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Snake found in broccoli

Looks like "full retreat" mode.

No posts since April 26th; we're onto the "pretending the thread doesn't exist" stage.

Oh, well.
 
SteveGrenard said:
Some follow-up of info on the snake in question, further compensation being sought by snake offended Tina :

from ANOVA News website:
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As a fan of ULs I just love the emerging morphing of Googled info that (all) non-venomous snake bites leave a horseshoe shaped bite mark to "characteristic" of the Horseshoe whipsnake. Named for actually for the horseshoe pattern it's scales make.
 
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Pal2 said:
So what was the error?
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As far as I can make out, the error to which Claus alluded was indeed that snakes can't open their eyes (on account of not being able to close them, on account of not having what almost everyone in the world with one notable exception would call eyelids).
 
Rolfe said:
Why, thank you sir! (Takes a bow.)

I'm sort of interested to see what happens if another post of Claus's to that effect is met with a link to the "Larsen list" above, and the observation thati asked first, and goose and gander sauce and so on. On the other hand, he's so bloody rude sometimes that maybe I just can't be arsed.

Seems likely that this has also been tried before, but I didn't see the results. Like I said, he has the hide of a rhinocerous.
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Has anyone noticed a change?

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=57038

Edited to try and fix url
 
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Yeah, do tell. He seems to be right back in "any text means exactly what I say it means, irrespective of the actual content" mode, in the Susan Blackmore climate change thread.

Please post a clear link.

Rolfe.

PS. We had a snake in for post mortem yesterday and I took the opportunity to have a good look at the eyes. It was a white reticulated python, by the way, which had had to be put down because it was paralysed. It took quite a bit of poking to be certain that one had seen the spectacle. I had rather thought the structure was more obvious. In fact the rim round the eyes was very similar to a mammal, but it just didn't hold moveable eyelids. Then there was a very definite (sorry, I'm hazy about the terminology and my anatomy books are in the lab but I think palpebral fossa?, anyway, the space you'd put eye drops in). I hadn't expected that. The spectacle, when visualised, appeared to us amateurs to resemble a continuation of the conjunctiva across the cornea more than any sort of eyelid.

Steve, I'd be grateful for your comments on this. Unfortunately my browser is currently refusing to display graphics so I'm a bit stymied.
 
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Rolfe said:
PS. We had a snake in for post mortem yesterday and I took the opportunity to have a good look at the eyes. It was a white reticulated python, by the way, which had had to be put down because it was paralysed. It took quite a bit of poking to be certain that one had seen the spectacle. I had rather thought the structure was more obvious. In fact the rim round the eyes was very similar to a mammal, but it just didn't hold moveable eyelids. Then there was a very definite (sorry, I'm hazy about the terminology and my anatomy books are in the lab but I think palpebral fossa?, anyway, the space you'd put eye drops in). I hadn't expected that. The spectacle, when visualised, appeared to us amateurs to resemble a continuation of the conjunctiva across the cornea more than any sort of eyelid.

Steve, I'd be grateful for your comments on this. Unfortunately my browser is currently refusing to display graphics so I'm a bit stymied.
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Since palpebral refers to eyelids and snakes don't have any I am not familiar with the use of this term for snakes. You can't get drops into the eye through the potential space circling the orbit.

I have found an excellent cross section of the snakes eye from Richard Shine in Australia. It is a pdf so maybe your browser/pc will "see" graphics downloaded this way:

www.bio.usyd.edu.au/Shinelab/shine/reprints/402originofsnakes.pdf


Treating a snake's eyes is a problem as they are effectively sealed/prevented from the instillation of medicines such as eye drops. The eyecap or spectacle is continuous with the top layer of skin which becomes "cuticle" and is shed in one piece (including the eye cap) periodically.


