Johanna Speaks

Coyote Peterson is in Kirtland Ohio. 

 Hadley Hofbauer is going to be joining Coyote Peterson on his adventure. They are going to be trying to see if they can catch a snapping turtle and a Painted turtle. 

They see a  baby Painted turtle!! They sneak up really quietly and bam! Coyote Peterson caught the baby Painted turtle. Hadley said," it looks so cute!". 

 Painted turtles are omnivorous which means that they eat different types of foods of things like tadpoles, little tiny fish, and plants.

 The carapace is the top of the shell and the plastron is the bottom of the shell. It's light so something's coming up from underneath it like a snapping turtle, the snapping turtle might not see it, and then it wouldn't get eaten.

Hadley named the turtle rainbow. 

They said goodbye and let it go back into the water. 

Next, they found a Northern water snake.

 Hadley got to hold the water snake. But Coyote Peterson did not want her to get bitten, not because it's venomous but he just does not want her to get bitten anyway, so he put on some gloves so if the snake does bite then she can't even feel it at all. Hadley has always been afraid of any type of snake.  After she got to hold the Northern water snake she was not really scared of snakes anymore and she thinks that they are actually kind of cute! If people are scared of water snakes, it's called ophidiophobia and a lot of people are afraid. The reason why people are so scared of snakes is that they don't understand them. 

They said goodbye to the Northern water snake and kept going. 

They see a snapping turtle!! Coyote Peterson went into the water and caught the snapping turtle! It is a Mud snapping turtle. 

People don't know how old snapping turtles get but Coyote Peterson said " it's estimated between 30 to 70 years old". And he thinks the one that they just caught is probably 20 or 25 years old.  Are all snapping turtle habitats in ponds? Snapping turtles love swamps but they can also be found in rivers and sometimes along the edges of lakes. Because they're a freshwater turtle species, if their body of fresh water, there's a good chance it could have been a snapping turtle.

They said goodbye to the snapping turtle. 

Hadley's favorite part of the adventure was holding the water snake. 

Mark is trying to find a Zombie Toad in the Sonoran Desert. 

While he was looking for the toad, along the way he found a Sidewinder Rattlesnake! Mark said, " If you look at the front of the snake's head, you see those horns, it's actually a specialized scale". He said, " The raised scales over their eyes are likely an evolutionary adaptation that may help the snake shade its eyes from the sun, or possibly prevent sand from drifting over them as they lay buried underneath the sand to ambush prey". 

They move super cool!! I wish I could have a Sidewinder Rattlesnake!!

 They let the snake go and kept going to look for the Zombie toad. But they came across a Desert hairy scorpion! Mark held the scorpion by the tail and made sure that the scorpion did not sting him. He said never do what I am doing, am just doing it because of science. 

 Mark said, " what is interesting is although it is the largest, it has probably the weakest venom". If you are stung then it will only feel like a bee sting. But if you are allergic to it, then well you can have a really bad situation. Then he let the scorpion go. 

He found water!! And where water is, the Zombie toads are! He found a Zombie toad. Now he just has to catch it! With one hand in the water, he caught the Zombie toad!!!

Mark said," This creature actually lives underground.". The toad's foot has a black little dot.  And that dot is actually built out of the same stuff from our fingernails. They use that to dig underground to hibernate a year, and when it hibernates it almost completely dehydrates itself and slows down all of its life processes remaining in a state of limbo for months and months and months. When the rain comes, the toad will rehydrate itself and emerge from the ground to breed and lay eggs in shallow pools of water. But they will return to the ground shortly there after for another year as a lifeless organism. 

The Zombie toads eye looks just like a cats eye almost.

The toads skin is not as bumpy as a ordinary toad. 

Mark said " you should definitely not have a Zombie toad as your pet".

Coyote Peterson is going to be putting his head in a box with Golden Orb Silk Weaver spiders. The name comes from the golden color of its extremely strong web, which helps to draw in and untangle a variety of victims. 

Coyote Peterson said, " all spiders have fangs ". I never knew that! I always thought that only venomous spiders have fangs, but all do apparently!! Some people say that they have seen a Golden Orb Silk Weaver eat a small bird!! 

