January 2012
volume 27, issue 1
Pacific Northwest Herpetological Society Inside this issue: Upcoming Events…… 2 3
General information
Letter from the President……………….. 4 Welcome 2012 PNHS Board of Directors………….…...…. 6 Cold-Blooded Cognition………………..…….. 7
Next Meeting: January 15, 2012 Meeting Location: Highline Community College
Board Meeting 4 p.m.
2400 S. 240th St., Des Moines, WA
General Meeting: 6 p.m.
Speaker Presentation: Patrick Viehoever** will be speaking about “Adventures in Field Herping.”
Classifieds……………….. 10
Contacts & Vets
11
** Note: Patrick Viehoever generously volunteered to fill in for scheduled speaker Dr. Robert Sprackland, who sends his sincere apologies for unexpectedly being unable to attend. Thank you, Patrick!
Membership Application. 12
February PNHS Newsletter Deadline: Jan. 31, 2012
PNHS: Come to hear a fascinating presentation!
“Herp of the Month” for January: Large Lizards
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Upcoming PNHS Events Pa g e 2 January 15, 2012:
PNHS Regular Meeting 2012 Board Members officially sworn in. Herp-of-the-Month: “ L arge Lizards ” Speaker: Patrick Viehoever Topic: “ Adventures in Field Herping ”
January 17, 2012:
PNHS Outreach, Location: Wallingford, WA Time: 6-8 p.m. “ S cience Night: ” Dinner for participants: 5-6 p.m.; Set-up 4 p.m. Contact VP/Outreach Coordinator to participate.
February 10, 2012:
PNHS Outreach, Location: Edmonds, WA Time: 6:30-8:30 p.m. Set-up after 5 p.m. Contact VP/Outreach Coordinator to participate.
February 12, 2012:
PNHS Regular Meeting Herp-of-the-Month: “ Chelonians ” ( T urtles, Tortoises & Terrapins) Speaker: Jerry Novak of Pacific Northwest Turtleworks
March 3, 2012:
Leap Year Event at Woodland Park Zoo “ L eaping Ahead of Extinction: A celebration of good news for amphibi ans in 2012, ” sponsored by the Amphibian Ark. For more information, go to www.LeapDay2012.org or www.zoo.org .
March 11, 2012:
PNHS Regular Meeting
Save The Date! June 2nd—3rd, 2012
Emerald City Reptile Expo Seattle Center Exhibition Hall
Come be a part of our biggest show ever!
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General information & guidelines re
PNHS’ Monthly Meetings are a great place to learn something new, purchase feeders at a discount, and meet new people
General Information The Pacific Northwest Herpetological Society (PNHS) is a non-profit organization registered with the State of Washington. PNHS is dedicated to the education of its members and the public, as well as the conservation, ecology, and captive care and breeding of reptiles and amphibians. The society also takes an active role in legislative and environmental issues affecting these animals and their habitats. Meeting Information PNHS holds its general meeting on the third Sunday of every month (with exceptions for holidays) at 6:00pm at Highline Community College in Des Moines, Building 12 Room 101. The Board meeting begins at 4:00pm. Doors open at 5:30. Other business and socialization occurs between 5:30 and 6; then the General Meeting starts. Meetings are open to the public, and the society encourages anyone with an interest in herpetology to attend. Please purchase a membership to show your support for the society. Animal Donations Looking to adopt, release an animal or donate cages and equipment? Please contact the Adoptions Committee by email at adoptions@pnwhs.org, or by voicemail at 206- 583-0686. We will contact you and make arrangements. Other Donations The Adoption Committee receives minimal financial support from the Society, so donations of money, food, cages, and equipment are always needed and appreciated. Please contact the Adoption Chair to make a donation. Adoptions To adopt an animal that is in the care of the Committee, you must be present at the meeting, be a current member (of at least one month), and be over 18 years of age or have parental consent. For more details see the web site or contact the Adoption Chair. Newsletter Information A monthly newsletter absorbs the lion’s share of the price of a PNHS membership. In order to keep it interesting, we encourage contribution of original articles, book reviews, letters, ads, and cartoons for publication. Items for incorporation into articles are also welcome, though with no guarantee of their use. Submissions may be sent to the Newsletter Committee or to the Society through the contacts listed on the following page.
Above: Both Green Tree Python Photos courtesy of the Adams’ Family.
