Farscales

A very cute bean.

Four-legged fossil snake is a world first

By Anastasia Christakou

The first four-legged fossil snake ever found is forcing scientists to rethink how snakes evolved from lizards.

Although it has four legs, Tetrapodophis amplectus has other features that clearly mark it as a snake, says Nick Longrich, a palaeontologist at the University of Bath, UK, and one of the authors of a paper describing the animal in Science1.

The creature’s limbs were probably not used for locomotion, the researchers say, but rather for grasping prey, or perhaps for holding on to mating partners. Such speculation inspired the snake’s name, which loosely translates as ‘four-legged hugging snake’.

Tetrapodophis was originally found in the fossil-rich Crato Formation in northeastern Brazil several decades ago. But its legs can be difficult to see at first glance, and it languished in a private collection after its discovery, assumed to be unremarkable.

“I was confident it might be a snake,” says David Martill, a palaeobiologist at the University of Portsmouth, UK, who came across the find in 2012. “It was only after getting the specimen under the microscope and looking at it in detail that my confidence grew. We had gone to see Archaeopteryx, the missing link between birds and dinosaurs, and discovered Tetrapodophis, the missing link between snakes and lizards.”

WE’VE GOT TWINS!

By Jason Bitte, National Geographic

PUBLISHED JULY 22, 2015

Boa constrictors were long thought to kill their prey by suffocation, slowly squeezing the life out one ragged breath at a time.

But a new study reveals that these big, non-venomous serpents, found in tropical Central and South America, subdue their quarry with a much quicker method: Cutting off their blood supply.

When a boa tightens its body around its prey, it throws off the finely tuned plumbing of the victim’s circulatory system. Arterial pressures plummet, venous pressures soar, and blood vessels begin to close.

“The heart literally doesn’t have enough strength to push against the pressure,” says study leader Scott Boback, a vertebrate ecologist at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Most animals can actually survive a relatively long time without breathing: Think about drowning people who are later resuscitated, he says. But the same isn’t true for a body without a heartbeat.

If executed perfectly, the powerful squeeze causes the animal to pass out within a matter of seconds. Death follows soon after.

Snakes on a Vein

To better understand the snakes’ constriction mechanism, Boback and his colleagues at Dickinson anesthetized lab rats and then rigged the animals with various instruments.

Vascular catheters measured blood pressure, for instance, while electrodes secured within the rats’ chest cavities provided information about the heart’s electrical activity.

Then they fed the outfitted rats to captive boa constrictors and measured what happened to the lab rats. Surprisingly, the pressures at which the snakes cinched against the rats weren’t all that remarkable. But then again, they don’t need to be.    

“A boa constricting a small rat is generating the kind of pressure that would stop the blood flow in your arm,” says Boback, whose study appears July 22 in the journal The Company of Biologists.

But even this light pressure, when applied to a rat’s torso, makes its system goes haywire, the team discovered.

Once blood flow ceases, organs with high metabolic rates—such as the brain, the liver, and the heart itself—begin to shut down. Doctors call this ischemia.

Snakes call it lunch.

An Evolutionary Advantage

The team theorizes that killing by circulatory arrest has given all constricting snakes—which includes pythons and anacondas—an evolutionary advantage. The quicker the snakes can disable their prey, the lower the chance the predator will get hurt in the process.

“That absolutely makes sense,” says Paul Rosolie, a conservationist who has spent the last decade working with anacondas.

Think about other animals living alongside boa constrictors in tropical rain forests, says Rosolie: They have teeth, hooves, and claws capable of kicking and ripping. But a snake just has a mouth—making it extremely vulnerable. 

“Almost every time an anaconda takes something down, it’s putting its face on that animal,” says Rosolie, who wasn’t involved in the new research.

“If it doesn’t get the attack exactly right, something big like a capybara can chew right through the body of an anaconda.”

Ectotherm’s Revenge

As interesting as his revelation is, Boback says there’s still much we don’t know.

