Doppy Aussie on NGEO again tomorrow ...

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toxinologist

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For those after a Saturday afternoon chuckle ...

National Geographic Channel are screening a new "Snake Wranglers" featuring one of my trips to Reevesby Island chasing black tiger snakes tomorrow afternoon (5.30pm in Qld).

Cheers


David
 
David,

So they are doing re runs of the Commedy Hour :twisted:
 
I used to go to Revesby Beach when I was a young bloke to watch the Submarine races with whatever chicky I had at the time. I didn't realise there were Tiger snakes there but. :? :wink: :shock:
 
Gregory said:
I used to go to Revesby Beach when I was a young bloke to watch the Submarine races with whatever chicky I had at the time.

Ha! That's funny! I thought it was a strictly Mildura recreational sport. I used to do the same thing at the river! Great sport, those sub races! Of course it gets a bit boring waiting for each sub, so you had to find something else to do while you waited, but still a great sport, nevertheless! :wink:
 
very good show david. how many snakes did you find on the island
 
I saw it yesterday and on the same day Mark Oshea's show about the Chappel Island tiger snakes was on. I'm just interested to know if you were the first to discover the tiger snake's survival relied on the availability of mutton bird chicks, or had it already been discovered?
Cheers
 
Yep, was an interesting story David. The only problem with the Snake Wrangler series is that they rarely give us the answer to the question asked at the beginning of the show i.e Is it a separate species or not?? That is not your fault obviously.

I am always frustrated by this as the questions they ask are always interesting...yet we never find out the answers! They should postpone the show until they can tell us the whole story - or have follow-up stories.

So I'm curious as to how your research has progressed...is it a new species of tiger?

Also, how long were you filming on the island...it seemed like there were snakes every 5 minutes!!
 
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Hi folks,

I saw the show for the first time myself on Saturday as well.

I was pretty damn surprised that they said I had discovered that the snakes were mutton bird feeders - especially since that has been common knowledge for at least 50 years - and I had told them exactly that in the production briefing!!

This was my second trip to Reevesby. On the first trip a group of us saw more than thirty tigers and 12-13 death adders in three days. We also went to Roxby Island a few kilometres away and saw two of the much smaller form of tiger snake that live there and feed on lizards rather than birds or rodents.

The NGEO shoot was done four months later in January which isn't the best time to see lots of snakes, and I actually had to work pretty hard to find the ones I did. The island is very open and exposed, and by the end of the shoot I was pretty badly sunburnt despite the weather itself being fairly cool (I was also pretty crook with a flu bug which didn't help either).

The answer as to the question of whether these snakes are a different species or not is contentious. Some researchers have the view that all tiger snakes are Notechis scutatus; others split them into Notechis scutatus and Notechis ater; and others split N.scutatus into N.s.scutatus and N.s.occidentalis, and N.ater into several subspecies based on locality ...

My personal view based on the information I have seen is that the island populations of tiger snakes (whether on Reevesby Is, Roxby Island, Chappel Island or King Island etc) are populations that are certainly on the way to evolving into distinctive species, but probably haven't quite got there (in the molecular sense) just yet. Give them another 20,000 in isolation and I'm sure they will continue to diversify into amazing unique lifeforms.

The bottom line however is that my role in sorting out these questions goes no further than collecting tissue samples and data for use by other researchers - despite the suggestions NGEO made to the contrary. All of my samples were forwarded to the South Australian Museum for inclusion in their collection, and to be available to other researchers - this was a term of the scientific permit issued by SA's wildlife authorities.

My major work continues to be the snakebite problems in Papua New Guinea, and trips to places like Reevesby Island are part of a small side interest in questions of biodiversity and elapid evolution.

Had I actually had any control over the post-production of the show I would have insisted that this be clarified, but apart from answering questions put to me by the producers, I had no real input into post-production or the development of the final storyline - and as I said at the beginning, hadn't seen the show myself until it went to air on Saturday night. As we all know, in Television there always seems to be a lot of "artistic license". Nevertheless these shows are made for a general audience and i guess that if they further people's acceptance of the uniqueness and diversity of snakes then they serve a good purpose.

I just wish they hadn't used the word "mutant" quite so liberally ... :oops:

Cheers


David
 
so whats the deal with the death adder onthe island. are they different from the ones from the mainland like the tigers?
 
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