Gordon Grice's Blog, page 19

New Study: How Boa Constrictors Kill

For a long time, herpers have been irritably telling the uninitiated that constricting snakes don't kill by crushing their prey, but by suffocating it. The study described here shows that neither is exactly true. It's a matter of stopping the circulation, which allows much quicker kills than suffocation would. I don't think the article is quite right to call this heart attack, but the point is interesting nonetheless.

Jens Raschendorf/Creative Commons
Boa Constrictors Give Heart Attacks, They Don’t Suffocate: "Boa constrictors are widely believed to kill prey by cutting off the air flow and suffocating it. But a new study has revealed that this is a flawed line of thought. In reality, Boa constrictors kill prey by cutting off the blood flow and giving heart attacks."

Longhorn Beetle

Hodari Nundu recently photographed this beetle, a member of the longhorn family. I might have hesitated to handle it, considering the size of its mandibles, but Hodari reports that it did him no harm. He adds: "This is a small one--I will never forget the biggest one I ever saw, which was easily the size of my hand and bright pink and green in color."

Rattlesnake Kills Pennsylvania Man

Tad Arensmeier/Creative Commons
Not a common occurrence in Pennsylvania, according to the article. The state is home to both the timber rattler and the Eastern massasauga; the former, a largish species of rattlesnake, would seem to be the culprit in this case, judging from range maps and its well-attested history as a dangerous snake. This man suffered an allergic reaction; the same bite would have had milder effects on most people.  

Man dies after being bitten by rattlesnake while camping - WHP CBS 21 Harrisburg - Top Stories: "Authorities say a western Pennsylvania man died after he was bitten by a rattlesnake while sitting near a campfire.

Armstrong County Coroner Brian Myers says 39-year-old Russell Davis, of Freedom, Beaver County, was camping with his family Saturday in Weedville, Elk County. He was bitten shortly before midnight."


Thanks to Steve V. for the news tip. 

Return of the Seahorses

Photography by Dee Puett

Shorebirds and Pelicans

Photography by Dee Puett

Spiders Eating Birds and Snakes

Thanks to Kaycie Anderson, a student in my Monsters Unleashed class, who shared this photo she took in Ocho Rios, Jamaica. This came up when we were discussing Erckmann-Chatrian's story "The Waters of Death," concerning an arachnid that dines out of its weight class. The spider pictured here--the golden-silk orb-weaver, Nephila clavipes--isn't the kind meant in the story, but it does occasionally take vertebrates as prey. Here is its close cousin from Australia taking a snake:



. . . and a bird:



Erckmann and Chatrian call their critter a crab-spider (or spider-crab in some translations), but they aren't talking about the harmless family of spiders currently known by that name (see D'Arcy's gorgeous close-ups of a crab spider here). They surely meant massive spiders like the Goliath bird-eater:

  Snakecollector/Creative Commons

For any arachnid, capturing a bird is a rare event. . . but it does happen.

Sharks and Rays

Photography by Dee Puett

Boy with Frog

Photos by Elizabeth Murphy

Year of Meteors

The Meteor of 1860Frederic Edwin Church painted this image from life. A rare astronomical event called "meteors in procession" happens when a single meteor breaks apart and its pieces travel together through the atmosphere. They are typically about forty miles above the earth, flying almost parallel to the surface. 

Walt Whitman also described this particular event:

The strange huge meteor procession, dazzling and clear, shooting over our heads,    
(A moment, a moment long, it sail’d its balls of unearthly light over our heads,
Then departed, dropt in the night, and was gone;)
Year of comets and meteors transient and strange!
--from “Year of Meteors (1859-1860)” 

I love Church's lush evocations of nature. Here are a few more of his paintings:
Storm in the Mountains
A Sunset
Cotopaxi
(Cotopaxi is a volcano in Ecuador)
The Icebergs
The Heart of the Andes

Sea Horses

Photography by Dee Puett