Editorial Policy The views expressed in this publication are solely the views of the authors and not necessarily the views of the Society, its members, or the Newsletter Committee. The Newsletter Committee reserves the right to edit all submissions including advertisements.
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Letter from the President By Aimee Kenoyer Hey PNHS! This month is a bit of a milestone for me. January’s meeting marks the end of my second term as PNHS President, where I’ll be passing the reins off to the lovely and capable Ms. Brenda Huber. First of all, thank you ALL for your support through the years, and for making the effort to read my silly letters! I initially joined this group five and a half years ago. At that time, we had about half as many members as we do now. Our Adoptions program has also doubled in the intervening years (does anyone recall the bust that resulted in us taking in over 30 fosters in a single day?). We are busier than ever with Outreaches and have been invited to more pet events and expos in the last year than in the prior four years. PNHS has tried some new things…some have worked (can you say Emerald City Reptile Expo? Woot!) … and some haven’t (the calendars, while fun, have not been financially beneficial). Along the way, I have learned so many things about so many different kinds of animals, and I’ve had the opportunity to work with some really incredible people. While I have been involved with other non-profits over the years and have even held office, this group is unique and very different. We are on the verge of being a real force for change in public perception of exotic pets – and exotic pet ownership – for our region. As PNHS grows, we are gaining ever more notoriety. More people know that we are here as a resource than ever before, leading directly into growth of the society as well as helping more animals in need. This is truly a grass-roots effort and has only been possible because of you, the membership of PNHS. I firmly believe that any organization will only benefit you as much as you are willing to invest – you get out what you put in. This is particularly relevant when you consider all of the potential legislative changes as well as vilification by groups such as the HSUS, and most media outlets. Currently, our hobby/interest/love is threatened by a number of sources. This makes it more important than ever before to: 1. educate the
Continued...
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Pa g e 5 Letter From The President Continued….
public about herps so that there will be less fear due to ignorance and misinformation; and 2. to share information amongst ourselves so that we as a community are keeping proper and responsible care of our herps. So, if you think these things are important and you also would like to get more out of PNHS, there is one easy way to accomplish all of this:
GET INVOLVED!! …. I did. Through fostering, outreach, and volunteering at a higher level, I have gained valuable knowledge, a sense of pride for the positive changes in which I’ve been involved, and some really incredible friendships. It was one of the better choices I have made in my life. This is a great group with some amazing people and enormous potential—help it along.
Aimee Kenoyer PNHS President
Above: Aimee Kenoyer shares her knowledge at the Pacific Science Center, April 2009. Photo courtesy of Suyama Images.
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Welcome 2012 PNHS Board Nominations were announced in November 2011; all positions were unopposed so no ballots were mailed.
Your 2012 PNHS Board of Directors: President:
Brenda Huber
President-Elect:
Rachel Shirk
Vice-President:
Brandon Winter
Secretary:
Teresa Montoya
Membership Secretary:
Geoff Sweet
Treasurer:
Dale Drexler
Members-At-Large:
Ted Adams David Brunnelle Carol Dean Matt Lee Julie Sharkey
Adoptions Coordinator: Rachel Shirk Event Coordinator:
Norm Hill
Newsletter Editor:
Marian Huber
Webmaster:
Geoff Sweet
Thank you for all that you do for PNHS!
Vol. 27, No. 1
Cold-Blooded Cognition: Tortoises Quick on the Uptake By Jeff Hecht, New Scientist Reprinted with permission from HerpDigest.org; Vol.12 No.1, Dated 1/2/12
Tortoises aren’t noted for their speed but they are surprisingly quick-witted. "IT ALL stems from Moses," says Anna Wilkinson. Moses is her pet red-footed tortoise and a bit of a celebrity in the science world. Why? First, he outsmarted rats in a maze. Then he was the inspiration for a new lab studying reptile intelligence and the evolutionary origins of cognition. Now he has helped Wilkinson win an Ig Nobel prize. Victory for slow and steady. This fruitful partnership began in 2004, after Wilkinson, now at the University of Lincoln, UK, started graduate school at the University of York, also in the UK. She was studying bird cognition but had earlier become fascinated by tortoises while employed in education and research at Flamingo Land zoo in North Yorkshire, UK. Although working with primates, she found herself drawn to the tortoise enclosure. Even when most of the group was basking in the sun, she recalls, at least one tortoise was exploring or feeding, and when a person walked in they all perked up, sensing that food was likely to follow. "They were always just fascinating," she says. So, a tortoise was the obvious choice as a pet. Moses's first big academic break came in 2006. Wilkinson was attending a lecture on how rats remember their paths through a maze, when she started thinking: "Moses can do that." Afterwards, she asked the lecturer, Geoffrey Hall, if anyone had tried putting tortoises in such mazes. A literature search indicated that reptiles in general have proved pretty dim when subjected to cognitive tests. Undeterred, Hall and Wilkinson decided to see what Moses was capable of. The pair set up a tortoise-sized test maze similar to the eight-armed radial structure used for rats and mice, then put Moses through his paces. As with the rodents he was placed in the centre of the maze and given eight chances to retrieve food from the arms - each of which had a morsel at its end. Moses quickly learned to find his way around so that he didn't revisit arms where he had already eaten the food. Like the rodents, he seemed to create a "cognitive map" from the objects he could see in the world beyond the maze. However, when Wilkinson and Hall obscured these landmarks, Moses took up a different strategy - he systematically visited the arm next to the one he had just left, allowing him to retrieve all eight food scraps (Journal of Comparative Psychology, vol 121, p 412). This flexibility of behaviour has never been seen in mammals, which seek new landmarks when old ones are removed. Clever Moses.
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Cold-Blooded Cognition, continued... Wilkinson and Hall were now interested in why reptiles had performed so poorly in previous cognitive studies. Taking a closer look at the reports, they found the problem. The earlier research had been done at cool temperatures, which left the cold-blooded animals feeling sluggish. Moses, by contrast, had performed at 29 degrees C, near the average temperature of the red-footed tortoise's native habitat in Central and South America. The warmer temperatures boosted Moses's metabolism, making him alert, lively and ready to conquer a maze. Having finished her dissertation, Wilkinson started postdoctoral research at the University of Vienna, Austria. There, her supervisor Ludwig Huber encouraged her to pursue her interest in reptiles. In 2007 they set up the cold-blooded cognition lab. With seven more redfooted tortoises - as well as some jeweled lizards - they were ready to find out just how smart reptiles are. One skill Wilkinson and Huber were keen to explore was gaze-following. The ability to look where another individual is looking is important because it can alert you to potential predators, or food. It is also a complex behavior, which requires understanding that another animal's gaze can convey useful information, working out where it is looking and turning to focus on the same spot. Gaze-following has long been thought of as a talent exclusive to primates, but recently it has been found in goats and a few birds. It turns out that redfooted tortoises can do it too. When Huber and Wilkinson shone a laser pointer at an overhead screen to attract the attention of one tortoise, they found that another individual, behind the screen, also looked up (Animal Cognition, vol .13, p 765). Gaze-following had never been tested in reptiles before. The fact that red-footed tortoises can do it was surprising, given that they are usually solitary in the wild so may not be expected to evolve the ability to take cues from others. Their performance on a second task was even more intriguing. The researchers found tortoises can learn to find hidden food by watching another tortoise walk around a wall to collect a treat (Biology Letters, vol 6, p 614). This indicates that tortoises are capable of social learning, a trait thought to have evolved as a special cognitive adaptation in social animals. The discovery raises the possibility that social learning may simply be an extension of general learning capabilities rather than a specialist skill. Moses and his pals have done much to raise the intellectual standing of tortoises, but there is one test they famously failed. Contagious yawning is thought to arise from empathy, but
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Cold-Blooded Cognition, Continued... Wilkinson doubted this theory. She spent six months teaching one tortoise to yawn in the hope that others would learn the trick - even though tortoises lack empathy. The yawns stubbornly refused to spread, Wilkinson and Huber reported in a paper that earned them the Ig Nobel prize earlier this year (Current Zoology, vol 57, p 477). Wilkinson's work is helping revive interest in reptile cognition, says Gordon Burghardt at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. This is important because most research on animal cognition has been on mammals or birds. Reptiles split from those groups more than 250 million years ago, so studies of how they think can shed light on the evolutionary roots of animal intelligence. Burghardt recently found "surprisingly advanced" social learning in pond turtles, a more social group than tortoises. Meanwhile, Manuel Leal and Brian Powell at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, have found that tree-dwelling anole lizards from Puerto Rico can solve simple problems to find food - a behaviour previously seen only in birds and mammals. Reptiles are clearly far smarter than we thought. Wilkinson has one explanation - at least for Moses and his ilk. Tortoises receive no care after they hatch, so they have to learn on their own, she points out. And with a very high attrition rate, there is strong natural selection for intelligence. "They learn things very fast because they have to do so to survive," she says. "They are learning machines."
