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Samira 🤍

#kenyan sand boa

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Sidewinder viper By: Edward S. Ross From: Wildlife of the Deserts 1980

#sidewinder #fav

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Burmese python By: Unknown photographer From: WWF Threatened Animals 1986

#burmese python

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#thank you for the tag 💗 #the source linked in this post is super cool #video

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During my college days i got a call that someone is trying to kill a snake near our department. I tried to rush just for saving this beauty but it was already dead when I reached the spot. It was a 6 foot rat snake. I had dissected snake before but never had to click pics. Luckily my post grad advisor n guide clicked these photos. The anatomy of a snake. Note how each of the snakes organs are long and thin (elongated) to fit inside its body. 1 esophagus, 2 trachea, 3 tracheal lungs, 4 rudimentary left lung, 5 right lung, 6 heart, 7 liver, 8 stomach, 9 air sac, 10 gallbladder, 11 pancreas, 12 spleen, 13 intestine, 14 testicles, 15 kidneys. #vetycos #vetlife🐾 #surgeon #vetsnobiety #MEDVETERINARIABR #snake #ratsnake #herpetology #snakeanatomy (at Jammu) https://www.instagram.com/p/CJbkzxhsV5w/?igshid=751es4xwic2e

#snake anatomy #animal death

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Full body Hot Sauce finally! His pattern is ‘God gave up halfway through’ and I’m surprised I got one decent shot of him. He’s a nervous worm.

#hes so pretty he looks like a toy lmao #milksnake #fav

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Sometimes when I walk past her tank, Horchata is out and about. She's just so pretty. 🐍

#milksnake

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Just hangin' out

#ball python

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Dinner for the Sok puppet

#kenyan sand boa #sand boa #animal death

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Survivor of a harrowing event (getting his tank cleaned)

#thanks for the tag 🥰 #ball python

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boomslang

#fav #art

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sold

a sweet little wingy snake commission

love the texture on this one

#art #this is insanely pretty #fav

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gutted (crop) (full thing on patreon)

twitter | ig | inprnt | patreon | store

#art #animal death

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Snakey says New Year New Me!

(She is in blue, get it? Shedding your old skin joke??)

Python brongersmai

#blood python

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#cornsnake

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Is It Ok For An Alligator To Have Tape On Their Mouth?

Alligators make pretty amazing animal ambassadors when handled safely and ethically. And it is actually pretty safe to take them out to interact with the zoo-going public (or general public in some settings), when done correctly. Many zoos and outreach organizations do an amazing job of this! Every state has different rules, but even if a state doesn't mandate that alligators be banded... well, if you're a responsible crocodilian handler, you'll band anyways. It's a huge public safety issue! Even an accidental graze against their front teeth can cause injury. See, the alligators that are used as handle-able ambassadors are pretty small, and their teeth are razor sharp. An adult gator has sharp teeth, too, as well as blunt teeth for crushing, and they also have the additional force of their jaw muscles.

Here's what it sounds like when an adult alligator pops his jaw. (Don't worry about the hissing/gaping; this is a trained and queued behavior. The stick towards the top of the inside of the mouth is triggering the bite reflex. Chester probably got lots of chicken and fish as he learned to do this.)

Skip ahead to 0:32 if you wanna skip the guest commentary.

What's more, biting is an important reflex for crocodilians. The lower jaws of crocodilians are some of the most innervated tissues in the animal kingdom; they are more sensitive than human fingertips! Even the slightest touch triggers their bite reflex, which likely is an adaptation that lets them detect changes in water pressure that signal a snack heading their way.

Here's a pretty good video about the biomechanics of crocodilian jaws:

So yeah. They need to not be able to bite for public safety. There's just too much risk involved with an unbanded alligator (or other crocodilian). Fortunately, it's easy to get a crocodilian to not bite- you just need to band its mouth!

(This fella is Frodo the dwarf caiman, but the principle is the same.)

This works because while crocodilians have an extremely strong bite force (claims range from 2,000 PSI to 5,000+ PSI, but I don't have time to get into that now but someday I will probably), but not particularly strong muscles to open their mouths. Selective pressure for quickly nabbing prey in murky water where there's not a lot of visibility lead to pterygoid and adductor muscles so big, they extend into the animal's neck. But those muscles only pull the jaw closed- they don't work to open it! That's why you see people holding an alligator's mouth closed with their hands.

Safe bands include:

Silicone tape- this is the best. It sticks to itself and not the gator's snout

Electrical tape

Medical tape

Rubber or elastic bands

There are other options, but these are the most popular- they're cheap, easily available, and safe. So if you see an alligator (or other crocodilian) out in public and it's got tape on its mouth, don't worry too much- it's safe for the gator (most of the time) and it's safe for you!

Here's a couple of safe tape options, modeled by a juvenile American alligator in pink electrical tape (I forget her name, these are from an outreach event a couple of years ago) and Pagasa, a juvenile Philippine crocodile wearing the white medical tape.

So when is tape not safe? When it's the wrong kind of tape. One of the worst offenders is duct tape.

When you're banding an alligator, you need to think about how sensitive their jaws are. A band that's too tight or too sticky can hurt them badly when it's removed- and you want that removal process to be fast, so that it doesn't stress them out too much.

What inspired this post was this picture I saw on Facebook:

That's so much duct tape! Now, this little guy is quite unhealthy; he's been loose in the Pittsburgh area all winter, and he's been struggling. What you see here is a very quick tape job done as he's getting ready for transport. The article didn't say who taped him, but given that he's in a dog crate and was found by bicyclists, I would wager that it was some harried animal control officer who was doing the best they could. And that's fine because this was truly an emergency situation. In an emergency situation, uncomfortable is always, always better than unsafe.

But if you see a tourist attraction and they've put duct tape on their alligator's mouth? That's a red flag! Banding an alligator in public is the safe, correct thing to do- you just want to make sure that it's done right.

If you want more information about alligator jaws, here's some interesting papers to read:

Erickson, Gregory et al. Insights into the Ecology and Evolutionary Success of Crocodilians Revealed through Bite-Force and Tooth-Pressure Experimentation. PLoS ONE 7(3): e31781.

Knight, Kathryn. Croc Jaws More Sensitive Than Human Fingertips. Journal of Experimental Biology (2012) 215.

Sellers et al. Ontogeny of bite force in a validated biomechanical model of the American alligator. Journal of Experimental Biology (2017), 220.

#not snakes

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Isn't he lovely 💚🐍💚

#burmese python