Category: reptiles

Two old ladies hunt deadly sea snakes

January 25, 2026 • 11:30 am

We’re not going to have a political discussion today, which can apparently lead to a website version of a fractious Thanksgiving dinner involving a family with sharply different political views. Instead, marvel here at the courage of two aged Japanese ladies, whose job is to catch deadly sea snakes—to make soup. It’s shown in the four-minute BBC video below.

Now all banded sea snakes are highly toxic, and are the kraits (genus Bungarus). Although bitten victims can be treated with antivenom, mortality from some species can be as high as 80% in untreated victims (age of victim and time until treatment begins are crucial). The venoms are neurotoxic and the symptoms are dire.

The snakes being hunted in this video, are probably the black-banded sea krait (Laticauda semifasciata), and they’re caught for food. From Wikipedia:

Black-banded sea krait venom is reportedly ten times stronger than that of a cobra; however, as with the vast majority of venomous snake species, the black-banded sea krait generally does not aggressively strike at humans unless it is cornered or threatened (or otherwise maliciously provoked), preferring to conserve its energy and venom supplies for hunting purposes, reacting defensively only as a very last resort.

Despite its potent venom, which is concentrated in the snake’s venom glands (behind the eyes), the meat of the erabu snake is a winter staple food in southern Japan, where it is believed to replenish a female’s womanhood or increase fertility. Irabu soup, or irabu-jiru (ja:イラブー汁), is said to taste like miso and a bit like tuna. This dish was a favorite of the royal court of the Ryukyu Kingdom; it is thought to have analeptic properties.

During certain warm years, the sea snakes are drawn en masse to the sea caves and tide pools of the coastal Ryukyu cliffs, in search of fresh water to drink and possibly to mate. It is in these cryptic spots where, by cover of darkness (and usually guided only by lantern light), elderly women—who are the most experienced at preparing irabu-jiru—explore the dangerous caverns in pursuit of black-banded sea kraits, which the ladies catch with their bare hands. Some areas may contain hundreds of the snakes, some engaged in active breeding balls, yet the women hike through the caves barefoot or with minimal protective gear. As with the handling of any venomous snake species, the sea snakes are grabbed quickly behind the head, as to avoid any potential envenomation. They are placed in a cloth bag, alive, and later quickly dispatched and prepared in a simple broth with kombu or other edible kelp, and possibly a bit of pork.

Look how they handle these snakes! Bare-handed, and no real protection.  Would you do this?

Readers’ wildlife photos

January 15, 2026 • 8:16 am

We’re saved again, for one day, as reader Rodney Graetz from Canberra has sent in some lovely photos from a remote corner of Australia. Rodney’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them. The three borrowed images are, I’m told, in the public domain.

Here is a series of landscape photos from a tourist boat journey along the Kimberley coastline from Darwin (Northern Territory) to Broome (Western Australia).  The distance, as the crow flies, was 1110 km (690 mi) but by hugging the coastline, the unrecorded distance was likely doubled.  We made land visits on 10 of the 12-day journey:

Our starting point, the Darwin coastline, is lapped by the Timor Sea.  It is shallow and muddy, in contrast to our Broome destination.  Like Broome, Darwin was targeted and bombed by the Japanese in February 1942.  Today, among the lush Darwin city coastline gardens, is a simple memorial honouring the 91 crew of the USS Peary, the United States Navy’s greatest loss in Australian waters.

Departing Darwin, we slowly merged with the mighty Indian Ocean whose colour and cloud streets suggested warmth, productivity and excitement.  We travelled in early June, too early to encounter the estimated 40,000 Humpback Whales travelling up from the Antarctic (June – November) to calve, nurse and then mate in these warm and safe waters  Next time!

At last, an edge of the NW corner of the Australian continent, revealing a flat and layered landscape.  The cliffs are massive, and the rock type is obviously hard because there is little sandy beach.

The Edge close up, and as predicted.  Note the tiny figures in the lower left corner.  The massive rocks are a hard Paleoproterozoic sandstone aged 1-1.9 billion years.  They are ever varied and spectacular:

Being drone-deficient, I’ve borrowed this image to illustrate this monsoonal landscape functioning.  During ‘The Wet’ (Nov–Mar), sufficient rainfall accumulates on the background plateau for a flow to eventually reach the edge and fall as spectacular waterfalls early in ‘The Dry’ ( Mar-Nov).