Females are larger than males.

 They are not aggressive toward humans. And their venom is very mild. Still, I would never want to be bitten by a Golden Orb Silk spider!! Or by any spider in fact! I am kind of scared of spiders. 

Coyote Peterson said, " well I have stayed in the box for a couple of minutes already. I think it's time to let my head be out of the box now". 

Coyote Peterson is in Deland, FL, Reptile Discovery Center. He is going to see a King Cobra and a Gaboon Viper snake. He is meeting up with Mara and Carl. They are going to be milking those two snakes (for their venom).

They are first going to be milking the King Cobra snake. Coyote Peterson is really excited! 

Carl said "The King Cobra snake is a young female. She is about four and a half years old. She is only about ten and a half feet long." 

Then Coyote Peterson said, "wait, did you say only about ten feet long!!??" 

Then Carl said "well yeah for a King Cobra that's not that long. In fact, King Cobra's are dimorphic by size. So males get much larger than females. A male King Cobra is sixteen feet long, but a female King Cobra only gets to about 11 feet."

King Cobras are ophiophags. They are snake eaters, almost exclusively. But in the Reptile Discovery Center, they give them rats to eat instead of snakes. 

They milked the King Cobra. The King Cobra's venom was a beautiful deep yellow. There were four hundred milligrams of venom. Four hundred milligrams of weight is less than 1/8 of a tsp in size. That can kill a lot of people if that snake bit someone!

Next, they are going to be milking the Gaboon Viper! A Gaboon Viper is a really fast snake. If you're just walking in the woods and if you are really close to a Gaboon Viper but you don't even know it's there, the snake will just remain motionless and try to blend in but if you get a little too close then well you are in deep trouble. It only takes a hundred milligrams to kill a person. And it gives out five hundred milligrams of venom!! So that can kill five people!!

They milked the Gaboon Viper!

Now they are going to see what happens with the snake's venom and with human blood mixed in. And that's going to be Coyote Peterson's blood. They are going to be seeing stuff under the microscope. When they put the Cobra venom and Coyote Peterson's blood together, the blood cells explode apart immediately! The venom keeps drawing toward itself all the good blood cells until they are destroyed. It looks like the red blood cells are getting magnetized in toward the venom. 

Watch the video to see what they see under the microscope.

I am really scared of roaches! In this video, Coyote Peterson puts five hundred roaches in this box that he made. Then he puts his head in the box and puts the roaches in! He has a friend named Mike Easter. Mike is TERRIFIED of roaches!! He won't even go near roaches. He watched Coyote Peterson put so many roaches in the box and he said: " Coyote if I were you I would already pass out".Coyote Peterson was trying to convince Mike that you don't have to be scared of roaches. He really even wanted to have Mike hold one. But at the end of the video, Mike said "I am still not even going to hold it or even go near it". I understand that of course because I am also pretty scared of them too.

Coyote Peterson puts five hundred roaches into the box. He starts with ten Madagascar hissing cockroaches first. They come from the island of Madagascar of course. 

Coyote Peterson said that roaches have three pairs of legs on each side and they have tiny claws which allow them to grip to irregularities of any surface. Which is really impressive for roaches.

The next type of roaches that Coyote Peterson is going to be putting in is called Dubia Cockroach. The Dubai cockroach is much faster than the Madagascar cockroaches.

 Coyote Peterson said that Joe Rogan actually ate a hissing cockroach as a part of the series. He asked Mike if he would eat a cockroach and he said "there's not a dollar amount that would convince me to eat a roach. That's just gross".

There is a cockroach inside Coyote Peterson's ear. Coyote Peterson also said that what people fear the most is that roaches will come and lay eggs inside of their ears. But that is a complete misnomer. It will definitely not happen. He said it smells horrible inside the box because there are so many cockroaches inside.

The reason people are so afraid of cockroaches is that they are so fast and they see them in their kitchen and freak out. 

Roaches as a species can survive almost anything. 

After watching that video I am still definitely scared of roaches.