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LUFKIN DAILY NEWS (Lufkin, Texas) 11 February 06 Endangered snake species lays eggs at zoo (Christine S. Diamond)
One of North America's most endangered snake species may soon increase its population by four.
That's how many 4-inch eggs were laid by a 4-year-old female Louisiana pine snake Friday morning at Ellen Trout Zoo in Lufkin. Each egg weighs about 75-80 grams.
The larger the egg, the more likely the snake is to be hatched alive.
"The eggs are big because the babies are usually big, because in the wild they exclusively eat pocket gophers," Charlotte Henley said. "Babies have to be 1½-2 feet long when they hatch out because their food source is large."
Anyone wanting to view the large, oblong snake eggs can do so in the reptile room at the zoo during the next two months – the time it takes for the eggs to hatch.
The outer egg, which zoo employee Ben Roberts described as feeling "like raw sausage" at first touch, will harden as it is exposed to outer air, Henley said. They are sitting in glass jars on a 1:1 ratio of vermiculite and water in a room that maintains a temperature of 73-80 degrees.
If in the wild, the eggs would be buried in the ground where temperatures are much colder right now, Henley said.
This was the zoo's third Louisiana pine snake hatch, according to Henley.
The first hatch occurred in 1984, the second in 1987. These original Texas parent snakes lived 14 years, she said. The average life of a Louisiana pine snake is 12-15 years.
Friday's parents, however, are from the Louisiana group, Henley said. This means they could never be released in the wild in Texas. They came to Lufkin via the Memphis zoo in March 2002.
The Texas and Louisiana populations of Pituophis melanoleucus ruthveni are two very distinct groups, they said. And the Texas group is even rarer and harder to find.
Zoo director Gordon B. Henley Jr. says the subspecies is related to the bull nose snakes out west, the gopher snakes and a Houston species.
"My opinion is that at one time that genus went all across the country and, for whatever reason, around this region it began to disappear and became a relic population – I don't know if that was 100 or 1,000 years ago," he said. "But they are so separated spatially from other members of that genus."
While nonvenomous, these native snakes will still bite.
"And it hurts," said Roberts, who grew up picking bull nose snakes – a close relation of the Louisiana pine snake.
Listen and you will hear a warning hiss and rattle before the mottled tan and black snake strikes as it fills itself up with air and then releases, making a hissing sound while shaking its tail in the underbrush like a rattler, he said.
This subspecies is only found along the central part of Deep East Texas near Toledo Bend and along the Louisiana borders. A full grown LP snake is as big around as a baseball bat and about 8 feet long, Roberts said. It eats about three to five pocket gophers a week. Zoo inhabitants dine on defrosted mice and rats – pocket gophers aren't that common anymore.
Just prior to Hurricane Katrina, wildlife biologists from public and private groups in East Texas and Louisiana, and three zoos met in Natchitoches to discuss managing the few endangered Louisiana pine snakes in the wild, Henley said. They were hoping to combine the two management plans which would call for open parklike forests of longleaf pine. While they do climb trees they are not a threat to the endangered red cockaded woodpecker, he said.
In the wild, the parents would be territorial and push the babies out, Roberts said.
"They seem to like the same habitat as the red cockaded woodpecker," Henley said.
"We used to breed Louisiana pine snakes a long time ago but there was no interest so we moved on," Henley said. "There are lots of endangered reptiles out there and it's hard to get people interested in working with them.
"It is important to protect what is in our backyard as well as the cool exotic stuff," she said.
"If you look at the snake's brain ... there's not a lot of room for the emotional development that higher animals do, like the woodpeckers," the Henleys said.
Endangered snake species lays eggs at zoo

Sorry about my language. This kind of reporting is the most irresposible and unprofessional and we really should just ignore it. Sorry too that I let it get to me.

Terry Vandeventer

Terry,

don't let it get to you, what happens in The Private sector never counts for anything you know that lol. It has been that way with a lot of Zoo's for years as you know. If it wasn't for the private sector many of the breeding and hatching routines we all use would never have evolved.

John Cherry
Cherryville FaRMS

I was thinking worse language while reading it, terry. Crap and WRONG crap and even "wronger" crap....lol.