Herps News

When Rohan Pandit and Wangchu Phiang accidentally stumbled upon a brown snake on a steep slope of a forest in the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh in India, little did…

Life on this planet, in all its wide diversity, is disappearing more quickly now than it has at any time in human history, and some 1 million species of plants…

A new study has shed light on how rare lizards found only in Sri Lanka are winding up in Europe as part of the illegal trade in exotic wildlife. The…

Sri Lanka will push for international protection of its endemic lizards threatened by smuggling when it hosts a global biodiversity trade summit next month. When the 18th meeting of the Conference…

Until recently, there were just four known Yangtze giant softshell turtles in the world. On April 13, the only known female among them died in China’s Suzhou Shangfangshan Forest Zoo…

Countries should concentrate on outcomes instead of actions when they set aside areas for parks and reserves to shore up the loss of biodiversity, according to a group of scientists.…

When many people think of snakes, they conjure up a vision of venomous serpents with huge fangs, large diamond-shaped heads, and cat-like eyes. The vision actually comes from the true-to-life…

The yellow-bellied three-toed skink is not your typical lizard. Vertebrates or animals with backbones usually reproduce in one of two ways: they either lay eggs or they give birth to…

Researchers have finally described a new species of skink from Angola, specimens of which have lurked on museum shelves for more than 70 years. Belgian herpetologist Raymond Laurent first suspected that…

Island-dwelling animals around the globe often face a common threat: alien species that compete with them for food, kill them and their young, and otherwise hamper their ability to survive.…

A fungal disease that has been wiping out amphibians across the world may be the world's most destructive disease ever recorded, according to a new study. Biologists first described the…

The forest floor along Brazil’s Atlantic coast is home to a species of teeny-tiny frogs called pumpkin toadlets (Brachycephalus ephippium), so named because of their bright orange color that warns…

The chief minister of the Malaysian state of Sabah has called on construction crews working on the multi-billion-dollar Pan Borneo Highway project to avoid breaking up the region’s forests and…

Ecuador’s most recently described glass frogs, a model plan for coastal management in Colombia, and using lights to scare away pumas in Chile were among the top recent stories from our…

The ensatina is a fairly common salamander. From southern British Columbia in Canada to northern Baja California in Mexico, it can be found lurking under logs in forests along the…

Animals around the globe are losing ground to farming and ranching, and their numbers are dwindling at the hands of human hunters. But the question of where to direct precious…

There’s another world beneath the soil of Central Texas, one that is dark, wet, and mysterious. It’s an isolated kingdom ruled by a unique group of underground salamanders. Now, new…

Customs officials in the Philippines have seized 1,529 live turtles that they found wrapped in duct tape inside four suitcases abandoned at Manila’s international airport. The confiscated turtles include threatened…

All the amphibian and reptile species that have ever been recorded in Angola have now been included in a comprehensive atlas. Covering published records from 1840 to 2017, the atlas…

Ecologists know that when we humans start tugging at the threads of a food web, the unraveling that results is often catastrophic to the connected species, paving the way for…

I grew up in Southern California, just north of Los Angeles, and spent time in nature consistently throughout my childhood. I credit the under-the-radar natural wonderland of Southern California, as…

Thirteen conservation organizations have banded together to ask policymakers to protect the world’s last wilderness areas by setting aside nearly one-third of the Earth for conservation. “The planet is losing…

When Valentine’s Day rolled around last year, Romeo found himself without a date. That’s because Romeo is a Sehuencas water frog and, as far as scientists knew at the time,…

A leaf-tailed gecko can be incredibly tricky to find. These lizards in the genus Uroplatus, found only in the forests of Madagascar, can masterfully camouflage themselves among dried leaves, sometimes…

A 40-year conservation effort on the remote Juruá River in Brazil’s Amazonas state cut turtle poaching to 2 percent, while also conserving bird, river dolphin and other species too: study.

North America is the world’s hotspot of salamander diversity. The continent is home to all salamander families but one (Hynobiidae, found only in Asia) and nearly half of all salamander…

It all started in 2008 when scientists started noticing fire salamanders in the Netherlands were disappearing. By 2011, nearly all salamanders in affected Dutch populations had been killed off, as…

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Biologists Chace Holzheuser and Bruce Means are on their hands and knees in a Florida swamp, pawing through dark water, leaves and muck as cicadas hum unceasingly…

Growing more than two feet in length, the hellbender (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis) is the largest salamander species in North America. Hellbenders have been on the decline for at least 30 years,…

A recent study found microplastics in the intestines of humans around the globe, and new research has now done the same for sea turtles. Researchers at the UK’s University of…