Picture of a Shed Snake Skin showing the eye cap intact:


http://www.geocities.com/happyherps/shedding.html


There are vets researching the snake's eye. I have heard they are developing techniques to breech the eyecap for direct treatment. Right now injected or oral meds that have a systemic effect are used to treat such things as eye infections which are rare but not unknown. Due to the spectacle a snakes' eyes are well protected against most insults other than trauma. Occasionally a poor shed fails to allow for the eyecap to be removed and it has to be carefully removed with a forceps after it is allowed to soften by soaking the animal first.



http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/whatsnew/article2.cfm?id=1456




If you put down a python with flaccid paralysis you must suspect a highly infectious common disease of boas and pythons (boids) called inclusion body disease or IBD. Other symptoms are also present but paralysis is commonly seen in younger animals which I suppose in a retic could be less than 6 feet or so.

Deficiency diseases in snakes are rare since they get everything they need by eating whole rodents and don't need sunlight to metabolize calcium. That is unless they are sick and not eating at all.


http://duke.usask.ca/~misra/virology/stud2005/exotic/ibd.html

 
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SteveGrenard said:
Since palpebral refers to eyelids and snakes don't have any I am not familiar with the use of this term for snakes. You can't get drops into the eye through the potential space circling the orbit.
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You could have in this case. I was quite surprised. I don't know what the correct terminology is here, I was merely trying to establish the description of what I was referring to.
SteveGrenard said:
I have found an excellent cross section of the snakes eye from Richard Shine in Australia. It is a pdf so maybe your browser/pc will "see" graphics downloaded this way:

www.bio.usyd.edu.au/Shinelab/shine/reprints/402originofsnakes.pdf
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Thanks, that did indeed work. Unfortunately the structure I was talking about isn't labelled on the diagram, although it is depicted. The reflexive "flaps" shown at either side of the spectacle. These were rather more prominent than is implied in the diagram, and in fact gave the appearance of being vestigial eyelids without the actual lids. It's the space behind these flaps I was referring to. I didn't realise it was there at all, I had thought from the various descriptions that the spectacle was a simple continuation of the scaled skin without such flaps.
SteveGrenard said:
Treating a snake's eyes is a problem as they are effectively sealed/prevented from the instillation of medicines such as eye drops. The eyecap or spectacle is continuous with the top layer of skin which becomes "cuticle" and is shed in one piece (including the eye cap) periodically.

Picture of a Shed Snake Skin showing the eye cap intact:
http://www.geocities.com/happyherps/shedding.html
Click to expand...
Well, of course trying to put eye drops in there would be of no practical use, because the spectacle prevents them from coming into contact with the cornea. I was merely describing what I saw as being like the place where eye drops go, not suggesting that one might use it for that purpose in the snake.

Unfortunately the graphics problem prevented me from accessing that picture.
SteveGrenard said:
If you put down a python with flaccid paralysis you must suspect a highly infectious common disease of boas and pythons (boids) called inclusion body disease or IBD. Other symptoms are also present but paralysis is commonly seen in younger animals which I suppose in a retic could be less than 6 feet or so.
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That was on the list of differentials, I believe. Histopathology of the CNS is in hand.

The really creepy thing was, after the snake had been thoroughly dissected and its organs laid out on the table, it was noticed that the heart was contracting, about once or twice a minute. The technician said, cool! I said, spooky.

By the way, the vet who sent the body in for PM said that the snake was pyrexic. Snakes are poikilotherms, right? How can they be pyrexic - other than lying too long in the sun that is?

Rolfe.
 
NoZed Avenger said:
That one should work. My apologies. Long day at work.
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Wow. There may be a difference in approach, but not in the superiority complex. Why was the alligator story such a trigger point with him anyway?

How do you think he's doing in the Susan Blackmore, climate change expert thread? Hagiography (if that's the right word), and insisting that she must have meant what he would have preferred her to have written, rather than what she actually wrote. Because she is a "True Skeptic" [TM], so every word must be defended to the last breath, no matter how batty. Even to the point where Claus now knows that he's referring to what she actually wrote, and I'm making things up.

Alice in Wonderland, anyone?

You're right, the scary thing is that Randi apparently likes and trusts this guy. I've seen less firmly closed minds on oysters.

Rolfe.
 
