Copperheads Too

This web log has touched on the box turtle study ongoing at the NC Zoo. Some turtles have even been fitted with monitoring devices to follow their movements around the Zoo. These are free ranging, wild animals, making their ways around the larger (1450-acre) Zoo property. (The developed NC Zoo is found within fences that encircle about 500 of those acres.)

John Groves, NC Zoo curator of amphibians and reptiles, is conducting the same kind of studies with the reclusive copperhead snakes which also range freely within the North Carolina Zoological Park. Some snakes too have been fitted with "devices", according to an article in today's "News & Record" (Greensboro).

John and the Zoo want to help conserve box turtles and copperheads. So they want to know more about how they behave in their natural settings.

Already they have learned "that the snake travels farther than they had thought and always returns within 100 feet of its hibernating spot," the "N & R" reports.