I’m glad I live in the middle of the Great White North. No venomous snakes! For some inexplicable reason I had a dream about being in Florida the other night. That sounds like a good dream: Disneyworld, Miami Beach and warm temperatures. But what was odd about this dream was that I was in a semi-swampy area where there were hordes of aggressive, large poisonous snakes. It was a freaky dream, lots of running away from snakes. Having snakes crawl from under couches etc. The last I remember about the dream I was attacking some smaller snakes in a motel room with a spade. Crazy dreams!

That dream led me to research deadly snakes in the United States. The bastards are all over the place.

The Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake.

This is a big bitch. Up to 8 feet long and 35 pounds. Some think it is the biggest pit viper in the world. Run into this thing while searching for the golf ball in the scrub and I would instantly meet the maker, and that is without getting bitten. Notice it’s throughout Florida.

Western Diamondback Rattlesnake

Very similar to the Eastern but a lot smaller. Likes the desert as opposed to it’s cousin which likes lush forested areas.

Cottonmouth, also known as the Water Moccasin

This is a nasty little bastard. The cottonmouth is one of the most feared venomous snakes in North America. Its powerful cytotoxic venom is so destructive that it can eat away flesh and result in grisly amputations. Their preference for hiding in water and attacking when least expected means that bites are also relatively frequent. Again, another deadly snake that slithers throughout Florida.

Copperhead

For some reason this snake avoids Florida.

The copperhead is perhaps responsible for the most bites of any snake on this list. It’s not because the snake is inherently more aggressive, but because copperheads tend to “freeze” when met with approaching humans—instead of fleeing like most other, sensible snakes—and will bite when stepped on.

The copperhead also has what is believed to be the weakest venom potency of all pit vipers, which is a happy coincidence for the snake that is otherwise most likely to bite you.

Timber Rattlesnake

I never realized there were so many rattlesnakes in the east. Florida spared again.

Coral Snakes

Eastern coral snakes are very reclusive and are rarely seen, which is great for hunters and hikers across the American Southeast. The eastern coral snake was once seen as the most dangerous snake in the region. While that reputation hasn’t exactly subsided, experts now say that fatalities from this dangerous species are actually very rare. This is thought to be because the coral snake has very little control of how much venom it can inject into a victim.

Massasauga Rattlesnake

Canada isn’t entirely left out

These pesky rattlesnakes go all the way up to the tip of southern Ontario. To the edges of Canada’s number one city Toronto, at least that is what the residents of Toronto think.

Prairie Rattlesnake

More Canadian content here. These critters crawl all the way up to Saskatchewan and Alberta. Florida is spared again!

Pakistani nature photographer Atif Saeed managed to capture this stunning shot of a lion — just before it leapt at him.

This photograph was snapped by Atif Saeed at a safari zoo park near Lahore. He got out of his jeep to take the photo, but the sound of the lens’s whizzing caught the lion’s attention. Saeed figures the big cat got as close as 10 feet, before he was able to reach the safety of his jeep.

Alpine Ibex are big mountain goats that live among the peaks in the European Alps where predators cannot reach. They occupy the steep, rocky terrain above the tree line between two to three thousand meters above sea level. But they can’t live there at all times, because there is no food up there. During spring and summer, the Ibex live among the conifers and the meadows where there are plenty of grass to feed. Before the first snow falls, the Ibex has to fatten up and build reserves to help see them through the Alpine winters. Once winter arrives, the Ibex retreats to the safety of their homes in the clouds.

Like many herbivores, the Alpine Ibex lacks salt and other essential minerals in their diet which they can’t get from grass. So the Ibex has to seek out natural salt licks. In springtime, when salt requirements are the highest, the Ibex can be seen licking rock surfaces for leached salts.

Dam walls are another precious source of salts and minerals. Dams are composed of concrete, and concrete releases a calcium-aluminium mineral called ettringite as part of the curing process. Up to twenty percent of hardened concrete is composed of ettringite.

Only the Alpine Ibex can exploit this resource. Being excellent climbers, the Ibex will climb the sheer vertical face of the dam’s wall using the small protruding boulders as foothold to lick ettringite off the wall’s surface. The Ibex can scale such great heights because of their soft, split hooves that can grip any surface like a pincer.