Downstream from the waterfalls, slow moving water combined with the incursion of plants, result in species-rich landscapes, such as this small idyllic wetland:

‘Salties’, aka Saltwater crocodile, were common neighbours at our landings.  Maneaters?  Yes, but only of the deserving at a rate of fewer than one person per year.  The ‘gaping’ is not a threat display but thermoregulation, of cooling.  Looking past the teeth, they are handsomely ornamented and coloured animals.  In the water, they are sleek!:

For geographic and celestial reasons, the tidal ranges along this coast are among the highest globally (± 10 metres).  A consequence of this, and a rocky, indented coastline, is the creation of Horizontal Waterfalls, where six times a day, huge volumes of water are forced through constricting narrows, as shown here.  Spectacular and hazardous:

The edge of a vast inshore reef (400 km², 154 sq mi) rapidly shedding water as the tide drops about 10 metres.  It is a visual and turbulent spectacle – the reef appears to rise up – and shed streams of water containing stranded fish eagerly sought by waiting birds, fish and sharks.  This one image could not capture the turbulence and action.  Details are here and an overview here:

Contemplative natural beauty of the coast was commonplace, such as here, Raft Point.  With the Dawn behind us, the red rocks and lush vegetation (including iconic Boab trees) are in contrast with the ocean, and on its horizon, small red rocky islands urge a visit:

Nearby Steep Island is another view that repays contemplation.  Why is it so?:

Journey’s end and Broome colouring contrasts with that of the previous days.  Here the rock and sands are red with an aquamarine ocean.  Tidal variation remains high.  The biological focal point is the adjacent Roebuck Bay, the background in this image:

To avoid lethal winters, some 100, 000 migratory birds fly from the Pacific low latitude coastal areas of China etc. to Australia along the East Asian-Australasian Flyway.  Roebuck Bay, a primary destination, is nationally protected as one RAMSAR wetland.  Bird lovers closely watch their comings and goings:

Finally, in the 1940s, both Darwin and Broome experienced the destructive impacts of war.  Now, in both locations, the stark remnants of those impacts remain submerged, slowly disappearing, accelerated by the living world.  That is a good thing:

Readers’ wildlife photos

January 6, 2026 • 8:35 am

This is it, folks: the end of the photo line—unless some readers step up to send in good wildlife pictures.

Today we have a diverse batch of photos from Richard Pieniakowski, but not much information about them though I suspect they’re from British Columbia. Richard’s short captions and IDs are indented (I found the binomials), and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus):

American Black Bear (Ursus americanus):

Belted kingfisher (Megaceryle alcyon):

Castle Rock:

“Caught in a moment of time” [read the bus sign]:

Common garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis):

Closeup of common garter snake:

Epic sky:

Grasshopper:

Great blue heron (Ardea herodias):

If readers don’t send in more photos, I’ll shoot this duck*:

 

 

*Just kidding; it’s an AI drawing.

Holiday Herps!

December 28, 2025 • 8:00 am

We now have 1.4 sets of photos besides this one, but that is not going to last long. However, yesterday Greg Mayer sent in two of his own animals, a ball python and a common snapping turtle (cleverly named “Snappy”), both decked out for the holidays.

by Greg Mayer

Having been treated to a a feline parade for the inauguration of Coynezaa, here, for day three, are some Holiday Herps, Vivian and Snappy.

Vivian the Ball Python (Python regius) in her Christmas scarf.

 

Snappy the Snapping Turtle (Chelydra serpentina) in a Winter Wonderland.

These photos were entered in a “Whisker Wonderland” photo contest for holiday pet pictures. WEIT readers will be glad to know that cat photos won all the actual prizes (People’s Choice and Jury)–as the award announcement said, “…it was a cat sweep!” However, among the reptiles entered, Vivian got the most People’s Choice votes. Plus, a couple of non-domestic species gives at least a hint of wildlife for today.

Readers’ wildlife photos

December 10, 2025 • 8:15 am

Hey, folks, we’re fast running out of photos. Please send yours in if you have good ones. Thanks!

Today we have pictures from two reserves in South Africa, sent in by Alex Skucas.  Alex’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

These are from our summer (their winter) safari to Timbavati Private Reserve in South Africa.  Timbavati is adjacent to Kruger and some years ago they took down the fence between the two so that the animals could come and go freely.  We saw all of the Big Five on our first day.

