Today marks a year since the beginning of the first Global Amphibian and Reptile Disease (GARD) conference, held in Knoxville, Tennessee. I travelled to Knoxville alone (as I usually do for international conferences), visiting the United States for the first time in order to present some of my PhD research on ophidiomycosis in grass snakes at GARD 2022. I’ll go into more detail about that next week, but for now I want to tell you about the amazing time I had at Zoo Knoxville on the 4th August 2022 as part of an ice-breaker and socialising event. Two coachloads of us were transported down to the zoo, where we were provided a range of snacks and IPA in order to mingle and get to know one another a little better ahead of the talks commencing the next day. This gave us ample opportunity to explore the zoo, although most of us loitered around the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation centre, where our mixer was taking place, and where all of the amphibians and reptiles were (who would have seen that coming?).

As someone that loves amphibians and reptiles more than life itself, it was great to see such a diversity of species on display, highlighting their conservation needs. I’ve visited a number of amazing zoos in the UK over the years, but nothing compares to zoos in the US in terms of the amount of species they have in captivity, and the success of their breeding programs. This is one of the few times where I agree that bigger is better! For example, there were a number of species that I saw in captivity for the first time in Zoo Knoxville such as the Lake Titicaca frog (pictured below), which were in an interactive tank where you could be photographed among them, which I thought was a great way to get people to engage with them. This is especially true if you’re familiar with one of the species’ other common names, which is the scrotum frog. These unusual looking frogs are only found in a single lake (hence their name), and are threatened by disease, pollution, habitat loss, and climate change to name a few.

It wasn’t just cool amphibians that were on display, there were colourful reptiles too! Another species I saw at Zoo Knoxville which I had not encountered in the European captive collections I’d visited before were the Ethiopian mountain viper. These green and yellow snakes are quite possibly some of the most beautiful snakes you’ll ever see. Unfortunately, this bold colouration has made them targets of illegal smuggling for the pet trade, on top of the impact of habitat loss. As is often the case if you’re an unusually colourful or vibrant reptile, you often find yourself stolen from the wild and end up in a tank in someone’s living room in central Europe. Thankfully though, these snakes are part of a vital captive breeding program for the species – something that I always love to see!

Aside from the multitude of exotic species (most of which were part of breeding programs), there were some native species on display too. This included some of the salamanders that I would later see (another blog coming out about that soo), but also frog too, although these were housed outside. It was great to see my first wild American amphibians, living freely in the zoo, in a pond nearby the ARC center. They were living so freely in fact, that whilst I was watching some brown frogs (Lithobates spp.), a garter snake decided to chomp down on one. Unfortunately for the snake, the frog it had chosen for its dinner was slightly too large for the snake, and the frog was also putting up quite the fight! After about 10 minutes of wrestling, the frog escaped (probably to tell all of its mates that it had just had a fight with a shark).

Being in the US, there were plenty of turtle and tortoises on display, including ploughshare and radiated tortoises – I’d always wanted to see them! The tropical house where a number of other species were houses was incredibly hot and humid (it was like being back in the jungles of Borneo), but to assist visitors in identifying the various species, they had resin casts of the shells that you could interact with. This provides both a visual and a tactile way for visitors to further engage with the collections and their conservation work, especially younger members of the public and those with sight problems. Hats off to Zoo Knoxville for coming up with inventive ways to help engage as many people as possible. From the rest of the zoo that I was able to explore (I may have been distracted), this theme carried on out throughout, and I would love the opportunity to visit again someday in the future to really get a feel for the place, and all of the amazing work they are doing.

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