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Sunday, February 28, 2010

SNAKESOFTAIWAN.COM finally ONLINE!

Ladies and gentlefolk,

I'm proud to announce that after six months of gruesome toil, our long-awaited website SNAKES OF TAIWAN has finally gone online.

This website was conceived out of a need for complete, one-stop information on the snakes of Taiwan. Before we created this site, the only comparable resources were a number of field guides in Chinese, most of them outdated. Similar material in English did not exist at all.

With this site we hope to provide exhaustive and current knowledge in both languages: tons of photos and videos from the field, taxonomic descriptions, info on biology, ecology, distribution, etymology, toxicology and more - and if that's not enough, there are copious links to even more information on the Web.

The site is organized like a field guide, i.e., all species on the main menu are arranged by colors and patterns rather than in alphabetical order. This facilitates quick identification of any snakes you might encounter in the wilds of Taiwan.

Mr. Onionsack and I, the authors of this site, are not professional herpetologists, just two average guys with a strong infatuation for Taiwan's serpentofauna. We have researched and now present the information on this site to the best of our knowledge and abilities. If you spot any mistakes, errors, blunders, bloopers, typos, or maybe just have a comment or two, or want to link to your site with our banner, we would love to hear from you - please drop me a note!

Thank you very much in advance for your help and your patronage!

Cheers

Hans
PS: The Chinese part is still being translated and will go online in March - we'll let you know when it's done :-)

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Mammals Suck At Ambush Hunting?

Guess the sit-and-wait approach just doesn't work for endotherms, as these two images prove.

(Pearls Before Swine, 2/9/10; copyright Stephen Pastis)