The Cingino Dam in northern Italy, not far from the Swiss border, is one place where you can observe the Alpine Ibex’s gravity-defying stunts—but it’s not the only place. This behavior has also been observed at the Barbellino dam in Lombardy, and Lago della Rossa dam in Valli di Lanzo, Piemonte.

Rapid deforestation and excessive human intervention into wildlife habitat has lead to frequent straying of wild animals into human habitation. Intrusion into wildlife habitat typically occurs due to illegal encroachment and also when roads, railroads, canals, electric power lines, and pipelines penetrate and divide wildlife habitat. Wild animals attempting to cross roads often find themselves in front of speeding vehicles.

Road mortality has significantly impacted a number of prominent species in the United States and elsewhere, including white-tailed deer, Florida panthers, and black bears. According to a study made in 2005, nearly 1.5 million traffic accidents involving deer occur each year in the United States that cause an estimated $1.1 billion in vehicle damage. In addition, species that are unable to migrate across roads to reach resources such as food, shelter and mates experiences reduced reproductive and survival rates.

Wildlife overpass in Banff National Park. Photo: Joel Sartore 

One way to minimize human-wildlife conflict is to construct wildlife crossings such as bridges and underpasses that allow animals to cross human-made barriers safely. The first wildlife crossings were constructed in France during the 1950s. Since then, several European countries including the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, and France have been using various crossing structures to reduce the conflict between wildlife and roads. In the Netherlands alone there are more than 600 tunnels installed under major and minor roads including the longest “ecoduct” viaduct, near Crailo that runs 800 meters.

Wildlife crossings have also become increasingly common in Canada and the United States. The most recognizable wildlife crossings in the world are found in Banff National Park in Alberta where the national park is bisected by a large commercial road called the Trans-Canada Highway. To reduce to effect of the four lane highway, 24 vegetated overpasses and underpasses were built to ensure habitat connectivity and protect motorists. These passes are used regularly by bears, moose, deer, wolves, elk, and many other species.

In the United States, thousands of wildlife crossings have been built in the past 30 years, including culverts, bridges, and overpasses. These have been used to protect Mountain Goats in Montana, Spotted Salamanders in Massachusetts, Bighorn Sheep in Colorado, Desert Tortoises in California, and endangered Florida Panthers in Florida.

The Netherlands contains an impressive number of wildlife crossings – over 600, that includes both underpasses and ecoducts. The Veluwe, a 1000 square kilometers of woods, heathland and drifting sands, the largest lowland nature area in North Western Europe, contains nine ecoducts, 50 meters wide on average, that are used to shuttle wildlife across highways that transect the Veluwe. The Netherlands also boasts the world’s longest ecoduct-wildlife overpass called the Natuurbrug Zanderij Crailo. This massive structure, completed in 2006, is 50 m wide and over 800 m long and spans a railway line, business park, river, roadway, and sports complex.

Ecoduct Borkeld in the Netherlands.

Banff.

Ecoduct Kikbeek in Hoge Kempen National Park, Belgium.

Banff

Elephant underpass in Kenya.

A book of bovine beauty shots seeks to revive the human-cattle bond.

While Werner Lampert was living on an alpine pasture, he discovered that cows have an insatiable appetite for, among many things, poetry. Each morning, he’d clamber up a small hill to the pasture where his bovine neighbors were grazing. There, he’d read aloud the works of the German Romantic poet Friedrich Hölderlin. The cows would gather around him, listening attentively until he finished delivering the poem at hand. “When I stopped … they would soon scatter,” writes Lampert. “But the next morning they would be there waiting for me again.”

According to Lampert, cows and humans share a special relationship—one that goes way deeper than impromptu poetry readings. That’s why he partnered with a team of photographers to journey around the globe documenting the many breeds of cattle that populate the planet, as well as the humans who look after them, work with them, worship them, and eat them. His forthcoming book, The Cow: A Tribute, is an epic ode to the stunning diversity of cows and the many ways in which they’ve helped humans thrive over the past 10,000 years. From the skyward-pointing horns of Ethiopian Raya-Azebo cattle to the spellbinding eyes of Austrian Montafons, The Cow offers a comprehensive, striking mosaic of the global bovine body and soul. (Yes, Lampert asserts, cows have souls.)