A few photographs of my critters - part 1 - Page 7

infernalis · 02-07-12, 08:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by crocdoc

Nope! I did drop a hint!

right here....

Quote:

Originally Posted by crocdoc

Okay, more shots taken away from home.

what a field trip that must be..

youngster · 02-07-12, 08:37 PM

Whew I failed pretty hard. That's a nice looking lizard though.
I admit, I really didn't think that was a komodo

The only ones I can identify easily are savs, laces, and perenties

DragonsEye · 02-07-12, 08:41 PM

Awesome pics, Crocdoc.

Q: When allowing the monitors to wander around the house, isn't a bit of an issue to clean up after them if they choose to defecate while out and about?

crocdoc · 02-07-12, 08:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by infernalis

what a field trip that must be..

'Awesome' doesn't quite cover it. It was amazing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DragonsEye

Q: When allowing the monitors to wander around the house, isn't a bit of an issue to clean up after them if they choose to defecate while out and about?

They're creatures of habit, so I try to slot in with their routines. Normally they defecate before they are let out, but lately the male has been going later than the female so sometimes it's just easier to leave them in the enclosure until he's done his bit before letting them out. The female is pretty comical in that regard - she'll come down from the basking spot and sit in the corner from which I normally let them out. If I try to let her out, though, she'll often just look at me. A few minute later she'll wander off, defecate, then come back and insist on being let out. It seems to me that she's waiting for that. I don't think she likes defecating outside the enclosure, whereas the male is the opposite and seems to hold on until he's let out.

BarelyBreathing · 02-07-12, 08:52 PM

My bad. I totally thought you meant on a drive or something, not out of country.

crocdoc · 02-07-12, 09:14 PM

Juvenile dragon from Rinca Island, where the dragons are more colourful than on Komodo Island itself. The hatchlings (ie much younger than this animal) are patterned quite similarly to lace monitors, particularly in the banding on the neck.

Big male dragon hanging around the ranger's hut on Komodo, hoping for scraps.

A dragon heading towards me just before the ranger suggested I back away.

Typical savannah habitat in which most of the dragons are found. This is Rinca.

A dragon we spotted in the monsoon forest on Komodo.

Same dragon, different angle

Hiking hazard on Rinca. Hey, I think there's something on the trail ahead.

infernalis · 02-07-12, 09:21 PM

The photos are amazing..

youngster · 02-07-12, 09:26 PM

Superb, thanks for sharing.

BarelyBreathing · 02-07-12, 09:42 PM

Oh man, I'm insanely envious. My brother is about to go over there to study them. I have some pictures of hatchling komodos, but these are captive.

**millertime89** · 02-07-12, 09:43 PM

God I want to make it over to Indonesia and experience all the amazing wildlife in their natural habitats.

crocdoc · 02-07-12, 09:45 PM

When's your brother going to be there and where's he going to be stationed? I may be heading back later this year.

crocdoc · 02-07-12, 09:53 PM

Dragon food, small to large

Russell's viper (although I think this is now classified as a separate species)

White-lipped viper

Flying lizard, Draco sp (probably Draco volans)

Tokay gecko. This was in a tree near where the buffalo above was photographed. They may be common pets in the US, but I still got a buzz the first time I heard one calling at night, and recognised it as a tokay. They have a very clear call that sounds either like "GEH-KOH GEH-KOH" or "TOE-KAY TOE-KAY".

Baby reticulated python in a cavity on the wall of a bat cave on Flores. The fuzziness isn't lack of focus, it's smeared guano and condensation on the lens. That particular adventure was 'interesting' rather than awesome. It would make a whole post on its own, but as I have almost no photographs to go with it, it is mostly in the telling. The white-lipped viper, above, was found near the cave, though, along with two others.

**millertime89** · 02-07-12, 09:56 PM

please share the story, I would love to read it.

BarelyBreathing · 02-07-12, 10:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by crocdoc

When's your brother going to be there and where's he going to be stationed? I may be heading back later this year.

