Once again it’s time to continue with my slow-burn zoo review series. I’ve just returned from a trip to Tokyo, you see, and while there I visited two zoos. Today we look at the first of them: Ueno Zoological Gardens (usually just called Ueno Zoo), located in Ueno Park in Taito City, central Toyko ..read more

It's time once again to look at squamates ..read more

Ever keen to cover more of squamate diversity – Squamata = snakes and lizards – we here look at a really interesting group of mostly Mexican lizards. They’ve led us on a merry chase with respect to their diversity, taxonomy, phylogeny and historical biogeography… Caption: some Abronia species are strikingly coloured, as is obvious from these images. Both show Green, Mexican, Sierra de Tehuacan, or Terrestrial arboreal alligator lizards – yes, a name that’s internally contradictory – A. graminea. This species occurs in Veracruz, Puebla and Oaxaca in eastern and southern Mexico. Images: María E ..read more

It’s time to start preparing for TetZooCon – our annual Tetrapod Zoology Convention – and oh boy is a lot of stuff happening this year… Once again, TetZooCon occurs at Bush House, Kings College, London (though in different parts of the building from previous events). This year, TetZooCon is a late September thing. We kick off with an evening discussion on Friday September 27th, and then continue across the weekend of September 28th and 29th. Doors open at 10am on both days and we’re generally done by 6pm. Tickets and further info can be found here. As ever, we have a busy schedule of talks an ..read more

It’s time once more to visit the amazing world of squamates, and again we’re looking at snakes. Today: the extremely obscure Small-eyed or Ikaheka snake of New Guinea and some of the surrounding islands. What’s the deal with this unusual animal? Caption: a very glossy, clean Small-eyed snake photographed in Karkar Island, New Guinea in 2010. There’s an almost iridescent sheen to some of the scales. Image: Wolfgang Wüster, used with permission. Known technically as Micropechis ikaheka, the Small-eyed snake is stocky and medium-sized, reaching 2 m in total. Its unusually small eyes are among it ..read more

Within recent days, the world has learnt of the passing of American writer, author, artist and natural historian Richard Ellis (1938-2024), best known for his many works on marine animals and their environment... Caption: Richard Ellis in 1978, a portrait provided by the Ellis family and used in this obituary at The New York Times. Image: (c) Ellis family. Richard and his work had a major and formative impact on myself, and I suspect on quite a few of you reading this article. I was lucky enough to have corresponded with him from the late 1990s onwards and thus had a modicum of insider info o ..read more

It’s time once again to look at a very interesting bunch of snakes…. Caption: we’ll be seeing this illustration again… I really like it. Image: G. H. Ford, in the public domain. In my continuing efforts to rescue and rehabilitate material now essentially lost due to the destruction of Tetrapod Zoology versions 2 and 3*, here’s another article on obscure snakes. And it has some degree of connection to the other snake-themed articles published here recently, which is good. The article here was originally published at ver 2 back in September 2010 and covers Bothrolycus ater, a relatively obscure ..read more

An updated look at a very special group of remarkable burrowing snakes… Caption: a fairly familiar portrait of a burrowing asp / stiletto snake that has appeared several times in the literature, and showing the right maxillary fang protruding while the mouth is closed. Image: I’m not sure of the origin of this image and will add credit info when I find it! I think it first featured in Underwood & Kovcha (1993). Tet Zoo, the Squamate Years. In case it isn’t already obvious, one of my aims for 2024 is to release a lot of squamate-themed content here at Tet Zoo ver 4, and in part this involv ..read more

Among the most poorly known of all squamate groups are the dibamids… Caption: a dibamid exemplar. Note the smooth-scaled, shiny overall look, the essentially eyeless head, and the pale patches on the snout and scattered across the body. This specimen, from the Philippines, was identified as Dibamus cf leucurus, so hadn’t been pinned down to species when published. Image: Brown et al. (2016), CC BY 4.0 (original here). … a group so obscure that they don’t really have a common or vernacular name (though read on). Little information on the group is available, and in this article I aim to cover e ..read more

For some years now, a prolific amateur herpetologist has published an absolutely extraordinary number of new taxonomic names for snakes, lizards and other reptiles… Caption: lest we forget, the world is full of amazing snakes. Top row, left to right: Prairie or Western rattlesnake Crotalus viridis, Bornean keeled green pitviper Tropidolaemus subannulatus and Mole snake Pseudaspis cana. Lower row, left to right: Rock rattlesnake Crotalus lepidus, Rhinoceros viper Bitis nasicornis and Smooth-scaled death adder Acanthophis laevis. All photos by Wolfgang Wüster and used with permission. In additi ..read more