Tag Archives: rattlesnakes

Episode 97: Dr. Emily Taylor: Cali Snakes & Rattle Cams

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Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Ninety Seven!  And while we’re at it, I hope you all remain safe and healthy out there.

I just got back from a great herping trip to Suriname.  You may remember my conversation with Dick and Lieke back in episode 79 and it was fun to go visit and see how they operate herp tours there, and the answer is they do very well.  I was with a small group and we saw a lot of fabulous herps.  At any rate I am back home for just a few days, allowing me to get this time sensitive episode assembled and in your ears, so to speak.  I return to Peru in just a few days to assist Josh Holbrook with his tropical ecology class, so the next episode will come out in early June.

SMP Patrons! I want to thank James Burnham for his contribution to the So Much Pingle podcast, via Patreon. Much appreciated, James, thank you so much.  And as always, I am grateful to all the show’s patrons who help to keep the show moving forward. And if you’re out there listening and you would like to kick in a few bucks, it’s easy to do, you simply go to the So Much Pingle Patreon page. You can support the show for as little as three bucks a month – less than a fancy cup of coffee! You can also support the show via one-time contributions via PayPal or Venmo (please contact me via email to somuchpingle@gmail.com).

Oh yeah. If you’ve been with the show from the early days or you’ve worked through the back catalog of episodes, you may recall me talking with Dr. Emily Taylor way back in Episode 12.  Well Emily is back with some exciting topics and it’s always a pleasure to talk with her and catch some of that vibrant energy she has. And below are some links for books and cams and papers:

Order link for the California Snakes book and other merchandise

Project Rattlecam website, and Project Rattlecam on YouTube

Link to Savannah Weaver and colleague’s paper on Blunt-nosed Leopard Lizards. Open access.

Link to paper “Effects of relational and instrumental messaging on human perception of rattlesnakes” Open access

Thanks for listening everyone! And as always, please keep the comments and suggestions coming, and please take time to rate the show on your podcast platform! The show email is somuchpingle@gmail.com, and there’s also a So Much Pingle group on Facebook, for discussion, comments, feedback, suggestions, herp confessions, tips for herping better, etc.

-Mike

 

Episode 95: Massasaugas with Dr. Mike Dreslik

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Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Ninety Five!  And while we’re at it, I hope you all remain safe and healthy out there.

SMP Patrons! I want to thank a couple of new Patreoners! – Derek Gillespie and Paul Duren, thank you both so much for supporting the show!  Much appreciated!  And as always, I am grateful to all the show’s patrons who help to keep the show moving forward. And if you’re out there listening and you would like to kick in a few bucks, it’s easy to do, you simply go to the So Much Pingle Patreon page. You can support the show for as little as three bucks a month – less than a fancy cup of coffee! You can also support the show via one-time contributions via PayPal or Venmo (please contact me via email to somuchpingle@gmail.com).

Well, if you’re a fan of the longer episodes then you are in luck – this one was a bit of a challenge, with 13 individual recordings to stitch together, and all recorded in the field to boot.  In late March I spent a long day in the field with Dr. Michael Dreslik, or Drez as folks call him, and his field team, doing field surveys for Massasaugas here in my home state of Illinois.  Mike has been studying saugas for a quarter century now, and it seemed like a good time to check in with him.

Lots of parts to this episode – there’s an interview with Mike to start off, and then we go out in the field to look for massasaugas.  I also talked briefly with everyone on Drez’s survey team, and these little vignettes are scattered throughout the episode.  I briefly touch base with Mike near the end, and then the last is a chat with Xander Perelman,  who is Mike’s PhD candidate, where we talk about some of the other interesting projects that he is working on with saugas and pygmy rattlers, as part of his PhD work.  Oh yeah and Xander provides a lot of narrative during the field recordings, doing a lot of explaining, and I thank him for that.

I want to thank Dr. Michael Dreslik for talking with me and letting me hang out and help look for those hard-to-spot massasaugas.  Let’s not forget all of the folks on the survey team – Emily Ash, Matt Parry, Joey Cannizzaro, Nick Dunham, Tony Easton, Claire Dietrich, and Xander Perelman.

