Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This is Dennis Wasko waking a sleeping beauty. He is doing his PhD research in Costa Rica now. The snakes below were ones he is tracking for his data.

>>This is Dennis Wasko waking a sleeping beauty.

I sure hope it's sleeping deeply given that his finger is about 1/8 inch away from the tip of that fang!!...

Oh yes, the snake is quite asleep. It just underwent radio transmittor surgery via the technique on Harry Greens video. Surgery went well and she is out establishing her home ground as I type this. Eating some kind of non-mammal no doubt. Dennis does invite anyone to e-mail him about research.

Fang..What Fang???

thats a pretty cool snake, it would make a preety cool loking pet... until it bites you
-----
jake

my addiction:
2 normal ball pythons (lazlo and izzy)
1 amelenistic corn snake (mazy)
0.1 blizzard corn (blizz)

Sweet!

..Why do you say so? Do they prefer a non-mammal diet in that particular area?

MH

I am sure they would prefer a mammal but they simply are not there. The hard part about reserves...how much is enough to reserve?

That's bizarre. My guess is that it is do to a lack of particular fruiting or nut bearing trees. We found a 2m asper trailing a spiny rat(Proechmys) that it had killed the night before near some steps at Sirena Bio station in 2003. We found the dead rat earlier in the morning, with 2 nice fang puntures in it. That evening, the snake crawled right by the steps right to where the rat had laid(one of the rangers had tossed it into the forest).

I was amazed that the snake could trail it, at least 12 hours after it had killed it.

Do you know if that reserve has experienced a prolonged rainy season this year, like the Pacific SW has? The rainy season on the Osa started mid-Feb this past year(about 2 months early) and messed up the fruiting of trees, affected croc nesting, etc.

The reserve was La Selva on the caribbean slope. There seemed to be plenty of nuts around though. I did see one rat while I was there and there would certainly be no problems for snakes big enough to eat peccaries.

I will also say anything willing to adapt to eating ameiva festiva had its life set because they were all over when there wasn't a ton of rain.

It did seem the reserve had no problems with fruit and nut bearing trees but given my short time there I had to trust everyone who told me the mammals (with the exception of peccaries) were somewhat scarce.

Dennis Wasko has been there a while and has been doing some radio telemetry for his PhD work and I know there is a supplemental feeding aspect involved in his work with the B.aspers. I never really found out exactly what they were taking on a regular basis in the "wild" but now I think I need to ask him. I know he was gathering plenty of poop from them after knocking them out for the surgery...so he will know.

Very cool story on the asper tracking the rat. It reminds me of a recent lecure given on rattle snakes tracking their prey days later. I think I need to plan a trip to the Osa Peninsula now...you say you did not see any Sibon huh?

I am leaving for Baja in about a week and just ordered L. Lee Grismer's book. I am not going to see any Sibon there either...but I will get some beach time when I am not looking for herps.

..I am sure they're there, we just have yet to see one. Snakes are typically more scarce there, than on teh Carib side...e.g., eyelash vipers aren't near as common, as if you go to Cahuita N.P. I've yet to see a Porthidium on the Osa, though people have told me that they are more common than Bothrops!!

I am assuming the snake has been anesthetized... snakes become anesthetized cranial to caudal but the wake up caudal to cranial so all he has to do is watch the tail movment and he would know when the animal is waking up for sure... snakes also cant breath on their own during a surgical depth of anesthesia so he has to give it the breaths and what he is doing is absolutly safe since there are warning signs far before the snake is even conscience in the head region
Cheers
PatrickR