The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) has declared March 8 through April 17 hunting season for Burmese pythons living on state lands in South Florida.

If you wish to hunt pythons, you’ll need a hunting license and you must also purchase a $26 management area permit for reptiles. Centerfire rifles mustn’t be used, but shotguns, pistols and ordinary rifles will be permitted. All kills must be reported to FWC within 36 hours.

You will not be allowed to remove living pythons from state lands.

The Burmese Python (Python molurus bivittatus) is the largest subspecies of the Indian Python and is native to south and south-eastern Asia. During recent years populations of Burmese Python has managed to establish themselves in Everglades, Florida. Since the python is a popular pet, these feral snakes are believed to hail from pets set free by their owners, e.g. because the snakes grew too large to handle or expensive to feed. Hurricane Andrew also released an unknown number of pets, including exotic fish and reptiles, into the wild when it wrecked havoc with homes and establishments along the coast back in 1992.

Over 1300 Burmese Pythons have been captured in the Everglades so far and local authorities now feel that it’s time to enlist civilians in the struggle against this invasive species. The Burmese python competes with the native alligator for food and is also known to eat birds, including several endangered species. Although the alligators seem to fend off the pythons pretty well, it is impossible to tell what long-term effects the introduction of such an efficient top-predator could have on the unique ecosystem of the Everglades.

FWC official Chuck Collins said government isn’t always the best solution to stopping the spread of invasive, exotic species.

”Better solutions are developed when we work with people closest to the issue — in this case, the hunters,” Collins said.

Roughly 50 hunters have already participated in ”Pythons 101” courses arranged by FWC officers and local experts, courses where hunters get to know more about python behavior, biology, habitat and diet as well as capture techniques and how to handle a python in safe way. The participants were also offered a chance to practice in the L-67 canal system.

“The quickest and easiest way to euthanize them is with a sharp instrument like a machete,” said Cole, a snake breeder from Haines City who instructed the hunters to kill rapidly and cause as little stress and suffering as possible. “The veterinary association recommends swift decapitation or a bullet. Don’t club these snakes to death”, he added.

The Burmese python is a semi-aquatic species that likes to stay near water but it can also be encountered in trees. Wild individuals normally stay below 4 meters in length but large specimens are nearly 6 meters long. Within its local range it is a popular source of food and Burmese python parts are also utilized by traditional healers.

You have probably noticed it if you’ve ever tried to catch a fish using your bare hands or a small net: the uncanny ability of these creatures to escape, sometimes even before you make a move. Most fish species are incredibly fast and seem to be virtual mind-readers when it comes to predicting when and where you will make your next attempt.

The reason behind this remarkable talent is a special circuit present in the brains of many species of fish. Fish ears constantly sense the sound pressure on each side of the body and if the ear on one side detects a disturbance, the muscles of the fish will automatically bend the body into a c-shape facing the opposite direction. This involuntary reaction makes it possible for the fish to start swimming way from harms way as quickly as possible. Scientists call it C-start and it is highly advantageous when escaping from predators. That is, until you venture upon the Tentacled snake (Erpeton tentaculatum) of South-East Asia.

While studying the Tentacled snake, Kenneth Catania, associate professor of biological sciences at Vanderbilt University, realized that this snake has found a way of exploiting the C-start reflex to its advantage.

Using video recordings of snake (see below) and prey Catania was able to slow down the chain of events enough to make them noticeable for a human eye, and what he saw amazed him. Instead of fleeing from the snake, fish would swim right into the mouth of the predator nearly four times out of five. How could this be?

When hunting, the Tentacled snake forms its body into a peculiar J-shape with its head at the bottom of the “J”. It then remains absolutely still until suitable prey ventures close enough to the “hook”-area of the J. When it finally strikes, it rarely misses since the fish seem to be magically drawn to the jaws of their attacker. In 120 attacks carried out by four different snakes, Catania observed no less than 78 percent of the fish turning toward the snake’s head instead of swimming away from it.

