Sad News

Sadly, Eddie passed away following a very short illness. Whilst he fought to the end, it became clear during surgery that there was not much prospect of a good quality of life for the time he had left, so he went quietly to sleep and never woke up.

He had a good long life and for 10 years he was a good friend. I hope he is happy wherever he is now, chasing locusts and sunning himself.

Not sure what I'll do with the site, but it will stay up for now.

All that remains for the moment is to say take care, and thanks for watching.

Posted by skitz at June 21, 2009 09:11 PM | Link | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Home

A new home. Cam still down as no easy way to stream the vid. Should install a network point in the next week or so.

Hope you're well.

Posted by skitz at November 4, 2007 10:06 PM | Link | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Two Heads Better Than One?

A small news article on Fresno, California's newest resident, a Two-Headed Bearded Dragon called Zack and Wheezy.

Posted by skitz at July 27, 2007 08:14 AM | Link | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to one and all.

Take care kids.

Posted by skitz at December 23, 2006 03:40 PM | Link | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Happy Australia Day

Crack open a cool one and enjoy. :)

Posted by skitz at January 26, 2006 11:44 AM | Link

Happy New Year

Hope you all surivived the festive period. Best wishes for the forthcoming year.

Take care

Posted by skitz at January 2, 2006 09:01 PM | Link

Merry Christmas

Best wishes to one and all.

Posted by skitz at December 24, 2005 12:00 AM | Link

Venom Lineage

A recently published article in the journal Nature suggests that venomous lizards are much more widespread than anyone realised. Furthermore venomous lizards and snakes are in fact descended from a common ancestor that lived about 200 million years ago.

Dr Fry identified the

"prescence of venom toxins in... Iguania... and shows that all lineages possessong toxin-secreting oral glands form a clade, demonstrating a single early origin in lizards and snakes

"characteristics of the ancestral venom system, namely serial, lobular non-compound venom-secreting glands on both the upper and lower jaws, whereas the advanced snakes and anguimorphs lizards ... ...have more derived venom systems characterised by the loss of the mandibular (lower) or maxillary (upper) glands."

Dr Fry's team of international scientists isolated crotamine — the classic venom of rattlesnakes whose bite can be fatal to humans — in the barbata, but emphasised that the bearded dragon's delivery system is primitive and it is present in such small amounts it would not harm a human.

The paper is worth a read, rather than going on just the snippets above. Also please note that this paper has only just been published and has not yet been responded to.

For more information:

• New Scientist - Lizards' poisonous secret is revealed
• Sydney Morning Herald - Venom research bad-mouths goannas

Posted by skitz at November 24, 2005 09:26 AM | Link