Left: Red-footed Tortoise, Geochelone carbonaria., courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
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PNHS would like to thank “Animal Talk Pet Shop” & “Animal Talk Rescue” for their generous donations of feeders for our foster animals!
Are you a Fluffy Foster? Kitten season is upon us & Animal Talk Rescue is urgently looking for foster homes for kitten(s). A full-line pet
Animal Talk Pet Shop 6514 Roosevelt Way NE Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-1558
store...and so much more! Find us on Facebook!
Join the Global Gecko Association Today! The GGA is a six year old international organization dedicated to the needs of all people interested in geckos. Members receive the twice-yearly, full-color journal, “Gekko”, plus “Chit-Chat”, our quarterly newsletter. Annual Membership is $32 US, $34 Canada/Mexico, $36 Overseas. Email: ElizabethFreer@aol.com (503)-436-1064 or www.gekkota.com
Feeder Insects & Rodents
Bean Farm’s Creative Habitats Slide-Top Aquariums
I have superworms, giant mealworms, and lots more! Plus, I now carry frozen rodents.
Various sizes available.
Order in advance: special pricing for PNHS members,,as well as quantity discounts!
We can deliver the cages to the meetings, as well as any other item from the Bean Farm catalogue.
For pick up and PNHS meeting delivery.
Please contact us by the Friday before the meeting in order for items to be delivered. Thank you!
Jennifer Sronce (425) 750-0477
Paula & Giovani Fagioli (877) 708-5882
www.seattlefeeders@gmail.com
Email: beanfarm@beanfarm.com www.beanfarm.com
Advertise in the PNHS Newsletter! Business Card .............................$5 Quarter Page................................$10 Half Page ....................................$15 Full Page .....................................$25 If you would like to place an ad in the PNHS newsletter, please contact: newsletter.editor@pnwhs.org GET PUBLICITY FOR YOUR BUSINESS & SUPPORTING PNHS!
Vol. 27, No. 1
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Contact Information PNHS P.O. Box 66147
adoptions:206-583-0686
Burien, WA 98166
email: contactus@pnwhs.org
www.pnwhs.org
general information: 206-628-4740
Area Representatives Greater Seattle
Aimee Kenoyer 206-200-1240
aimee.kenoyer@pnwhs.org
N King & Snohomish
Brenda Huber 206-334-7168
brenda.huber@pnwhs.org
S King & Pierce
Dale Drexler
dale.drexler@yahoo.com
Oregon
Elizabeth Freer 503-436-1064
253-606-4328
elizabethfreer@aol.com
Peninsula, Skagit, Whatcom & Island, Thurston, Lewis, Spokane—need volunteers! Officers for 2011 President
Aimee Kenoyer
aimee.kenoyer@pnwhs.org
Vice President
Dave Alverson
dave.alverson@pnwhs.org
President-Elect
Brenda Huber
brenda.huber@pnwhs.org
Treasurer
Dale Drexler
dale.drexler@pnwhs.org
Secretary
Mel Kreachbaum
secretary@pnwhs.org
Membership Secretary Vivian Eleven
members@pnwhs.org
Members-At-Large
Rachel Shirk
rachel.shirk@pnwhs.org
Julie Sharkey
julie.sharkey@pnwhs.org
Geoff Sweet
geoff.sweet@pnwhs.org
Heather Shipway
heather.shipway@pnwhs.org
Amanda Perez
amanda.perez@pnwhs.org
Adoptions Coordinator Rachel Shirk
adoptions@pnwhs.org
Newsletter Editor
Marian Huber
newsletter@pnwhs.org
Webmaster
Geoff Sweet
webmaster@pnwhs.org
Find us on FACEBOOK!
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To join PNHS, please print & complete the following application, enclose your yearly or multi-yearly membership fee and return to: PNHS Membership Secretary P.O. Box 27542 Seattle, WA 98165 Membership applications and fees may also be received at the monthly meetings by the Membership Secretary. With your yearly or multi-year membership fee you will receive the monthly PNHS E-Newsletter, access to membership pricing for adoption animals, and the opportunity to participate in the many outreaches and special “Members Only� events held throughout the year.
Please select one of the options below:
Please select your preferred membership category: Individual Membership (One person)
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Above: Kids are intent on everything Board Member Geoff Sweet has to say at an outreach in Duvall, 2005.
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