 

Juvenile black rhinos playing at the watering hole.:

 

The whole family on their way to the watering hole:

Lion family nap time – two brothers and a sister.  They didn’t seem to care that we were just feet away in our vehicle:

 

And, of course, lots of African bush elephants.  They were everywhere – and doing quite a bit of damage to the ecosystem by knocking over trees.  There is an over-abundance of elephants in this area, and it is a concern for the parks:

 

These are a few pictures from a trip we took to Zimbabwe and Zambia this summer, right after spending time in Timbavati.  We had a special guest join us for lunch at Victoria Falls [JAC: a vervet monkey]

 

This leopard in Zambia was resting and had a fresh gash on his left flank, possibly from a fight with nearby baboons.  We were assured he would be fine:

 

Giraffe getting a drink.  Giraffes can only maintain this posture for a short time due to the increase in blood pressure on the brain:

 

An elephant walking over a Nile crocodile.  The elephant was taking a long slow walk along a berm and there was a croc in its path.  The elephant momentarily paused before stepping right over the croc – the croc never even flinched and kept sunning itself:

The elephant continued unfazed.  You can see the marks where it crossed through some deep water:

 

Elephants can swim using their snouts as a snorkel.  Here are two on either end of a calf, protecting it from crocs (and presumably the hippos too):

 

And the three safely emerging from the river:

Readers’ wildlife photos

November 14, 2025 • 8:20 am

Today’s photos come from reader Todd Martin, with a variety of shots taken in Taiwan. Todd’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

My wife and I just returned from a trip to the Republic of China (aka Isle Formosa or more commonly Taiwan) and realized I had enough photos for another Readers Wildlife Photos post. Taiwan is a populous country, but thanks to the mountainous terrain (which covers about 70% of the island) there is quite a bit of natural beauty and opportunities for hiking (assuming one can bear the hot, humid climate).

These first two photos are Formosan rock macaques (Macaca cyclopis). They seem peaceful and coo softly to one another when eating, but don’t let that fool you. They can be quite aggressive and there are signs warning people not to interact with them, which I deemed to be pretty solid advice.

In the Alishan National Forest Recreation Area we climbed the many stairs found on the Tashan Trail to the summit of Mount Data only to find the peak (and its purported views) enveloped in a thick fog. Fortunately, there were quite a few of these Formosan Laughing Thrushes (Trochalopteron morrisonianum) there to greet us, which we dubbed our ‘consolation bird’:

On the way back down we were thrilled to encounter this beautiful male Mikado Pheasant (Syrmaticus mikado). The birds are considered endangered, but the good news is that their numbers have increased from about 5,000 in 1986 to 10,000 today:

I’m not much of a birder, so I rarely know what I’m looking at until I have a chance to look it up later so I referred to these birds as ‘skinny egrets’. In actuality, they are Eastern Cattle Egrets (Ardea coromanda) and were pretty common in Taiwan and we often saw them poking about grassy areas looking for insects:

One final bird is this (not very good cell phone photo) of a Black-crowned Night Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax). Their habitat is wetlands, but this sophisticated fellow was hanging out in front of the Taiwan National Museum.

I was pleased to get a photo of this Green Metalwing Damselfly (Neurobasis chinensis) because they’re pretty quick and don’t hold still for long. That is … until I got home and saw the full-sized image, which looks like something designed by H.R. Giger for a Ridley Scott movie:

This is a female Stag Beetle (I’m guessing Lucanus datunensis) that I only just avoided stepped on. Thank goodness for quick reflexes, I don’t think the resulting crunch would have been good for either of us:

As an island, Taiwan has a lot of coast to explore and on the south coast we happened upon this Green Sea Turtle (Chelonia mydas). I could see this one under the water but had to wait about 10 minutes for it to surface to get this (albeit mediocre) photo:

The following are some reasonably interesting plants we encountered.

Angel’s Trumpet (Brugmansia):

Flossflower (Ageratum houstonianum) an invasive species:

Blue Lotus (Nymphaea nouchali):

Ferns (Polypodiopsida, though I’m afraid I don’t know specifically which ones):

Some sort of Morning Glory (Ipomoea):

 

Finally … I’ve seen tandem bicycles and bicycles equipped with kid seats, but this is the first time I’ve seen one with a perch. These lovely Rosy-faced Lovebirds (Agapornis roseicollis) were out for a spin along the coast and seemed pretty pleased to be doing so.