Thanks for listening everyone! And as always, please keep the comments and suggestions coming, and please take time to rate the show on your podcast platform! The show email is somuchpingle@gmail.com, and there’s also a So Much Pingle group on Facebook, for discussion, comments, feedback, suggestions, herp confessions, tips for herping better, etc.

-Mike

Episode 94: Herp Science Sunday: Dr. Alex Krohn & Dr. Harry Greene

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Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Ninety Four!  And while we’re at it, I hope you all remain safe and healthy out there.

SMP Patrons! I want to thank a couple of folks for their support – Clint Guadiana, for his contribution via Patreon, and Dave Weber, who made another one-time contribution via PayPal.  Thank you Clint and Dave! And as always, I am grateful to all the show’s patrons who help to keep the show moving forward. And if you’re out there listening and you would like to kick in a few bucks, it’s easy to do, you simply go to the So Much Pingle Patreon page. You can support the show for as little as three bucks a month – less than a fancy cup of coffee! You can also support the show via one-time contributions via PayPal or Venmo (please contact me via email to somuchpingle@gmail.com).

Here we go with the eighth installment of Herp Science Sunday with Dr. Alex Krohn.   I’ve really enjoyed doing these shows with Alex, and this one was no exception – a conversation with Dr. Harry Greene on a variety of subjects including Pleistocene rewilding, Bolson Tortoises, a breakdown of serpent prey items, and much, much more.  Harry is a deep thinker and don’t be surprised if you find yourself thinking deeply about some of the topics we discuss!

Thanks for listening everyone! And as always, please keep the comments and suggestions coming, and please take time to rate the show on your podcast platform! The show email is somuchpingle@gmail.com, and there’s also a So Much Pingle group on Facebook, for discussion, comments, feedback, suggestions, herp confessions, tips for herping better, etc.

-Mike

 

 

Episode 82: Bucket Cams, Rattlesnakes and more with Dr. Andrew Hoffman

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Hello everyone and welcome to the show!  Mike Pingleton here, and I am your host for these proceedings.  And here we go with Episode Eighty Two, and I hope you all remain safe and healthy out there.  It’s a lovely Sunday morning in May and I can’t wait to get out in it after I’m done putting this together.

So Much Pingle Patrons! A big thank you to the show’s newest patron, Skylar Hopkins!  Thank you Skylar! And as always, I want to thank everyone who keeps the show rolling along. And if you’re out there listening and you would like to kick in a few bucks, it’s easy to do, you simply go to the So Much Pingle Patreon page. You can support the show for as little as three bucks a month – less than a fancy cup of coffee! You can also support the show via one-time contributions via PayPal or Venmo (please contact me via email to somuchpingle@gmail.com).

Our guest this week is Dr. Andrew Hoffman lately of The Ohio State University, and we talk about bucket cams, rattlesnakes, outreach and education, the Life Underfoot You Tube channel, and Andrew’s new job as assistant professor at St. John Fisher University.

Thanks for talking with me Andrew! And thanks for listening everyone! And as always, please keep the comments and suggestions coming, and please take time to rate the show on your podcast platform! The show email is somuchpingle@gmail.com, and there’s also a So Much Pingle group on Facebook, for discussion, comments, feedback, suggestions, herp confessions, methods for picking up water snakes, tips for herping better, etc.

-Mike

Episode 73: Life Underfoot with Zach Truelock

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Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Seventy Three! Tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in the US and I wish everyone a good holiday.  It’s good to be back in the studio again after a few weeks off.

As always, I want to say thank you to all of the show’s patrons!  I’m grateful for everyone’s contributions and it does keep the show rolling along. And if you’re out there listening and you would like to kick in a few bucks, it’s easy to do, you simply go to the So Much Pingle Patreon page. You can support the show for as little as three bucks a month – less than a fancy cup of coffee! You can also support the show via one-time contributions via PayPal or Venmo (please contact me via email to somuchpingle@gmail.com).

