit injury and disability.”
Saint Louis University is recruiting six stroke patients at Saint Louis University Hospital to participate in the clinical trial. Half will receive an intravenous infusion of ancrod and half will receive a placebo. Both groups will otherwise receive the same standard of care. Both groups of patients will be followed for 90 days; then researchers will compare how well they function in daily activities. A total of 650 participants are being recruited worldwide.
Stroke is the third-leading cause of death and leading cause of disability in the US.