Readers’ wildlife photos

November 10, 2025 • 9:12 am

Today we have a contribution of miscellaneous flora and fauna from reader David Riddell, a Kiwi.  His descriptions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Recently I sent in some pictures of seabirds to be posted here, several of them taken on a trip to New Zealand’s Chatham Islands. I thought I’d add a few more images from that trip, starting with this group of Pitt Island shags (Phalacrocorax featherstoni).  These are endemic to the Chathams – one of two species found only there, and one of 13 New Zealand cormorant species, which are generally all referred to as shags in this country.  There are fewer than 500 pairs of both Chatham species, and their numbers appear to be declining.  Unfortunately these are not in breeding plumage, when they look a lot more handsome:

Shore plovers (Charadrius novaeseelandiae) were wiped off the New Zealand mainland by exotic mammalian predators by the 1870s, and for more than a century existed only on Rangatira Island, which lies just off Pitt Island in the Chathams. Small populations have now been re-established on a couple of predator-free islands off the New Zealand mainland, as well as another island in the Chathams group, but the global population is still below 200.  Intensive predator control on Pitt (where a few feral cats persist) has recently allowed the odd pair to breed there, which is where we saw this one, along with a recently fledged juvenile:

In the 1970s there were only about 50 Chatham Island oystercatchers (Haematopus chathamensis). With management there are now over 300, but they are still the world’s rarest oystercatcher.  These were on Pitt, very close to the shore plover above:

Back on main Chatham, the parea, or Chatham Island pigeon (Hemiphaga chathamensis) has benefited from predator control which has seen its numbers rise from a low of about 45 birds in 1989 to an estimated population of more than 600. They are larger and greyer than the New Zealand pigeon, or kereru (Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae), with a stouter, more brightly coloured bill:

For comparison, this is a kereru, which are reasonably common and widespread on the New Zealand mainland:

Not the most photogenic of creatures perhaps, but this is a chick of one of the world’s rarest seabirds, the Chatham Island taiko, or Magenta petrel (Pterodroma magentae). First described from a bird collected in 1867 by the Italian research vessel Magenta it was tentatively identified in the 20th century with the taiko, which was believed to be extinct.  The identity was confirmed in 1978 when ornithologist David Crockett found live birds in the southwest of Chatham Island.  About 20 breeding burrows are currently known, many with observation hatches like this one, and mostly within a predator-fenced reserve.  The total population is probably fewer than 200, though slowly increasing:

The Chathams only have one lizard species, the Chatham Island skink (Oligosoma nigriplantare). It’s extinct on the main island, but is still common on Pitt and the outlying islands:

The Chatham Island red admiral (Vanessa gonerilla ida) is an endemic subspecies which is notably common throughout the islands:

The Chatham Islands’ plants also show a high degree of endemism. This is a rautini (Brachyglottis huntii), sometimes called the Chatham Island Christmas tree as it flowers conspicuously in the height of the southern hemisphere summer.  This one is a bit past its best in March:

The Chatham Island geranium (Geranium traversii) is a pretty little flower sometimes grown in rock gardens on the mainland:

There was an attempt to establish a business farming emus (Dromaius novaehollandiae) in New Zealand late last century, but it never became a significant industry, though a few of the big birds remain here and there, mostly in small flocks (herds?) on lifestyle blocks. They’ve gone feral in a few areas, although they are still not officially recognised as part of the local avifauna.  Chatham Island now has dozens roaming wild through central parts of the island; there’s talk of trying to eradicate them, but for now they’re an unexpected addition to the landscape:

Much of Chatham Island is occupied by a huge brackish lagoon, along the shores of which, at a spot called Blind Jim’s Creek, you can find fossilised shark teeth. These are between 30 and 60 million years old; most are mako (Isurus oxyrhynchus, or perhaps an ancestor), but other species, including Otodus megalodon, also occur.  In the background of the picture below there are also some fossilised urchin spines, which are present along with the teeth.  Three of us found this collection in about an hour of searching:

It’s a bit hard to make out, but this is a dendroglyph, markings carved into the bark of a kopi (Corynocarpus laevigatus) tree by the Moriori, who were the original inhabitants of the Chathams. They had one of the world’s only true pacifist societies, and when Maori from New Zealand invaded in 1835 they put up no resistance.  Consequently they were massacred, many of them were eaten (Maori were cannibals), and the rest enslaved.  Within a century the last full-blooded Moriori was dead, though a few people today still claim Moriori ancestry, descended from slaves and their Maori masters.  The dendroglyphs are now at least 190 years old, and very few are left.  We found this one, not signposted and not visible from the track, entirely by chance, in a patch of forest where their presence was not known, or at least not publicised: