Chicago Academy of Sciences Blog
Articles tagged Herpetology
November 8, 2021
What do snakes do in the winter?
How do cold-blooded animals deal with cold weather? We had lots of questions about snakes in the winter and Dr. Allison had lots of answers! Keep reading to learn about what snakes in Illinois do in the winter when it gets cold. “What do snakes do in the winter? Do they hibernate?” Reptiles, including snakes, and amphibians brumate over the winter. It’s not hibernation, which warm-blooded animals do. Instead, snakes stop eating as the temperature drops, their metabolism slows down, and they look for an underground place to hide from surface temperature changes. Snakes are less active over the winter, but will still come to the surface to drink on warmer winter days, but they won’t eat until spring. “Where do snakes spend the winter?” Snakes overwinter underground in a hibernaculum. A hibernaculum is a place where several hundred to several thousand snakes spend the winter together brumating. Multiple species of snakes can be found in a single hibernaculum. Both juveniles and adult snakes will follow each other’s scent trails to a hibernaculum.
May 31, 2021
One of the most common questions we get is how reptiles, like snakes and turtles, have babies. Do they lay eggs? Do they give birth to live young? Or is it somewhere in between? As it turns out, it depends on the reptile! Let’s take a closer look at the two categories that Chicago-area reptiles fall into.
April 9, 2021
Since early March, curator of herpetology Dr. Allison Sacerdote-Velat has been monitoring various field sites in Lake County. In this special blog post, she’s walking us through the work she’s been doing with her team and sharing some of her amazing observations!
February 15, 2021
How do museums preserve reptile specimens?
In order to better understand reptile and amphibian species, research institutions like the Chicago Academy of Sciences / Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum create and maintain extensive collections of specimens that are fundamental tools for studying our living environment.
February 15, 2021
Snakes, like other reptiles, are covered in scales. They protect the snake, help it move, and aid in camouflage. You have something similar to scales yourself, your fingernails! Made of keratin, hard but a little flexible, your fingernail protects your nail bed just like a scale protects a snake’s body. We’re exploring the different types of scales we can observe on a snake’s body and how those scales are unique.
February 1, 2021
What happens to wood frogs in winter?
In the warmer months, frogs are a common sight in backyards, around ponds, and in parks. But when winter hits, it’s as if they’ve just vanished into thin air! We talked to our reptile and amphibian expert, Dr. Allison, to help us learn more about what frogs, particularly wood frogs, do in the winter.
August 8, 2018
Reintroducing Smooth Greensnakes
July 25, 2018, was an exciting milestone for our conservation team. We initiated our first reintroduction effort of the threatened smooth greensnakes into a privately owned restoration site, managed by the Barrington-based Citizens for Conservation. Partnerships with private organizations like this one allow us to expand the footprint of our reintroduction initiatives in completely new ways. This reintroduction effort is part of the multi-partner Barrington Greenway Initiative, an ambitious project with the objective of linking habitat corridors and increasing biodiversity in the Barrington, Illinois area. Through this initiative, restoration work has been carried out across ownership boundaries to promote and sustain native habitats and wildlife.
August 22, 2017
Priority Species Update: A Museum Full of Smooth Greensnakes
We have been surveying for Smooth Greensnakes in sites in Lake, DuPage, Cook, DeKalb, and Grundy Counties. Some sites are part of a long-term population monitoring study and some are previous release sites for headstarted snakes. When we headstart Smooth Greensnakes, we can focus on improving two aspects of their survival; hatching success of eggs and hatchling overwintering survival. In DuPage County, we are improving hatching success by incubating half of the eggs from nests that we find in the field at our Forest Preserve District of DuPage County’s partner facility, Willowbrook Wildlife Center. Once the eggs hatch, we measure, mark, and release the hatchlings back to their nest sites. By individually marking hatchlings, we hope to find them again next season to improve estimates of hatchling overwintering survival.
February 9, 2015
Taking a Closer Look at Howard K. Gloyd
Herpetologist Howard K. Gloyd served as Director of the Chicago Academy of Sciences from 1936-1958. Born in DeSoto, Kansas, Gloyd taught at Ottawa University, the Agricultural College of Kansas State University and the University of Michigan before joining the Chicago Academy of Sciences in 1936 as Academy Director. It was also around this time that he became vice president of the American Society of Icthyologists and Herpetologist and was a consultant for the State Natural History Survey of Illinois. While at the Academy, Gloyd worked to expand the Academy’s scientific publications and additions to the Academy’s public lecture series, and still conducted his own personal research on snakes with a special emphasis on rattlesnakes. Gloyd’s focus on rattlesnakes led him to organize three separate expeditions to Arizona, with the first in 1936, the second in 1940, and the third in 1946. The specimens he acquired during these expeditions are actually still in our collections. Although Gloyd left the Academy in 1958, he continued to remain an important figure in the world of herpetology, describing new species (like the Florida cottonmouth snake) and holding various lecturer and research associate positions at the University of Arizona which culminated in his appointment as Emeritus Professor of Zoology at U of A. He held this position until his death in 1978.