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Rolfe said:
The really creepy thing was, after the snake had been thoroughly dissected and its organs laid out on the table, it was noticed that the heart wascontracting, about once or twice a minute. The technician said, cool! I said, spooky.
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Since hearts have intrinsic pacemakers this is probably not unusual.

By the way, the vet who sent the body in for PM said that the snake was pyrexic. Snakes are poikilotherms, right? How can they be pyrexic - other than lying too long in the sun that is?
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Snakes are ectotherms and their body temperature varies with their substrate and air temperature. Poikilotherm derives from the Greek which translates to "variable temperature" which I don't feel is quite as accurate as ecotherm but I have seen poikilotherm used for amphibians, reptiles
and fish to differentiate them from birds and mammals which have a (normally) non-variable temperature. Reptiles do not have hypothalamic regulation of body temperature but they do thermoregulate by moving from warm to cool or from cool or warm locations. Snakes particularly do this to digest their food by lying on warm substrates (they even sell heating pads for part of a snake's cage to permit this) which is why we see them on the roads at night which retain the day's heat. As the heat dissipates they move off into the brush. There are studies that have observed reptiles with infections thermoregulating by moving to a warmer location technically making themselves hyperpyrexic.

I can't imagine this snake being hyperpyrexic unless the owner had kept the snake overheated with heating pads or lamps.
 
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That's what I thought, niceties of terminology aside. I don't see how he could have taken a snake's temperature anyway. The mind boggles. (You're right, it wasn't an adult, wasn't a lot more then 3 feet.)

I suppose histopathology will reveal all, it usually does.

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
That's what I thought, niceties of terminology aside. I don't see how he could have taken a snake's temperature anyway. The mind boggles. (You're right, it wasn't an adult, wasn't a lot more then 3 feet.)

I suppose histopathology will reveal all, it usually does.

Rolfe.
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Because this is a highly contagious disease until or unless it is confirmed or ruled out, you have to make sure everything used is well disinfected
or disposed of. If the owner has other snakes he should be cautioned...although frankly if the retrovirus is present in any other snakes he has there is nothing that can be done other to contain or isolate them and then euthanize them.

I guess the thermoregulating studies I recall were able to take the temperature with various probes. Sticking a thermomenter in the cloaca is probably not accurate. Maybe the snake just felt hot......maybe he had one of those stick on thermometers and he put it on the snakes forehead or something....:)
 
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The term I was looking for is apparently conjunctival fornix. That snake had that, and indeed it is also implied in the diagram in the pdf file. As I said, if I had to describe the spectacle as anything, it looked like a continuation of the conjunctiva to cover the cornea. Interesting.

Ah, I'm getting that picture now, and the shed skin corresponds with what I saw on the dead snake. Interesting again, not quite what I'd envisaged from the bare descriptions. In spite of what the CD-ROM I quoted earlier said, the actual appearance of the spectacle is indeed very unlike anything one might think of describing as an eyelid, in my opinion.

Yes, yes, I know, but we don't see many snakes and I'm not a herpetologist, and I'd just never looked that closely at the eyes before.

Rolfe.
 
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Rolfe said:
Wow. There may be a difference in approach, but not in the superiority complex. Why was the alligator story such a trigger point with him anyway?
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Americans and guns. It's like a red flag to a cartoon bull (as opposed to a real one, where the color doesn't matter).

How do you think he's doing in the Susan Blackmore, climate change expert thread? Hagiography (if that's the right word), and insisting that she must have meant what he would have preferred her to have written, rather than what she actually wrote. Because she is a "True Skeptic" [TM], so every word must be defended to the last breath, no matter how batty. Even to the point where Claus now knows that he's referring to what she actually wrote, and I'm making things up.
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I read part of that, and agree. It's particularly hard to understand the stated certainty and vehemence on her "true" intent when what is being presented is clearly an obvious veneer of pure guesses over a latticework of wishes and hopes.
 
He's reappeared on that, still hugging his unique insights. I haven't time to do anything, feel free if you've got a moment.

Rolfe.
 
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