AY Honors/Reptiles/Answer Key

1. What characteristics must an animal have to be classed as a reptile?

Reptiles are cold blooded animals. They are thick-skinned. Most have scales and reproduce by egg-laying. The lack of a larval stage distinguishes reptiles from amphibians.

2. Name 15 reptiles (lizards, snakes, and/or turtles) found in your locality. Tell where they live, their food habits, and their economic importance.

http://enature.org is a good resource for this. You can search local wildlife by zip code, and it also gives information about each animal.

4. Tell what to do if you are bitten by a venomous snake.

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/First aid/Snake bite

5. Tell what to do if you are bitten by a non-venomous snake.

Treatment of a non-venomous snakebite is essentially the same as the treatment for puncture wounds. Clean the wound, cover it with a sterile bandage, and seek medical attention.

6. Do one of the following:

a. Tell the life history of one representative of each: lizard, snake, turtle. Compare lizards, snakes, turtles, and crocodiles as to life history, variation in eyes and ears, teeth, heart, lungs, limbs, tails, and scales (shells).

Leopard Gecko (Lizard)

Leopard Gecko

Leopard Geckos become sexually mature at around 10-14 months of age. The Leopard Gecko's gender can be determined once the animal reaches an adult length of 5+".

Leopard Geckos breed from March through September, although the season may begin as early as January and finish as late as October. Thirty days later, the female will lay one or two eggs with a leathery shell. Clutches of two eggs will then be laid every two weeks to monthly throughout the rest of the mating season varying from each gecko according to age, with older females gradually laying fewer eggs with each year. The eggs will need to be incubated.

Like many other egg-laying reptiles the sex of Leopard geckos are determined by incubation temperature. Eggs incubated at 79 F will result in a majority of female neonates, where as eggs incubated at 85 - 87 F will result in a more even sex ratio and eggs incubated at 89 - 90 F in the first four weeks will result in more males. Females hatched from these eggs are generally more aggressive than other females, and they tend to reach sexual maturity later if at all. An incubation temperature lower than 77 F or higher than 97 F will cause deformities and usually death of the neonates incubated at these temperatures.

The eggs hatch 6-12 weeks after being laid depending on temperature. The gecko breaks the surface of the egg and pushes its head out, remaining in this position from 2 to 4 hours adapting to lung breathing and obtaining oxygen from the egg membranes as well as absorbing yolk from inside the egg.

Garter Snake

Before they mate, garter snakes go into brumation, which is a state similar to hibernaiton. They stop eating for about two weeks beforehand to clear their stomach of any food that would rot there otherwise. Garter snakes begin mating as soon as they emerge from brumation. In chillier parts of their range, male common garter snakes awaken from brumation first, giving themselves enough time to prepare to mate with females when they finally appear. After mating, a female leaves the den/mating area to find food and a place to give birth. Female garter snakes are able to store the male's sperm for years before fertilization. The young are incubated in the lower abdomen, at about the midpoint of the length of the mother's body. Garter snakes are viviparous, meaning they give birth to live young. Gestation is two to three months in most species. As few as 3 or as many as 50 snakes are born in a single litter. The babies are independent upon birth.

Leatherback Turtle

Like all sea turtles, leatherback turtles start their lives as hatchlings bursting out from the sands of their nesting beaches. Right after they hatch, the baby turtles are already in danger of predation. Many are eaten by birds, crustaceans or other reptiles before they reach the water. Once they reach the ocean they are generally not seen again until maturity. Very few turtles survive this mysterious period to become adults. It is known that juvenile leatherbacks spend a majority of their particular life stage in more tropical waters than the adults.

Adults are prone to long-distance bouts of migration. Migration in leatherback turtles occurs between the cold waters in which mature leatherbacks cruise in to feed on the abundant masses of jellyfish that occur in those waters, to the tropical and subtropical beaches in the regions where they were hatched from. In the Atlantic, individual females tagged in French Guiana off the coast of South America have been recaptured on the other side of the ocean in Morocco and Spain.

Mating between leatherback turtles take place at sea. Leatherback males never leave the water once they enter it unlike females which crawl onto land to nest.

While the other species of sea turtles almost-always return to the same beaches they hatched from, female leatherback turtles have been found to be capable of switching to another beach within the same general region of their "home" beach. Chosen nesting beaches are comprised of soft sand since their shells and plastrons (the turtle's underside) are softer and easily damaged by hard rocks. Nesting beaches also have shallower approach angles from the sea. This is a source of vulnerability for the turtles because such beaches are easily eroded. Females excavate a nest above the high-tide line with their flippers. One female may lay as many as nine clutches in one breeding season. About nine days pass between nesting events. The average clutch size of this particular species is around 110 eggs per nest, 85% of which are viable. The female carefully back-fills the nest after, disguising it from predators with a scattering of sand.

The eggs hatch in about sixty to seventy days. As with other reptiles, the ambient temperature of the nest determines the sex of the hatchlings. After nightfall, the hatchlings dig their way to the surface and make their way to the sea.

7. Locate two Bible stories in which a reptile played an important part.

Eve tempted by the serpent in the garden of Eden (Genesis 3)

Moses and Aaron's staffs becoming snakes (Exodus 4 & 7)

People who were bit by snakes could look at bronze snake on pole to live (Numbers 21)

Paul was bitten by a viper, which he shook off into the fire. The people thought he was a god since he didn't die. (Acts 28)