Reptile & Amphibian Forums

The site is drying up, the tadpole pond that I was hoping to watch and see if hogs gravitated to, dried up before and toads could emerge. When I got there, there was one small cup sized wet spot with a handful of living tads, a couple had legs. I did the dispictable, for a biologist, and moved them. By noon, the pond was completely dry. No luck there.

As of now, there is no grativation to toads, tadpoles. Like their is to lizards and other prey sources.

From fecal smears, there is no question, some individuals are finding toads, at this time. They are just not moving to them.

I still question, how do these yucky snakes make all that blood in their mouths.

There were more neonates of the year,

And I observed the individual with the most black on its belly(med. adult female)

As I mentioned in a reply below, individual temps ranged from 97F to 106F. It was bloody hot(see pic) and all hogs acted very racer like and took off upon spotting them. Which is a bit unusual. So no good in situ pics.

It was so hot, I started looking in holes until this happened.

Best wishes

Those are some really intersting photos from the field. I knew they bled from the mouth when stressed but had no idea it was so much. Bet that badger eats a fair number of snakes.

They bleed like crazy, I have another pic of me measuring that snake and it looks like I am measuring a Dor hognose. Blood out of the mouth and blood on its body. Do you want to see that picture?

Sorry, not all individuals do that. In fact, males are more prone to by this animal is female. And the hotter they are, the more they do this craziness.

Seems pretty physiologically taxing. Males are substantially smaller so they cannot have that much blood to spare I would think. Where does the blood come from? Bust a bunch of capillaries in their mouths? Not the sort of reaction they could muster up the blood to perform very often. Course if I had a badger biting me I would release all sort of biological fluids!
At any rate, really nice pics. Cool species of snake.

I have no idea where it comes from, I thought, they could puncture somewhere on the inside of their mouth with those teeth.

It does not seem to bother them at all. In fact, they seem to treat that defense, like a rattlesnake rattling, or a pit blowing up and hissing. When you leave, they do go about business as normal.

I have worked with snake species that just touching them interfered with their normal behavior and often was delerterious.

Wonder if it is pure blood or diluted with mucous or water? Earlier poster who brought up stress reaction in hognose is accurate. The craziness wild hogs exhibit when picked up is one immense stress reaction. Flipping over, tongue lolling, puking blood. Good adaptations for a relatively slow species that finds itself on the menu of lots of stuff like that badger, bobcats, birds of prey.

I have no idea how it works, other then it must wrong. Those predators you mentioned, would grab and rip and hog to pieces. So all that would happen with any colubrid. You know, blood guts crap etc. And playing dead, hmmmmmmmmm the predators would kill them anyway, so its like a shortcut.

Again, it must work, or not and completely. As I have only seen two individuals with scares, one with two fresh punctures and one with two small scared areas. Rattlesnakes are also like that, not many with scares.

On the otherhand, Greenrats seem to be a bag of scares to a point you have to wonder who won. Scared dented and all such is common. Kings are inbetween, in my experience as well as pits. Best wishes

Maybe you do not see many scarred hogs because very few get away once attacked. Too slow. You are right, cannot see that their craziness does much good against badgers and raptors. Eastern hogs I have seen get dropped by coyotes, maybe confused by the craziness. The most beat up snakes in my part of the world are racers and garters. Lots of predators grab them because they are frequently out in the open, but fast enough to get out of Dodge in one scarred piece. Your western hogs gotta hide to stay alive.

Actually they are fairly fast, hmmmmmmm yes, fast. They are indeed situational. That is, they crawl very quickly. They move from spot to spot As fast as any colubrid at a crawling pace. There is one open spot they often cross that's about 60 feet wide and they do it in under 4 minutes. They also dash for bushes or holes.

But if discovered in the open, they go cryptic and freeze. They do not have that much patience, and soon give up and leave.

Its also temperature dependent, as when cool, freeze more, when hot, run more.

Those field photos are fantastic! I wish more people with access to hognose habitats would post field pics. Makes "normal" hogs look so cool. Thanks for posting them. BTW...that badger pic is so cool.

Your welcome. And Yes, I think normal hogs are very interesting, they do have some much variation in pattern and color, from one spot.

And I like morphs too. But good old normal are out of hand. Thanks again