Catania also noticed something else: before the snakes moved their head to strike, they always flexed a point midway down the body. A hydrophone placed in the aquarium unveiled that by flexing its body, the snake produces sound waves intense enough to trigger the fish’s C-start reflex, and since the sound comes from a spot opposite the head of the hungry snake, the C-start reflex forces the fish to turn and swim directly towards the snake’s mouth.

“Once the C-start begins, the fish can’t turn back,” Catania explained. “The snake has found a way to use the fish’s escape reflex to its advantage. I haven’t been able to find reports of any other predators that exhibit a similar ability to influence and predict the future behavior of their prey,”

The C-start behaviour is actually so predictable that the snake doesn’t even bother to aim for the initial position of its prey and then adjust its direction as most predators would. Instead, it goes directly for the spot where it knows the fish will be heading.

“The best evidence for this is the cases when the snake misses,” says Catania. “Not all the targeted fish react with a C-start and the snake almost always misses those that don’t react reflexively.”

Kenneth Catania studies the brains and behaviour of species with extreme specializations. His new snake study is published this week in the online early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Top 10 list of new species from 2008 has now been compiled by the ASU institute and an international committee of taxonomists. Last year, thousands of new species were described by science, many of them native to hard-to-access regions of our planet, such as remote tropical areas or deep sea habitats, but two of the species on the list actually hail from much less exotic locations: Cardiff and a bottle of hairspray.

“Most people do not realize just how incomplete our knowledge of Earth’s species is,” said Quentin Wheeler, director of the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University, which announced the top 10 new species list. “We are surrounded by such an exuberance of species diversity that we too often take it for granted“.

These are the selected few that made it all the way to the ASU Top 10:

1.) A palm with no close relatives in the neighbourhood

Name: Tahina spectabilis
Common Name: Tahina Palm

This plant produces truly spectacular inflorescence with numerous flowers. After fruiting, the palm dies and collapses. Strangely enough, the genus Tahina is not closely related to any of the other 170+ palm species found on Madagascar. Its closest relatives are instead found in Afghanistan, Thailand, Vietnam and China.

Soon after the publication of the species, seeds were disseminated throughout the palm grower community, raising money for its conservation by the local villagers.

2.) The world’s longest known living insect

Name: Phobaeticus chani
Common Name: This insect has no common name in English. Perhaps Chani’s stick insect would be a suitable English common name? Do any of the readers of this blog know if this species has a common name in Malaysia?

With a body length of 35.6 cm (14 inches) and an overall length of 56.7 cm (22.3 inches), Phobaeticus chani is the world’s longest known now living insect. Once upon a time, insects grew much larger than this, but none of those gigantic insects have survived into our time.

3.) The world’s smallest seahorse

Name: Hippocampus satomiae
Common Name: Satomi’s Pygmy Seahorse

This is the smallest known seahorse in the world. It has a standard length of no more than 13.8mm (0.54 inches) and an approximate height of 11.5mm (0.45 inches).

4.) The world’s smallest snake

Name: Leptotyphlops carlae
Common Name: Barbados Threadsnake

This is the world’s smallest snake with a total length of 104 mm (4.1 inches).

5.) A Welsh ghost slug

Name: Selenochlamys ysbryda
Common Name: Ghost Slug

The word ysbryda is a Latinized version of the Welsh word ysbryd which means ghost or spirit. The name alludes to the species’ ghostly appearance, nocturnal, predatory behaviour and the element of mystery surrounding its origin. Strangely enough, this new species was discovered in Cardiff, UK, a well-collected and densely populated part of the world. (For all the Torchwood fans out there, this mesmerizing find naturally comes as no surprise.)

6.) A snail with a surprising twist

Name: Opisthostoma vermiculum
Common Name: This species has no common name in English. Do any of the readers of this blog know it has a common name in Malaysia?

Most gastropod shells tightly coil according to a logarithmic spiral and have an upper limit of three coiling axes, but the shell of Opisthostoma vermiculum consists of four different coiling axes which is the highest number ever seen in gastropods. As if this wasn’t enough, the shell whorls detach three times and reattach twice to preceding whorls in a fairly consistent manner, which suggests that the coiling strategy is under some form of strict developmental-gene control.

