Search results

Travel to Africa to meet the longest snake on the continent, the black mamba, which is also one of the fastest in the world.

A basic exploration of the appearance, behavior, and habitat of sea turtles, the migrating shelled reptiles. Also included is a story from folklore explaining how sea turtles cause monsoons.

Texas has a large and diverse turtle population, with forms that are found nowhere else (Cagle’s Map Turtle and the Texas Map Turtle) and wide-ranging species that barely touch the state, including the Painted Turtles and the Rough-footed Mud Turtle. From the Sabine River to El Paso, and from the Rio Grande to the Panhandle, thirty-one native and established exotic turtle species are definitely known in Texas, along with one crocodilian, the American Alligator. Texas Turtles & Crocodilians is t...

This book is a celebration of lizard-hood. It salutes a diversity of form and function unparalleled among terrestrial vertebrates, from apex predators capable of swallowing goats to limbless subterranean insectivores. In equal measure they thrive in a tropical paradise, a waterless terrain so bleak one wonders how anything survives, and the human domain, including domestic gardens and the ruins of past civilizations The book ventures into how lizards exploit those disparate places, and aut...

Where do turtles hail from? Why and how did they acquire shells? These questions have spurred heated debate and intense research for more than two hundred years. Brilliantly weaving evidence from the latest paleontological discoveries with an accessible, incisive look at different theories of biological evolution and their proponents, Turtles as Hopeful Monsters tells the fascinating evolutionary story of the shelled reptiles. Paleontologist Olivier Rieppel traces the evolution of turtles from o...

This exquisitely photographed, informative, and comprehensive book provides one-of-a-kind details and descriptions of snakes. Graphic sidebars highlight the appearance and behavior of the most unusual snakes.

More than twenty-five experts examine the biology, evolution, natural history, and relations with humans of all twenty-two species of crocodilians.

Beautiful to behold and extremely sensitive to its environment, the snake is nonetheless stigmatized as a serpent, a creature that almost universally inspires fear. At a time when so many animals are endangered, who will speak up for the snake? Snake populations are declining precipitously around the globe, but calls for their conservation are muted by fear and prejudice. Saving Snakes offers a new approach to understanding snakes and preserving their populations--an approach built on respect....

Host to more than one hundred species of reptiles and amphibians, the Savannah River Site, a 780-square-kilometer tract in South Carolina, is one of the most intensely studied areas of herpetological ecology in the world. This guide is a summary of basic information on the site's richly varied herpetofauna, from their taxonomy and distribution to their behavior and habitats. Keys to identify the adult and larval forms of the site's known species comprise the core of the guide. These keys are su...

Islands and Snakes contains 13 chapters describing ecological systems with foci on snakes and their ecological roles on islands around the world. Each chapter is written by one or more authors who is an authority on that particular system. Summaries of research on the various islands are written in a narrative manner that includes science as well as personal insights in easily understood language. These varied vignettes of science feature islands around the world, and in all cases, fantastic spe...

This delightful book is one of the first three volumes of Oxford University Press's new Pocket Guide European natural history series. The series fills the need for lighter weight guides for those who want to find out about the common organisms they come across during countryside excursions without having the specialist knowledge required to make detailed species identifications. All the books in the series are attractively designed and generously illustrated with plentiful high quality colour li...