Our guest this week is Zach Truelock, an Indiana native who is currently doing some very important conservation work in Florida.  Zach has been involved with a number of very cool herp conservation projects over the past few years, and also a co-creator for the Life Underfoot YouTube channel.  I want to highlight a few links for Life Underfoot, some of which we talk about in the episode:

Can We Save North America’s Rarest Salamander?

Spotted Salamanders In A Vernal Pool

Timber Rattlesnake Male Combat

Jefferson’s Salamanders

Thanks for listening everyone! And as always, please keep the comments and suggestions coming, and please take time to rate the show on your podcast platform! The show email is somuchpingle@gmail.com, and there’s also a So Much Pingle group on Facebook, for discussion, comments, feedback, suggestions, herp confessions, tips for herping better, etc.

-Mike

 

Episode 53: Tony Daly-Crews and the Rattlesnake Conservancy

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Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Fifty Three!  Things are good here in central Illinois, and I hope you all remain safe and healthy out there.  I wish you safe travels if you are journeying for the upcoming Christmas holiday season.

Patrons!  I want to give a shout-out to new Patreon member Ben Stegenga!  Thank you Ben, much appreciated!  And thanks as always to all of the folks who help keep the show going and to reach fifty-plus episodes!. To others in the listening audience, if you like the show, please consider supporting it via the So Much Pingle Patreon page. You can also support the show via one-time contributions via PayPal or Venmo (please contact me via email to somuchpingle@gmail.com).

Calendars – if you listened to the Bob is Back episode a few weeks back and then bought a calendar from Bob Fersuon,, I want to say thank you very much! Bob broke last year’s record for calendar orders, by more than three hundred! He received over 1100 calendar orders and as most of you know, all of the proceeds go to preserving rainforest habitat for herps and birds and jaguars and so forth. Great work, Bob, and thanks again everyone who participated..

Our guest this week is Tony Daly-Crews. I was on a conference call a few weeks ago with Tony and some other folks, and he was representing the Rattlesnake Conservancy. And while we were talking a little bell went ding somewhere in my brain, and at the end of the call I asked Tony if he would come on the show and talk about the Rattlesnake Conservancy and he graciously said yes. I knew a little but not a lot about this non-profit organization, so I learned quite a bit from my conversation with Tony, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.  And folks, be sure to check out the Rattlesnake Conservancy webpage and you can also follow them on Facebook and Instagram. You can also buy some merch and/or make a donation to support the organization ( I just did! ).

Thanks for coming on the show, Tony, and thanks for listening everyone!  And as always, please keep the comments and suggestions coming, and please take time to rate the show on your podcast platform! The show email is somuchpingle@gmail.com, and there’s also a So Much Pingle group on Facebook, for discussion, comments, feedback, suggestions, herp confessions, tips for herping better, etc.

Cheers!  Mike

 

Episode 50: Herp Science Sunday with Dr. Alex Krohn

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Hello everyone, I hope you all remain safe and healthy out there, and welcome to Episode Fifty!  Yay!  It feels good to make it to half-a-hundred shows.  It’s a nice milestone to reach!.  And this episode features another installment of Herp Science Sunday with Dr. Alex Krohn, and I’m very excited about that and I hope you are too.

Patrons!  I want to give a shout-out to Peter Berg for his one-time contribution.  Thanks Pete!  And thanks as always to all of the folks who help keep the show going and to reach fifty episodes!. To others in the listening audience, if you like the show, please consider supporting it via the So Much Pingle Patreon page. You can also support the show via one-time contributions via PayPal or Venmo (please contact me via email to somuchpingle@gmail.com).

I’m excited to put out another installment of Herp Science Sunday, as I received some encouraging feedback and comments about the first show Alex and I did.  Plus I just enjoy talking to Alex, his enthusiasm is contagious and I love hearing his perspective on all things herpetological.  We will be talking once again about two different papers, but the conversation also veers off on an unexpected and totally cool tangent and I will attempt to tie it all up in a neat and tidy package in the epilog after our conversation.

