Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
SNAKES ALIVE
I first met Bob Kiwala shortly after the aquarium reopened. He'd been
working temporarily up at the University of California's Bodega Ma-
rine Station and had started at Steinhart as an aquarist working with
assorted species of fishes. A short time after Bob arrived, Earl Herald
came up with the idea that everyone should be able to do everything.
Although Bob's interests, training, and expertise were in marine biol-
ogy, he was ordered by Herald to work with the reptiles.
Herald's specialty was ichthyology, but he had a strong interest in
all cold-blooded vertebrates, and as a result Steinhart Aquarium had
an extensive collection of reptiles and amphibians as well as fish. These
were all under the direction of one of the herpetologists, who shall go
unnamed. I wasn't able to learn much about the herpetologist's pro-
fessional background, but I did know that he had a fascination with
venomous snakes. He loved to show o¤ by handling deadly ones; the
more dangerous they were, the happier he was.
This herpetologist had accumulated quite an extensive collection of
snakes from around the world. He had more species of rattlesnakes than
I knew existed, as well as cottonmouths, Mexican cantils, and coral
snakes from North America—but they were the tame ones. He had
regular cobras, golden cobras, a twelve-foot-long king cobra (which ate
only other snakes), and the charming spitting cobra, which, aiming
for your eyes, sprayed the glass with venom whenever you walked by
its holding tank. There were pu¤ adders, Gaboon vipers, and mambas
from Africa, and from Australia the small but nasty death adder. The
worst of them all was the Australian brown snake, which was as fast as
a red racer, extremely venomous, and, as if that wasn't enough, had a
really bad attitude. These were all his “babies,” as he called them.
There were giant snakes too. Although nonvenomous, they could
be dangerous because of their sheer size and strength. Our sixteen-foot-
long African python bit the herpetologist once when eight of us were
moving it from one cage to another. We each had hold of a couple of
feet of snake, and biologist Glenn Burghart had a firm grip on the head.
The herpetologist walked around in front of the snake and it suddenly
lunged for him, pulling Glenn with it. The python grabbed the her-
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