For instance, there’s evidence that boa constrictors have a tougher time killing ectotherms, animals such as lizards and snakes that rely on external heat to regulate their body temperatures.

During a recent expedition to Honduras, for instance, Boback and several other scientists observed a boa constrictor attacking a spinytail iguana. After the snake constricted its prey for an hour, the team collected both animals—assuming the iguana was dead—and went to bed.

In the morning, they were surprised to discover the animals at either end of the observation tank, with the iguana alive and well.

“We have no idea what was going on,” says Boback, “but [the iguana] seemed totally fine.”

No worse for wear, the team released the lucky survivor back into the wild.

A few days ago, we posted an emergency signal boost message about my snake Ivy (a.k.a. Bug/Buggy), who ate a 100% polyester hand towel/washcloth and we were desperately asking for any advice, especially if there was anyone who had ever experienced something similar.

We received an overwhelming response of over 500 notes in two days, and countless tips, suggestions, and ideas - good wishes and prayers, all for which we are very thankful.

However, it seems there were only about 2 or 3 similar cases ever recorded, so we had very little idea of what really was going to happen. Not a single veterinarian in Laredo, San Antonio, or College Station (Texas) had ever seen or had to treat a case like this - so everyone was pretty much clueless (though I received great help and support from some of these veterinarians). So I decided to post about Ivy’s case in case that (GOD FORBID) anyone’s snake ever has to go through this.

In a matter of 2 days, Ivy’s stomach acids had dissolved the towel (as it appears on the x-rays), but she still runs the risk of not being able to excrete the few undigested fibers that might still be inside her. Although she already excreted a couple along with her urine, as you can see on the photo I’ve attached (seen under the microscope at 40x magnification).

She is swimming in the bath tub every day (to increase metabolic rate) and has been drinking a lot of water (to avoid dehydration/towel sucking up gastric juices). BUT she might be able to manage just fine after this without the need of surgery (as it was initially suggested, but later retracted). She will be under observation for the next couple of weeks, but we’re hoping she will make a full recovery.

PLEASE if you’re a snake owner, or know someone who owns snakes, even veterinarians or vet techs, let our unfortunate event serve as a lesson that

1) Snakes CAN eat weird crap they’re not supposed to. I NEVER, in a million years, would have believed that Ivy would swallow a towel. So please, be careful with the objects you leave in your snake’s tank.

2) A snake’s stomach acids can break down just about anything. Except metals and perhaps hard plastics. This was a problem to me because no vets nor wild life experts really knew whether or not a snake could digest polyester because, well, THEY HAVE NEVER HAD TO FIND OUT. Now they know. Now we all know.

3) Surgery can cost over $1,000 - so if you ever experience something similar to this, don’t rush your snake into surgery. They also run a big risk of not surviving the surgery. Not many vets are experienced in operating on snakes, and the way their organs are laid out makes it a very delicate procedure, especially if your vet does not usually do these types of operations (they mostly only operate on cats and dogs). Opening the digestive tract is also very dangerous, and your snake is very prone to infections. And following up with antibiotics can prove to be extremely difficult.

4) And finally, less literal and more of a lesson learned, don’t take your snake for granted. These past few days were hell for my family, friends, and myself. I barely caught any sleep supervising her at night, and I broke down over thinking that could probably be the last time I held her. Ivy has been with us for 6 years, so we, as a family, are very attached to her. I don’t want for anyone else to have to experience what we did.

So just a request, if you own a snake, or know someone that does, please share this with them. I want for this to be out there because one of the worst feelings in the world is being in crisis and not being able to find any useful information anywhere. Not google, yahoo answers, pet owners, wildlife experts, nor vets. If something good can come out of this, I hope that it can help someone else some day.

Thank you everyone for your advice, love, support, kind thoughts and prayers, commissions and donations on mayucva‘s account. The money from those funds helped us pay for the consultation and X-Rays. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts and will forever be grateful to you all.

Best,