First paper up for discussion:

Bromeliad Sampling: A Passive Technique for Arboreal Amphibians across Ecosystems in the Neotropics
Yonatan Aguilar-Cruz, Marıa de los Angeles Arenas-Cruz, Leticia M. Ochoa-Ochoa, and Gerhard Zotz
Ichthyology & Herpetology 109, No. 1, 2021, 211–218

Second paper:

Frequency modulation of rattlesnake acoustic display affects acoustic distance perception in humans
Michael Forsthofer, Michael Schutte, Harald Luksch, Tobias Kohl, Lutz Wiegrebe, Boris P. Chagnaud
Current Biology 31, 1–6, October 11 2021

For this rattlesnake acoustics paper, be sure to check out the associated YouTube video that provides insight into how the experiments were run.

Bonus paper!

Homoplasy: The Result of Natural Selection, or Evidence of Design Limitations?
David B. Wake
The American Naturalist, Vol. 138, No. 3 (Sep., 1991), pp. 543-567
(see page 560 for miniaturization discussion)

You can get all three papers from the SciHub repository, or you can drop me an email and I will send you a PDF.

And as always, thanks for listening everyone!  Please keep the comments and suggestions coming, and please take time to rate the show on your podcast platform! The show email is somuchpingle@gmail.com, and there’s also a So Much Pingle group on Facebook, for discussion, comments, feedback, suggestions, how to see your own genome using this one weird trick, herp confessions, tips for herping better, etc.

Cheers!  Mike

 

 

Episode 49: Never Too Tired (To Talk About Rattlesnakes)

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Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Forty Nine!  Things are good here in central Illinois, and I hope you all remain safe and healthy out there. Here we go with another midweek episode because once again I will be out and about this weekend. A lot of folks say that May is THE month for finding amphibians and reptiles, here in the Northern Hemisphere. But I have to say that I am nearly as busy in October as I am in May, and I see herps in comparable numbers. So I have a big block of away-time coming up in mid-October so I will be working in new episodes as I can. And as always, I will be bringing my mobile recording rig on my journeys in order to talk with people, because those opportunities are too good to pass up. And I’m looking forward to some long hikes on warm October afternoons, and cool nights around a campfire. And I’m looking forward to seeing some old friends and maybe making some new ones.

Patrons!  Thanks as always to all of the folks who help keep the show going. To others in the listening audience, if you like the show, please consider supporting it via the So Much Pingle Patreon page. You can also support the show via one-time contributions via PayPal or Venmo (please contact me via email to somuchpingle@gmail.com).

So this week’s show features another one of those rambling around-the-room discussions that I occasionally capture. And one was recorded this past June, in Mexico City. To be more precise, in a hotel next to the airport in Mexico City, and I had to do some fancy filtering to remove most of the sounds of jet engines taking off and landing. This was at the tail end of a herping adventure in Puebla and Veracruz, mostly Veracruz, and about half of our group had already flown home and the rest of us were waiting our turns. This was a long trip, two full weeks plus travel days, and everyone was very tired when I turned on the recorder. So you can tell from the show’s opening minutes that the energy level in the room was lower than low, but as the discussion progressed you can hear folks getting a little more animated about the subject material and their brains were getting fully engaged, just proving that many of us are never too tired to talk about rattlesnakes.

I want to thank Mack, Andy, John, Bryan, Tim, Armin, Andrew, Pat, and Max for pulling themselves up on one elbow and joining in the discussion.  And as always, thanks for listening everyone!  Please keep the comments and suggestions coming, and please take time to rate the show on your podcast platform! The show email is somuchpingle@gmail.com, and there’s also a So Much Pingle group on Facebook, for discussion, comments, feedback, suggestions, herp confessions, tips for herping better, etc.