7.) Deep-blue deep-dweller

Name: Chromis abyssus
Common Name: Deep Blue Chromis

Compared to other members of its genus, the deep blue Chromis abyssus lives pretty far from the surface but it is certainly not found at abyssal depths. The name is instead a reference to the BBC documentary Pacific Abyss, since the type specimen was collected during the making of this show. This species was also the first one to have its description registered in the newly launched taxonomic database Zoobank.

8.) A 380 million year old delivery

Name: Materpiscis attenboroughi
Common Name: Mother Fish

This is the oldest known live bearing (viviparous) vertebrate and we know of it from fossil record only. Amazingly, the fossil shows a female fish in the process of giving birth some 380 million years ago. It was found at Gogo Station in Western Australia. The name of the genus, Materpiscis, means “mother fish” in Latin, while the species itself is named in honour of Sir David Attenborough who first drew attention to the Gogo fish sites in his 1979 series Life on Earth.

9.) African decaf

Name: Coffea charrieriana
Common Name: Charrier Coffee

This is a true member of the genus Coffea, but it is completely void of caffeine. Coffea charrieriana is the first known caffeine-free Coffea species from Central Africa and coffee makers are now pondering the idea of using it to make natural decaf coffee.

10.) Hair spray bacteria

Name: Microbacterium hatanonis
Common Name: None

This new species wasn’t found in some remote rainforest or deep down in blue; it was isolated as contaminant of hairspray.

The Top 10 New Species were selected from the thousands of species fully described and published in 2008. The public could nominate species through the IISE Web site and nominations were also generated by IISE staff and committee members themselves. The Committee had complete freedom in making its choices and developing its own criteria to provide a breadth of species attributes and importance.

I am sorry that we don’t have pictures of all species. To see pictures of all species you can here.

If you would like to nominate a species for the 2010 Top 10 New Species please click here.

Unlike many other countries, Sweden has traditionally been blessed with the absence of dangerously venomous spiders, snakes and similar critters, but this might be about to change as more and more new species establish themselves in Scandinavia. One of the latest additions to the Swedish fauna is the Black widow spider, according to Naturhistoriska riksmuseet (Swedish Museum of Natural History) in Stockholm.

“This year about 10 black widows have been sent to me, but I will of course only find out about a small fraction of all discovered specimens”, says Bert Gustavsson, assistant curator at Naturhistoriska riksmuseet, to Swedish news agency Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå (TT). He also adds that a lot of the spiders that reach Sweden as cargo stowaways manage to avoid discovery altogether.

According to Bert Gustavsson, it is safe to assume that the black widow has now established itself in Sweden for good. “One example is the guy in Värmland who imported a car from the U.S. The car was stored in a garage for three years. When he was about to move the car, spiders emerged from it. This means that they had been reproducing in the garage for three years.”

A protective garage is however not necessary for these spiders to thrive and the Swedish climate is not a problem for them since black widow spiders can be found in parts of Canada and northern United States subjected to even colder winters and warmer summers than Sweden.

Swedish hospitals do not hold black widow anti-venom and will instead focus on handling the various symptoms that can appear when a person has been bitten, such as muscle spasms and changes in blood pressure. “Fatalities have occurred around the world, but that depends on how much venom that is injected and the location of the bite” says Dr Anna Landgren at the Swedish Poisons Information Centre to TT. “In 80 percent of the cases the bitten person will only develop mild symptoms in the form of sweating and ache.”

Facts about the Black Widow:

The name black widow spider is used for three different spider species within the genus Latrodectus: Southern black widow (Latrodectus mactans), Northern black widow (Latrodectus variolus), and Western black widow (Latrodectus hesperus). The Southern black widow is native to south-eastern United States, the Northern black widow hails from north-eastern United States and south-eastern Canada, and the Western black widow lives in the western parts of the United States, the south-western parts of Canada, and in much of Mexico.