A Complete Guide to the Snakes of Southern Africa, by Johan Marais

A Complete Guide to the Snakes of Southern Africa, by Johan Marais. Penguin Random House South Africa, Struik Nature. 3rd edition. Cape Town, South Africa 2022. ISBN 9781775847472 / ISBN 978-1-77-584747-2

A Complete Guide to the Snakes of Southern Africa, by Johan Marais. Penguin Random House South Africa, Struik Nature. 3rd edition. Cape Town, South Africa 2022. ISBN 9781775847472 / ISBN 978-1-77-584747-2

A Complete Guide to the Snakes of Southern Africa by Johan Marais, features outstanding species descriptions providing invaluable information about vernacular names, favoured habitats, habits, similar species, hints on identification, dangers to man, and so on.

Johan Marais  

This comprehensive guide, A Complete Guide to the Snakes of Southern Africa, will prove invaluable to herpetologists, snake collectors, hikers, gardeners and reptile enthusiasts. In his iconic book Illustrations of the Zoology of South Africa, published in 1849, Sir Andrew Smith, the father of South African zoology, wrote this about the Boomslang (his Bucephalus capensis, now Dispholidus typus): 'The natives of South Africa regard the boom-slange as poisonous; but in their opinion we cannot concur, as we have not been able to discover the existence of any glands manifestly organized for the secretion of poison'. He attributed to 'the rudimentary fangs which exist at the hinder extremity of the maxillary rows of teeth' the purely mechanical function of restraining prey such as birds in the snake's mouth. It would take the astute observations and animal experiments of Frederick W FitzSimons to vindicate the locals' belief that this species was dangerously venomous. FW FitzSimons was a multi-talented zoologist, museum curator, anthropologist and founder of Africa's first Snake Park in Port Elizabeth. Although not medically qualified, he had studied medicine in Ireland, which gave him a valuable background for interpreting, pathophysiological^, the clinical effects of envenoming. By reporting two severe human cases of Boomslang envenoming, one of them fatal, and through studies in chickens, ducks, rabbits and a Cape jackal, he established the lethal potency of Boomslang venom.23 His younger son, Desmond C. FitzSimons, carried forward the development of the eponymous Snake-bite Serum, Snake-bite Outfit and Serosyringe Snake-bite Outfit. FitzSimons Snake-bite Serum ('Bitis, Hemachatus, Naja') was still being marketed in the 1970s, when I used it to treat Bitis arietans and Naja nigricollis bite victims in Nigeria. FW FitzSimons' other son, Vivian FM FitzSimons, published the classic Snakes of Southern Africa in 1962.4 In 1983, it was substantially rewritten and updated by Donald Broadley as FitzSimons' Snakes of Southern Africa.5 These marvellous books remain key sources of reference. In the 1990s, Broadley was planning a new edition, in which Roger Blaylock and I were to succeed Poul Christensen of the South African Institute for Medical Research as authors of the section on venoms and snakebite. Unfortunately, the publishers eventually reneged, and so no new edition was forthcoming. This has left the field open for a comprehensive work on the rich herpetofauna of this country and its medical implications, to complement Bill Branch's excellent field guides, and the interesting but now outdated Snakes and Snakebite: Venomous Snakes and Management of Snakebite in Southern Africa by John Visser and David Chapman, that I reviewed for the British Medical Journal in 1978. This magnificent new edition of  A Complete Guide to Snakes of South Africa will fill this gap. The Introduction dispels many of the ignorant and destructive myths surrounding snakes, an endlessly fascinating group of animals that has inspired all manner of erroneous beliefs. Marais describes the appropriate behaviour for someone who is confronted by a snake at home. He gives tips on snake photography and husbandry, and provides a thorough background to snake biology, including descriptions of their unique range of special senses. As well as their tropotactical forked tongues, chemosensitive vomeronasal organs, and thermosensitive loreal pit organs, snakes also possess hydrodynamic and mechano-sensory scale organs or sensilla. [...]

Professor David A. