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But racer snakes are waiting. This is the best feeding opportunity they will get all year.</p><p>From <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02544td\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Planet Earth II</em></a>'s opening episode \"Islands\".</p><p><em>Join over six million BBC Earth fans by liking us on <a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/bbcearth\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook</a>, or follow us on <a href=\"https://twitter.com/bbcearth\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter</a> and <a href=\"https://instagram.com/bbcearth/\" target=\"_blank\">Instagram</a>.</em></p><p><em>If you liked this story, <a href=\"http://pages.emails.bbc.com/subscribe/?ocid=ear.bbc.email.we.email-signup\" target=\"_blank\">sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter</a> called \"If You Only Read 6 Things This Week\". 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Plus we will guide you to the best hotels, restaurants, attractions, shopping, nightlife and entertainment.","DestinationType":"Country","Id":"wwtravel/destination/ecuador","InternalName":"Ecuador, South-America","IsEnabled":true,"Name":"Ecuador","Parent":[],"Path":"south-america/ecuador","PrimaryVertical":"wwtravel","WeatherId":"3652462","CreationDateTime":"2011-01-31T15:24:12Z","Entity":"destination","Guid":"a9c8184e-eb09-4499-8280-f894c43f51d5","ModifiedDateTime":"2011-01-31T15:24:12Z","Project":"wwtravel","Slug":"ecuador"},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2011-01-31T15:24:12Z","Entity":"destination","Guid":"a9c8184e-eb09-4499-8280-f894c43f51d5","Id":"wwtravel/destination/ecuador","ModifiedDateTime":"2011-01-31T15:24:12Z","Project":"wwtravel","Slug":"ecuador"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:destination:wwtravel/destination/ecuador","_id":"5981d23f0b1947497fcb9007"}],"Option":null,"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwearth","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":[{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":null,"AssetImage":[],"AssetImagePromo":null,"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":null,"AssetSelect":"ib2video","AssetVideoIb2":[],"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":null,"BodyHtml":"<p><em>Zoo Quest</em> was David Attenborough's first major natural history television programme. Made in the 1950s, it was the forerunner to classic series like <em>Planet Earth</em>.</p><p>In each series, Attenborough journeyed to a different part of the world in search of a specific animal.</p><p>In April 2016 it emerged that <a href=\"http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-36091147\" target=\"_blank\">the series had been filmed in colour</a>, even though it aired in black-and-white. For the first time, it is possible to see the programme as it was actually shot.</p><p>In this clip from the series, the young Attenborough is set the task of capturing a snake: specifically, a rather large python.</p><p><a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03rv2r8\" target=\"_blank\">Zoo Quest in Colour</a><em> will air in the UK on 17 May.</em></p>","BusinessUnit":"worldwide","CalloutBody":"","CalloutPosition":"","CalloutSubtitle":"","CalloutTitle":"","Campaign":null,"Collection":[],"DisableAdverts":false,"DisplayDate":"2016-05-16T11:34:56.126Z","Geolocation":[],"HeadlineLong":"Watch a young David Attenborough try to catch a python","HeadlineShort":"When Attenborough had to catch a python","HideRelated":false,"Horizontal":null,"Intro":"In this clip from Zoo Quest in Colour, the legendary naturalist attempts to catch a rather large snake - which is inconveniently up a tree","IsSyndicated":true,"Location":null,"Option":null,"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwearth","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":[],"RelatedTag":[],"StoryType":"video","SummaryLong":"In this clip from Zoo Quest in Colour, the legendary naturalist attempts to catch a rather large snake - which is inconveniently up a tree","SummaryShort":"A young Sir David once chased a rather large snake","Tag":[]},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2016-05-16T10:52:10.001226Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"20e68e18-e516-4794-98d2-a44d66e3aff4","Id":"wwearth/story/20160516-watch-a-young-david-attenborough-try-to-catch-a-python","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-05-17T15:22:37.815768Z","Project":"wwearth","Slug":"20160516-watch-a-young-david-attenborough-try-to-catch-a-python"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:story:wwearth/story/20160516-watch-a-young-david-attenborough-try-to-catch-a-python","_id":"59820e2e0b1947497fcd7c44"},{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":null,"AssetImage":[],"AssetImagePromo":null,"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":[],"AssetSelect":"","AssetVideoIb2":null,"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":[],"BodyHtml":"<p>The Galápagos Islands are something of a mecca for wildlife biologists and enthusiasts alike. The journey there is perhaps the closest thing those in the sciences have to a holy pilgrimage.</p><p>While Charles Darwin's theories about evolution and natural selection would take decades to fully form, it was on these islands that some of the initial ideas were planted deep within his mind. As a result, these are some of the most intensively studied, best understood ecosystems on the planet. They are also remarkably <a href=\"https://www.kcet.org/redefine/the-channel-islands-are-californias-galapagos\">well protected</a>.</p><p>Thanks to the fame of the Galápagos, just about everybody with even a passing interest in wildlife knows about their giant tortoises, flightless seabirds, Darwin's famous finches, and seagoing iguanas.</p><p>But even here, evolution continues to surprise. There is an extremely uncommon kind of iguana here hiding in plain sight. Perhaps fewer than two dozen have ever been seen.</p><p>In July 2016, I was in an open-top boat called a zodiac with biologist <a href=\"https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Aaron_Pomerantz\">Aaron Pomerantz</a>, speeding towards a tiny uninhabited island called Plaza Sur. We knew that the odds were against us. We were after the rarest of Galápagos stories: one that has been left largely untold.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04d09tv\"}}</p><p>The Galápagos is home to two groups of iguanas: the terrestrial, or land-based ones, and the marine ones. They are separated by 4.5 million years of evolution, and live very different lives.</p><blockquote><p> There is an extremely uncommon kind of iguana here hiding in plain sight </p></blockquote><p><a href=\"http://eol.org/pages/795986/overview\">Galápagos marine iguanas</a> are the only modern lizards that can forage in the sea. They scrape algae off rocks in the intertidal zone. Their flat faces help them gobble up more algae with each bite.</p><p>The marine iguanas have large, menacingly sharp claws. These help them grip the rocky seafloor, so that the waves do not thrash them about. They are mostly black, although on some islands they also sport a bit of red or blue.</p><p>The yellow <a href=\"http://eol.org/pages/454869/overview\">land iguanas</a>, as their name suggests, lead a drier lifestyle. Their pointier faces allow them to bite off chunks of cactus without getting needles in their eyes.</p><p>But on Plaza Sur, the land iguanas and the marine iguanas do something they cannot do anywhere else: they make babies together.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04d0b6m\"}}</p><p>Plaza Sur is hardly an island at all. It is a tiny speck of dry land spanning barely one-tenth of a square kilometre, its highest point rising just 75ft (23m) above sea level.</p><p>It is the only place in all the Galápagos where you can find hybrid iguanas. Our goal was to film and photograph these rarest of rare animals.</p><p>In 2013, <a href=\"https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alizon_Llerena\">Alizon Llerena</a> of the Charles Darwin Foundation in Puerto Ayora in the Galápagos conducted a census of Plaza Sur's iguanas. She only found four hybrids.</p><blockquote><p> Only a small part of the already tiny island is even accessible to tourists </p></blockquote><p>By the time we visited in 2016, the entire archipelago was in the midst of a long, multi-year drought. Iguanas everywhere were suffering. Nobody knew if those four hybrids were still alive, or if any new ones had been born.</p><p>Our guide, Mario, laughed at us. Since nobody is allowed inside the protected areas of Galápagos National Park without a guide, he has been leading tourists through the archipelago for years. Despite hundreds of day trips to Plaza Sur, he had never seen a hybrid.</p><p>What's more, only a small part of the already tiny island is even accessible to tourists. Not only would there have to be hybrids in the first place, they would have to be visible on the part of the island we were permitted to explore.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04d0hmz\"}}</p><p><a href=\"https://biology.unm.edu/core-faculty/snell.shtml\">Howard Snell</a> was the first to notice the hybrid iguanas. Now a professor of biology at the University of New Mexico, he first came to the Galápagos in 1977 with his wife Heidi.</p><p>They were both volunteers with the US Peace Corps, there to work on a land iguana conservation project. But they were not having much luck coaxing baby iguanas out of their artificially-incubated eggs.</p><blockquote><p> Eventually he realised he had caught the same strange iguana twice </p></blockquote><p>\"We realised there was a lot of natural history that we just didn't know,\" Snell recalls. \"So we decided to use Plaza Sur as a basic ecology site to try to learn a lot of things about iguanas, so that we'd be more effective at the captive breeding.\"</p><p>They soon began to suspect that Plaza Sur was particularly special.</p><p>\"In one of the years, I think it was probably '79, or maybe it was '80, when we were capturing marine iguanas, we captured this individual that we thought was just an aberrant land iguana,\" he says. \"It looked kind of odd.