He's going in August. I'm not sure he knows where he's going yet, though.

crocdoc · 02-07-12, 10:48 PM

There's a cave on Flores called Istana Ular ('snake palace'). It's starting to become quite famous now. It's full of bats and reticulated pythons go in there, particularly during the dry season, to maintain humidity and to feed on the bats. My mates and I hired a guide, the best known one in the region, to take us there. We got permission from the locals and from the landowners (the cave features heavily in local myths and it is thought that the snakes represent ancestors, if I remember correctly) and headed towards the cave.

As we walked into the cave, the guide warned us that there may be some guano (bat droppings). At first we didn't think much of it, as it was not much deeper than the treads of our boots. Within minutes we were thigh deep in guano the consistency of mangrove mud. Thigh deep, no exaggeration. And when I say it was like mangrove mud, I mean that it sucks in your legs, so if you slow down or stop moving you will get stuck and may not be able to get moving again.

That's issue #1

Issue #2 was that the cave got warmer the further we went in. We were already in the tropics, so it was hot as hell outside, but one would expect it to get cooler the further in we went. But no, it got warmer. The breaths of thousands of bats combined with decomposing guano ensures that it is a cosy high 30s C in there.

Issue #3 was the humidity. Not only did it get warmer as we went further into the cave, but the air got more and more humid until it was at around 99%.

Issue #4 was the insects. Whenever my headlamp beam scanned across the surface of the guano, a sea of cockroaches would scatter. That's okay, it was the insects around my face that were a nuisance. Attracted by my headlamp, there was a little cloud of them right in front of my face at all times. That on its own isn't a huge issue, until you consider Issue #5

Issue #5 was the air quality. The further in the cave we went, the less oxygen there was to breathe, the more heavily saturated the air was with carbon dioxide, ammonia and nitrogen - a combination of breathing bats and decaying guano. This meant that even walking at a slow pace, we were breathing rapidly at all times. Going back to issue #4, this meant there was a small cloud of insects going in and out of our mouths with each and every breath, some of which would make it into our lungs. A few coughs and you'd want to breathe in, right? No, more ammonia, more insects, more coughing.

Issue #5 meant that if you got stuck in the guano (issue #1), you'd exhaust what little air you had to breathe in no time. Exercise in a low oxygen environment is not a good idea. At one point one of my mates got stuck in the guano and couldn't move. I tried to help him by grabbing a part of a wall (covered in guano also, making it slippery - issue #6) and then pulling on his arm slowly until he finally freed one leg enough to start moving slowly again, but by then he was toast. The effort of trying to get out exhausted his blood oxygen and he just couldn't catch his breath again. Imagine sprinting and then trying to catch your breath while breathing into a bag. He had to leave the cave in order to recover his breath. My other mate got stuck a bit further in and although he eventually freed himself, he also (sensibly) decided to leave the cave.

The guide and I continued on for a while, but eventually we reached a point where the guano was too deep to go any further. He put his walking stick in and it seemed to keep going, so we decided that was enough and turned around to leave. By that stage every part of me was covered in guano, including my camera, so when I stopped to photograph the little reticulated python near the entrance of the cave I was trying to wipe a guano covered lens with a sopping wet sleeve (did I mention the heat and 99% humidity?) which was also covered in guano.

When I got outside the cave I found my two mates by the stream, gently washing off bits of guano. I said "you're both mad", put my camera down and walked straight to the middle of the stream, clothes, boots and all, laid down under the water and stayed there as the water rushed over me, until I needed to breathe. It's hard to describe, but that cave was one of the strangest experiences of my life (and the others agreed on that). It's definitely the sort of thing only hard-core reptile people would do, just to see some snakes. Unfortunately, there weren't many retics in there at the time, for it was the wrong time of year, but we did see a fair number of vipers nearby.

Apparently the guano isn't always that deep and is sometimes more fluid in consistency, so less arduous.