Cheers!  Mike

 

Episode 46: Training on Venomous with Joe Ehrenberger

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Matt and Joe

Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Forty Six!  I hope you all remain safe and healthy out there. It’s the dog days of summer here at So Much Pingle world headquarters and the afternoons are plenty hot and humid. The flower garden still looks pretty good, but the tomato plants are scraggly and tired. But in my general area it’s also the time of year when female copperheads and rattlesnakes are close to giving birth. I got to see a couple gravid timber rattlesnakes last weekend while out with some friends, and the snakes looked ready to pop and I expect they will do so in just a few short weeks. And of course when gravid snakes are encountered, I prefer just to hang back and observe them without any real disturbance, just let them do their thing and I’m grateful just to see them.

SMP Patrons!  I want to thank our latest Patreon member, Benjamin Genter!  Thank you so much for supporting the show, Ben!  And thanks as always to all of the folks who help keep the show going. And folks, if you like the show, please consider supporting it via the So Much Pingle Patreon page. You can also support the show via one-time contributions via PayPal or Venmo (please contact me via email to somuchpingle@gmail.com).

This week’s episode features a conversation with Joe Ehrenberger, and while the main thrust of the interview concerns the venomous snake training that Joe provides to first responders and other professionals, we talk about much, much more. Joe and I have been friends for quite a while, and we’ve shared some cool adventures over the years, including trips to Mexico and Cuba. Joe and his wife Kelly are new parents to a little cutie bug named Emma, and they are quite busy as you might imagine, so I was happy to get a little chunk of time with Joe for this interview. Joe has environmental consulting company out in the Denver area, and we talked about some of the projects the company is involved with, including one in particular. And there is a bonus guest appearance by Matt Cage, friend of the show and my Peruvian herping buddy. Matt works with Joe doing venomous snake training modules and so we’re getting two perspectives on that important work.

Thanks Joe and Matt for coming on the show!  And thanks for listening everyone!  And as always, please keep the comments and suggestions coming, and please take time to rate the show on your podcast platform! The show email is somuchpingle@gmail.com, and there’s also a So Much Pingle group on Facebook, for discussion, comments, feedback, suggestions, herp confessions, the best gloves for wrangling caterpillars, tips for herping better, etc.

Cheers!  Mike

 

Episode 44: Human-Snake Interactions with Dr. Heather Bateman

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Hello again, everyone, and welcome to Episode Forty Four!  I hope you all remain safe and healthy out there!  It’s hot, humid, and full-bore summer here at the SMP world headquarters, so I took a little time off yesterday for some creek walking and queen-snaking.  The cold water felt great and there were plenty of Nerodia sipedon and Regina septemvittata to observe.  I like the fact that when it’s miserably hot, I can change my game a little and still get some herp-time in.

Patrons!  Thanks as always to all of the folks who help keep the show going. To others in the listening audience, if you like the show, please consider supporting it via the So Much Pingle Patreon page. You can also support the show via one-time contributions via PayPal or Venmo (please contact me via email to somuchpingle@gmail.com).

This week’s guest is Dr. Heather Bateman, an associate professor at at Arizona State University’s College of Integrative Science and Arts, and a wildlife ecologist as well as an educator.  Heather is the recent co-author of the paper “Unwanted Residential Wildlife: Evaluating Social-Ecological Patterns for Snake Removals” published in Global Ecology and Conservation earlier this year  It’s an interesting paper and a little complicated, and I’m grateful to Dr. Bateman for unpacking the publication and breaking it down for me.  Also, ASU put together a short 3 min video that gives a little back story to the Bateman et al. paper – it’s very well done and it features Heather and Bryan Hughes and some cute buzztails, so be sure to check it out!

Thanks for coming on the show, Heather!  I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation and we also chatted about some of her other projects (she is a busy person!). And as always, thanks for listening everyone!  Please keep the comments and suggestions coming, and please take time to rate the show on your podcast platform! The show email is somuchpingle@gmail.com, and there’s also a So Much Pingle group on Facebook, for discussion, comments, feedback, suggestions, herp confessions, tips for herping better, etc.

Cheers!  Mike