Woodland Reptiles: Snakes and Turtles

foreign Smith with Penn State Extension again I'm joined by Julian Avery a professor a research professor of wildlife conservation in the College of AG Sciences Julian you teach a course called herpetology and for those that don't know it it's reptiles and amphibians and I wanted to ask you a few questions today about reptiles so what's a reptile and How might people encounter reptiles in their everyday existence yeah great questions happy to be here today thanks Sandy reptiles in general are animals that have a scaly fingernail-like integument so when we say integument we're talking about a covering or layer reptiles tend to have a relatively impervious scaly covering that keeps them from drying out they lay protected eggs and they get most of their heat and energy from their surroundings right so they don't have the ability to internally control their temperatures like we do so we call them ectotherms and kind of a side note is that we oftentimes refer to them as cold-blooded but that's not necessarily true because a cold-blooded animal means that its blood is cold but reptiles will put themselves in the environment in ways that allow themselves to heat up and have a fast metabolism and be able to move quickly and all that stuff comes from having warm blood and a warm metabolism and that comes from thermoregulating in their environment yeah and that comes from the sun right and pretty much is there any other heat that's provided to them somewhere no not really the ground can get pretty warm after a full day so it might not be all that uncommon to find them hunting along roads or other things at night where the the surfaces are warm but you really need openings and forests like this for for reptiles to come out and bask and get ready for their for the day yeah I'm sure that a lot of people listening when they hear reptiles they think snakes yeah but there's another whole group of reptiles which aren't generally thought of as reptiles in fact some people think these are amphibians but they have a little shell on the outside turtles yeah Turtles So within reptiles we have lizards snakes Turtles amphisbaneids which are another kind of a legless type of reptile that's a little bit more evolutionary evolutionarily ancient but it's funny snakes actually seem to have come out of the group of lizards so they're actually sort of nested within lizards and in lizards that haven't become snakes you also have other groups of legless lizards so the ability to to go without legs is actually not all that uncommon within rep and the scale on a turtle I I think it's on its leg isn't it I can't remember or is that shell a scale yeah so turtles are cool in that they're uh the only animal we know of that has its hips enclosed within its rib cage um but that that architecture across their back the shell is actually kind of an extension off the backbone and then all the pretty patterns on the surface of that Turtle are are scales we call those scutes so they have scales on the top of their body on the shell then they also have them across the legs but those scales on the legs are totally different than what's on the back isn't it a little bit same still same kinds of keratin okay they're built made out of keratin the same thing in your hair and fingernails they just they just screw differently all right yeah well um reptiles are coming out in the summer then and warming or early or later spring or early spring what do they do through the winter a lot of reptiles will do what we call prumation which is uh kind of like hibernation except they're not really going to sleep so Turtles are pretty Adept at that box turtles that might use a cut like this will a power line cut like this will will start Down Under The Leaf litter and as it gets colder and colder they'll actually start digging themselves down further and further so some animals go deep and others sort of adjust their position throughout the winter as it gets colder and colder at greater depth yeah and are they totally freezing in the winter are they kind of staying alive some have tolerance some are going deep enough to avoid freezing for the most part they're going to try and avoid that but the kind of the crazy thing are things that live in Creeks right so we also have wood turtles in Pennsylvania and they not needing heat necessarily can go to very cold temperatures and what's interesting is that as their metabolism slows down in very very cold water they need very very little oxygen and so what's kind of funny and and a lot of kids might find this interesting is that they'll actually take water in through the cloaca where they get rid of their waste and they'll extract oxygen from that water within the tissues of their cloaca so a lot of kids like to call them butt breathers it's not quite accurate but that's close enough but they don't need to come up for air throughout the winter because they can get enough from the water that they take into their body that's fascinating now I've asked you this question before in different ways but what is it you like best about reptiles you have any sort of a favorite characteristics or favorite reptiles yeah um much like any I'm kind of hooked on biodiversity in general each group has its own sort of really uniquely evolved traits and behaviors reptiles are just so pretty and so fascinating and and I think some of the species that we have in Pennsylvania are gorgeous one of the most prettiest is actually the the northern copperhead one of our vipers a very very sort of calm animal that likes to sit and wait and hunt for for its prey I think they just have the the most absolutely gorgeous colors and pattern any animal in the northeastern United States has wow okay some people would run from your favorite thing there yeah no no need to run they they're more afraid of us than we are though okay well thank you very much thank you Julian for teaching us a little bit more about reptiles today we