\"</p><p>At the time, Snell and his team did not pay that much attention to the curious critter. During a land iguana capture, Snell caught another peculiar animal, but this time he dismissed it as an odd-looking marine iguana.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04d0d0g\"}}</p><p>Eventually he realised he had caught the same strange iguana twice, and that he could not quite decide how to classify it. It did not fit in with the marine iguanas, nor did it seem to be at home among the terrestrial ones.</p><p>\"We realized that this individual was very intermediate in a lot of the characteristics between land and marine iguanas, and we <a href=\"http://dx.doi.orgi/10.1111/j.1095-8312.1984.tb02061.x\">hypothesised then</a> that it was a hybrid,\" he says. \"But of course we didn't know that for sure.\"</p><blockquote><p> The hybrids are not just genetic mosaics; they are physical mash-ups as well </p></blockquote><p>Over the next few years, the Snells would go on to find another handful of hybrids. Eventually their surveys also turned up some hybrid hatchlings.</p><p>Finally, in a study published in 1997 scientists used genetics to confirm what seemed obvious to Snell. \"The hybrid status of this morphologically unusual iguana from this island is confirmed,\" <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7998.1997.tb05822.x\">the researchers wrote</a>.</p><p>Geneticists also verified another of Snell's predictions. The hybrids were all produced by matings between male marine iguanas and female land iguanas.</p><p>There was reason to think that the hybrids were sterile. Nobody ever found any marine iguanas that had a few land iguana genes, or vice versa. If the hybrids had been able to breed, other mixed iguanas would have turned up, such as ones that were 75% marine iguana and 25% land iguana.</p><p>The hybrids are not just genetic mosaics; they are physical mash-ups as well.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04d0bnt\"}}</p><p>Like the marine iguanas, the hybrids are mostly black. However, their necks and torsos are adorned with long yellow stripes; evidence of their terrestrial heritage.</p><blockquote><p> The Galápagos continue to tell us how evolution works </p></blockquote><p>They inherited long claws from their seagoing fathers, but they use them for climbing trees, not for clinging to rocks. Land iguanas cannot do either.</p><p>Marine iguanas have flat tails that they can use as rudders while swimming. The hybrids have them too, though they have never been seen in the water. It is as if somebody took half a land iguana and half a marine iguana, chopped them up, and stitched them back together.</p><p>This description was at the forefront of our minds when our boat reached the wooden dock and we scrambled up the lava rocks onto the island. We had only walked a few metres when Mario stopped us.</p><p>There was an iguana, the first we had seen, lazily sunning itself under a cactus. \"I don't believe it,\" said Mario. It was a hybrid.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04d0gnt\"}} </p><p>If the unique colouration pattern was not evidence enough, the iguana's body was also covered with cactus spines, suggesting that it was a cactus climber.</p><blockquote><p> Once they get to be five or six years old, they'll live a long time </p></blockquote><p>When I tell him our story, Snell is not surprised. \"There was one that lived near the dock for years and years,\" he says.</p><p>Out of respect for the animal – and because it would have been illegal – we did not flip our hybrid onto its back to see whether it had been marked. But if Snell is right, then this could have been one of the animals tracked by his 24-year study. He caught one hybrid, already several years old, every year for a decade.</p><p>\"Once they get to be five or six years old, they'll live a long time,\" says Snell. In all, he can recall finding 16 hybrids between arriving at Plaza Sur in 1977 and the end of his project there in 2000.</p><p>How do these strange animals even exist?</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04d0g5t\"}}</p><p>Plaza Sur offers something of a Goldilocks situation for iguanas, says evolutionary biologist <a href=\"https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gabriele_Gentile\">Gabriele Gentile</a> of the University of Rome in Italy. Circumstances there are just right.</p><blockquote><p> The two species are forced into promiscuity </p></blockquote><p>First, Galápagos iguanas only breed for a short time each year. On Plaza Sur, those seasons overlap. When male marine iguanas arrive at the island ready to mate, they catch the tail end of the land iguanas' reproductive season.</p><p>\"So female land iguanas that have not yet mated may be forced to copulate by larger, aggressive male marine iguanas,\" Gentile says. By the time female marine iguanas are ready to mate, the male land iguanas have already done the deed.</p><p>Second, the island is truly tiny. Other islands have enough space for the two groups of iguanas to find disparate habitats, but on Plaza Sur their territories overlap. \"It is quite easy to see marine iguanas in the more interior part of the island,\" Gentile says. \"The two species are forced into promiscuity.\"</p><p>Even more surprising than our once-in-a-lifetime sighting is that, nearly two centuries after Darwin visited the islands, the Galápagos continue to tell us how evolution works.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04d0fd3\"}}</p><p>\"Hybridisation is actually a powerful factor in evolution,\" says Gentile.</p><blockquote><p> In the past, hybridisation was considered a bad thing </p></blockquote><p>Because hybridisation allows two groups of animals to combine their gene pools, the hybrid animals represent entirely new arrangements of genes. Compared with the usual tricks evolution employs to create new sets of genes, like mutation, hybridisation between species can make changes a lot faster.</p><p>This raises an important question for conservationists: what does it mean to protect a species? What should we do with animals that cannot be classified as a unique species at all, like the hybrid iguanas?</p><p>Gentile says that, as well as preserving biodiversity, we also need to protect the evolutionary processes that generate biodiversity.</p><p>\"In the past, hybridisation was considered a bad thing,\" says Gentile.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p04d0cdv\"}}</p><p>There is a good reason for this. When two species begin mating, they end up as one species and their distinct features are lost. The <a href=\"https://www.iucn.org/\">International Union for Conservation of Nature</a> includes hybridisation as a potential risk factor for extinction, alongside more obvious threats like habitat loss, diseases and pollution. As a result, Gentile says, \"hybrid animals would not be considered for conservation action.\"</p><blockquote><p> The hybrid iguanas of Plaza Sur appear to be sterile </p></blockquote><p>This is a reasonable attitude when hybridisation is the result of human meddling. But if hybridisation is part of a natural process, as it seems to be in the case of the hybrid iguanas, then it may be worth preserving. That means preserving the unique habitat on Plaza Sur that allows these unlikely creatures to come into being.</p><p>For now, the hybrid iguanas of Plaza Sur appear to be sterile and make up less than 2% of the island's total iguana population. That means they do not pose any threat to the existence of marine and land iguanas.</p><p>Big changes would need to occur for hybridisation to impact the evolution of Galápagos iguanas in a way that posed a philosophical problem for conservationists. But that does not mean it cannot happen, says Snell. \"Anybody that says they can't reproduce is overstating their knowledge,\" he says. \"But it is unlikely.\" </p><p><em>Join over five million BBC Earth fans by liking us on </em><a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/bbcearth\"><em>Facebook</em></a><em>, or follow us on </em><a href=\"https://twitter.com/bbcearth\"><em>Twitter</em></a><em> and </em><a href=\"https://instagram.com/bbcearth/\"><em>Instagram</em></a><em>.</em></p><p><em>If you liked this story, </em><a href=\"http://pages.emails.bbc.com/subscribe/?ocid=ear.bbc.email.we.email-signup\"><em>sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter</em></a><em> called \"If You Only Read 6 Things This Week\". A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital, Travel and Autos, delivered to your inbox every Friday</em>.</p>","BusinessUnit":"worldwide","CalloutBody":"","CalloutPosition":"","CalloutSubtitle":"","CalloutTitle":"","Campaign":null,"Collection":[],"DisableAdverts":false,"DisplayDate":"2016-10-25T14:23:21Z","Geolocation":null,"HeadlineLong":"There is a hidden iguana on the Gal谩pagos and nobody noticed","HeadlineShort":"Meet one of the rarest animals alive ","HideRelated":false,"Horizontal":null,"Intro":"The Gal谩pagos Islands are famous for their marine iguanas, and their cactus-munching terrestrial cousins. But in one isolated spot there is another kind\n","IsSyndicated":true,"Latitude":"","Location":null,"Longitude":"","Option":[],"Partner":null,"PrimaryVertical":"wwearth","Programme":null,"RelatedStory":[],"RelatedTag":null,"StoryType":"image","SummaryLong":"The Gal谩pagos Islands are famous for their marine iguanas, and their cactus-munching terrestrial cousins. But in one isolated spot there is another kind\n","SummaryShort":"Fewer than two dozen have ever been seen in the Gal谩pagos ","SuperSection":null,"Tag":[]},"Metadata":{"CreationDateTime":"2016-10-25T06:30:07.352244Z","Entity":"story","Guid":"0371aa59-0ec4-4f1c-819c-4928c41e06fe","Id":"wwearth/story/20161024-there-is-a-hidden-iguana-on-the-galpagos-and-nobody-noticed","ModifiedDateTime":"2016-10-27T15:28:27.255628Z","Project":"wwearth","Slug":"20161024-there-is-a-hidden-iguana-on-the-galpagos-and-nobody-noticed"},"Urn":"urn:pubstack:jative:story:wwearth/story/20161024-there-is-a-hidden-iguana-on-the-galpagos-and-nobody-noticed","_id":"5981d5640b1947497fcd12d6"},{"Content":{"AssetCustom":"","AssetIbroadcast":null,"AssetImage":[],"AssetImagePromo":null,"AssetInfographic":"","AssetInline":[],"AssetSelect":"","AssetVideoIb2":null,"AssetVideoMps":null,"Author":[],"BodyHtml":"<p><em>Several centuries ago, a group of Borneo natives left their villages and headed deep into the jungle, searching for a home away from the Dutch colonialists who had begun spreading across their island. Eventually, they found a nice spot in the lowland rainforests near the mountains in Borneo's centre. They built houses and cultivated crops, and caught fish from the Burak river. All was well. Then children began vanishing.</em></p><p><em>One at a time, the kids disappeared, leaving behind baffled and frantic adults. This happened eight days in a row. Was it the work of a forest ghost, or jungle nomads, or a big carnivore like a clouded leopard? To find out, the villagers set a trap and baited it with another child, sacrificing one more life to stop the slaughter.</em></p><p><em>The creature that finally emerged from the river was huge, limbless and covered in scales. It was a snake, but one so overgrown they called it a dragon.</em></p><blockquote><p> They found two huge, chocolate-brown adult dragons </p></blockquote><p><em>From their hiding place, the people watched as the dragon took the child to a den on an island in the river. Then they made axes, spears and shovels from the forest's strong ironwood trees, and dug a tunnel right into the dragon's home.</em></p><p><em>When the villagers charged in, they found two huge, chocolate-brown adult dragons, each as big around as an oil barrel. With them was a smaller dragon, the width of a coconut palm, which was colourful and had a yellow belly.</em></p><p><em>In retaliation for the killings, the people cut the two adults in half. But they spared the young dragon, believing it to be innocent. They also made an agreement with it that is still binding today: neither humans nor dragons shall harm the other, on pain of death.</em></p><p><em>Later, the people returned to less remote villages. But they say the dragons are still around.</em></p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02bqjwf\"}}</p><p>I first heard this story in late July 2014, when I sat by a fragrant campfire listening to Pak Rusni, an elder from the Dayak village of Tumbang Tujang, recount his ancestral tale. Rusni is 54 years old, with gentle, dark eyes. He mostly spoke softly, and the cicadas threatened to drown out his words. But when he got to the crux of the tale, Rusni became loud and animated. He drew me a diagram depicting the dragon den, the tunnel, and the riverbank settlement. And then he gestured upriver.</p><p>Our campsite was near the northern border of Indonesian Borneo, along the Burak river. If we journeyed upriver for another day and a half, Rusni said, we would find the remnants of the village besieged by dragons.</p><p>Fascinated by Rusni's story, I wanted to find out which of the local snakes might be closest to the dragons of the story. So many centuries later, I didn't expect to find a definitive answer. But there were two questions that I could nail down, which might offer pointers. Were there any snakes in Borneo that grew so monstrously large? And could any kill children that quickly?</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02bnbwv\"}}</p><p>I soon realised there were many possible culprits. The Borneo rainforest is 140 million years old, one of Earth's oldest, so its inhabitants have had plenty of time to diversify. What's more, during the last ice age <a href=\"http://www.fieldmuseum.org/sites/default/files/Voris_2000.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">land bridges linked Borneo to mainland Asia and other Indonesian islands</a>. Species emigrated from the mainland to the islands, seeding Borneo with an astonishing array of organisms. When the ice age ended, flooding the land bridges, Borneo's creatures were free to evolve in relative isolation.</p><blockquote><p> The locals sometimes refer to our field site as the 'Land of the Man-Eating Snakes' </p></blockquote><p>The snakes are particularly diverse. There may be about 150 species on the island, possibly more. \"It's like every family of snake somehow managed to get to Borneo,\" says <a href=\"http://sararuane.wordpress.com\" target=\"_blank\">Sara Ruane</a> of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. \"And no doubt there's undiscovered species.\"</p><p>Some live underground, others in the leaves littering the forest floors. Some surf through the treetops, flying from tree to tree. Others prefer to live underwater, or in caves. Many use the structures built by humans: they sneak into the nooks beneath roofs or hide under decks.</p><p>Several are dangerous to humans. I was told the locals sometimes refer to our field site as the \"Land of the Man-Eating Snakes\": that's presumably a reference to Rusni's story, but might also reflect a present-day truth. So before we set out, I asked our expedition leader <a href=\"http://www.peter-houlihan.com\" target=\"_blank\">Peter Houlihan</a>, of the <a href=\"http://www.brinccborneo.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Barito River Initiative for Nature Conservation and Communities</a>, which local snakes were most deadly. He was not reassuring. \"It gets to a certain point where it doesn't really make a difference.\"</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02bnc6g\"}}</p><p>Since they first appeared between 100 and 150 million years ago, snakes have evolved rapidly. A lot of that has gone into creating new ways to kill other animals, in particular snakes' infamous venoms.</p><p>\"Most snakes do have venom, even the so-called harmless ones,\" says Robert Stuebing, a Borneo-based herpetologist. \"There's a lot more out there than we ever realized.\"</p><p>That variety might be a response to the challenges involved with living life as a tube. \"You think of being a tube as a simplification, but that actually makes life harder,\" says <a href=\"http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/colleges/medicalschool/departments/biochemistry/Faculty/PrimaryFaculty/Pages/Pollock.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">David Pollock</a> of the University of Colorado in Denver. So to ease the strain of hunting without limbs, snakes have developed highly specialized ways of killing things – ways that could, conceivably, account for vanishing village children.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02bndd7\"}}</p><p>Snake venoms contain a bewildering array of proteins that work together to bring down prey. Some, like king cobra venom, have more than 100 different kinds.</p><p>These toxic cocktails are hugely variable. Not only do different species produce different mixtures, but snakes of the same species can mix different drinks as well. What's more, a snake's venom may change as it ages.</p><blockquote><p> The venom seems to be evolving extremely rapidly </p></blockquote><p>This might be the result of an evolutionary arms race, with venom mixtures evolving to work best on each snake's most common prey. Alternatively, it could be that some snakes have evolved a range of toxins that lets them bring down different types of prey. \"If it doesn't really cost the snake anything, you might as well have this huge array of weapons,\" says <a href=\"http://www.dbs.nus.edu.sg/lab/kini/current%20lab%20rerch%20fellow.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Ryan McCleary</a> of the National University of Singapore.</p><p>Scientists are just beginning to trace the evolutionary history of the serpents' deadly potions. But it is clear that the genes coding for snake venom proteins have evolved rapidly. Last year McCleary, Pollock and their colleagues published <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1314702110\" target=\"_blank\">the sequence of the king cobra genome</a>, and found that base pairs were being swapped and shifted unusually often. \"The rest of the snake is still going along like normal,\" says McCleary. \"But the venom seems to be evolving extremely rapidly.\"</p><p>So which of Borneo's snakes might be capable of killing a small child? Here are the prime suspects.</p><p><strong>Red-headed krait</strong></p><p>The red-headed krait (<a href=\"http://eol.org/pages/1057026/overview\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Bungarus flaviceps</em></a>) is elegant but deadly. Its shiny black body is bookended by a bright red head and tail. \"It's one of the most beautiful snakes I've ever seen,\" says Houlihan. \"But you don't want to be in the water with a krait.\"</p><blockquote><p> Many people just don't wake up the next morning </p></blockquote><p>Krait venoms disable their prey's nervous system. They block the junctions that convey messages from nerves to muscles, making it impossible to breathe or move.</p><p>\"Antivenom really doesn't work unless you get it in very quickly,\" says <a href=\"http://www.lstmliverpool.ac.uk/research/departments/staff-profiles/nick-casewell\" target=\"_blank\">Nicholas Casewell</a> of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in the UK. In 2001, a <a href=\"http://eol.org/pages/1057023/overview\" target=\"_blank\">many-banded krait</a> in Myanmar bit herpetologist Joseph Slowinski on the hand. Too far afield to find proper medical attention, <a href=\"http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/Bit.html\" target=\"_blank\">he died in just over a day</a>.</p><p>But kraits don't fit the profile of dragons. Red-headed kraits can be two metres long, but they are thin, and the dragons were fat. Plus, kraits are sluggish in the day. Most bites happen at night, when the snakes stay near a sleeping human for warmth. \"Many people just don't wake up the next morning,\" Casewell says. \"Or they wake up paralyzed.\"</p><p><strong>Blue coral snake</strong></p><p>What about Borneo's many coral snakes? Some have abnormally large venom glands.</p><p>Take the Malayan blue coral snake (<a href=\"http://eol.org/pages/1055877/overview\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Calliophis bivirgatus</em></a>), a nocturnal blue serpent with a bright red belly. As with other snakes, the venom gland begins behind the eye. But it stretches for more than a third of the snake's length, which can reach 1.5 metres. That means a blue coral snake's venom gland could be longer than your foot. \"Nobody knows why,\" says McCleary.</p><p>But despite their humongous venom glands, coral snakes aren't even close to being dragons. They hide among the leaves littering the ground, and mostly eat other snakes – often small, burrowing ones. That means their fangs are too small to easily pierce human skin. \"They have to get you sort of between the fingers in order to inject venom,\" Stuebing says.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02bnfwt\"}}</p><p>Now this looks more like it. Reaching lengths of 5 metres, king cobras (<a href=\"http://eol.org/pages/1055746/overview\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Ophiophagus hannah</em></a>) are the longest venomous snakes alive. And they can rear up, raising the first third of their body from the ground. \"You could have a cobra looking you in the eye,\" Houlihan says.</p><p>Many who have worked with king cobras say they have a curiosity that sets them apart from other snakes. \"They just have this kind of alertness,\" says <a href=\"http://cals.arizona.edu/research/goode/Home.html\" target=\"_blank\">Matt Goode</a> of the University of Arizona in Tucson.</p><p>Sleek and lithe, cobras are active during the day, often hunting other snakes. Goode and his team have tracked them using implanted radio transmitters and found that they travel surprisingly large distances.</p><p>But cobras probably weren't the dragons either. Although they are dangerous, they rarely bite. \"They're absolutely not aggressive, compared to some snakes,\" says <a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/ronlilleysbalisnakepatrol\" target=\"_blank\">Ron Lilley</a>, who runs a snake retrieval service in Bali. \"They have so much venom in them, but they're very reluctant to bite people.\"</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02bngc9\"}}</p><p>Pit vipers are like heat-seeking missiles. They have specialized pits on their heads that detect heat, giving them a kind of infrared vision that few prey animals can evade.</p><p>But unlike the fast-moving cobras, pit vipers are ambush predators. They lurk in trees or bushes, waiting for critters to wander close enough to strike. \"They're pretty sluggish, but that strike is very fast,\" says <a href=\"http://csivc.csi.cuny.edu/Frank.Burbrink/files/\" target=\"_blank\">Frank Burbrink</a> of the City University of New York. \"It's a completely different lifestyle.\"</p><blockquote><p> They wait for their prey to come to them instead of chasing it down </p></blockquote><p>Pit vipers also use a different kind of venom, targeting the cardiovascular system rather than the nervous system. Their venoms do things like preventing blood from coagulating or causing blood pressure to drop dangerously low. Many also directly attack and kill cells. \"The pit vipers really hurt. You'll be in excruciating pain. They're blowing up your cells,\" Burbrink says.</p><p>As we walked through the Bornean jungle, it was the pit vipers we were told to look out for. A few days after we arrived, we found a Sumatran pit viper (<a href=\"http://eol.org/pages/461496/overview\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Trimeresurus sumatranus</em></a>) hanging out in a tree near our camp. It was probably digesting a meal and might have stayed put for days, but we moved it to the opposite bank anyway.</p><p>Nevertheless, pit vipers don't fit the story either. \"Their reputation is different from the dragons that are referred to in the Dayak stories,\" Houlihan says. \"The arboreal pit vipers in Borneo are more sit-and-wait predators. They wait for their prey to come to them instead of chasing it down.\"</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02bnj8s\"}}</p><p>So if none of these snakes are likely related to the dragons, what is? The best contenders are probably Borneo's pythons, which are among the largest snakes on Earth. Instead of relying on venom, these massive serpents squeeze their prey to death.</p><p>The reticulated python (<a href=\"http://eol.org/pages/1055461/overview\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Python reticulatus</em></a>) is the longest snake in the world, capable of reaching over 10 metres in length. But shrinking forests and fearful humans mean that really large pythons haven't been found for a long time. \"The biggest python I've seen caught here, which was put in a cage and treated like a sacred animal, was a 4-metre python that came out of a drain in downtown Denpasar,\" says Lilley.</p><p>Still, a python doesn't need to be the length of a bus to eat something person-sized. Snakes like the <a href=\"http://eol.org/pages/1055462/overview\" target=\"_blank\">African rock python</a> regularly eat pigs or deer, and attacks on humans do happen. A 2011 study reported that <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1115116108\" target=\"_blank\">one-quarter of the villagers on a Philippines island had described being attacked by these giant snakes</a>. A World Health Organization <a href=\"http://www.searo.who.int/entity/emergencies/documents/9789290223774/en/\" target=\"_blank\">report on snake bites in south-east Asia</a> contains images of a reticulated python that swallowed a farmer on Sulawesi. Last December, <a href=\"https://sg.news.yahoo.com/snake-kills-security-guard-bali-luxury-hotel-003429913.html\" target=\"_blank\">a 4-metre reticulated python strangled a security guard outside a hotel in Bali</a>.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02bntwk\"}}</p><p>Nevertheless, there are problems with the idea that the Bornean dragons were pythons.</p><p>Pythons are ambush predators that mostly lounge around, either digesting a meal or waiting for the next one to wander close enough to be throttled and swallowed. \"They're sit-and-wait foragers,\" says <a href=\"http://bama.ua.edu/~ssecor/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">Stephen Secor</a> of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.</p><blockquote><p> A python can wait over a year until its next meal </p></blockquote><p>There is another problem. Those binge-eating dragons, swallowing one child a day, were definitely not on the python diet. The best estimates suggest that wild pythons eat every month or six weeks. \"Pythons don't eat every day,\" Burbrink says.</p><p>That's because pythons can handle meals 1.5 times their size, by ramping up their digestive systems. When a python catches a meal, its heart, pancreas, and other organs enlarge, sometimes doubling in size, to support its digestive system. \"Their metabolic rate goes way up,\" Secor says. \"Rates go up as much as 40 times for huge, huge meals.\"</p><p>Afterwards, the python hunkers down, lowers its metabolic rate, and deactivates its digestive system. It can wait a long time until its next meal, sometimes over a year, says Secor.</p><p>{\"image\":{\"pid\":\"p02bnj18\"}}</p><p>It's possible that the dragons in the story are based on several snakes: perhaps the king cobra's hunting skills, the krait's deadly venom, and a python's imposing size. We can't be sure.</p><blockquote><p> The dragons are black and shiny, and as big around as oil drums </p></blockquote><p>Nevertheless Houlihan, who has spoken with the Tujang residents about the tale, points the finger at pythons: \"massive pythons that were big enough to make people disappear without a trace,\" he says. \"When the forest floods, during the wet season, colossal pythons could be anywhere. It's enough to instil fear in even the bravest and most experienced of elders - thus, the proliferation of these stories to this day.\"</p><p>Today, the area where the dragons appeared is called Teluk Naga. Naga is the Dayak word for dragon, and the Sanskrit word for snake. The remains of the village, including the ironwood tools used to slay the dragons, are still there, says Suri, a Tujang resident who fishes nearby. But Suri says the island where the dragons lived was split in two by the river when the villagers' tunnel flooded.</p><p>Rusni and the others say they still see dragons near the water. The dragons are black and shiny, and as big around as oil drums. But they never stick around for long. They can appear and disappear at will, Rusni says, and have transcended their physical bodies to become mystical creatures.</p><p>I asked if they scared him. \"Of course I'm afraid of them,\" he says. \"But they don't disturb us. 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BBC:Something%20is%20blinding%20these%20snakes&body=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Fearth%2Fstory%2F20170629-something-is-blinding-these-snakes%3Focid%3Dww.social.link.email" data-share-destination="email" data-tracking-id="email" target="_blank"> <span class="share-icon-wrapper share-icon-wrapper--social"> <span class="icon gelicon--mail"></span> </span> <span class="share-item-text">Share by Email</span> </a> </div> </li></ul> </div> </div>   <div class="mid-unit"> </div>   <div class="bottom-unit"> <div class="byline"> <span class="byline-heading"></span> <div class="source-attribution-wrapper"> <div class="source-attribution-detail"> <ul class="seperated-list source-attribution"> </ul> <span class="publication-date index-body">29 June 2017</span> </div> </div> </div> <div class="body-content"> <p>This population of tiger snakes looks to be having a rough time of it.</p><p>Many have head injuries and one in 10 are totally blind, but this does not seem to get in the way of them finding a good meal.</p><p>The snakes live near a colony of silver gulls that breeds throughout the year so their chicks provide the snakes with a constant supply of fresh meat.</p><p>But the gulls are valiant defenders of their chicks. Their stabbing beaks are powerful and strong and they always go straight for the snake's head.</p><p>Even with the loss of sight, these hungry snakes are still able to pick off a tasty chick or two thanks to their impressive forked tongues which they use to follow smells.</p><p>Watch the moment Sir David Attenborough and BBC filmmakers captured these impressive hunters for the series Life In Cold Blood.</p><p><div class="inline-media inline-video"> <div id="p03vb680" class="inline-video video-player" data-video-player data-video-title="" data-video-player-vpid="p03vb686" data-video-player-mediator="mc" data-brand-color="#008e9b" data-video-player-image-url="http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/wm/live/624_351/images/live/p0/3v/bn/p03vbn0g.jpg" data-show-ads="true"> <noscript> <div class="warning"> <p><strong>This media cannot be played on your device.</strong></p> </div> </noscript> </div></div></p><p>Even better, you can watch a further 1,000 more memorable moments, for free, anytime, 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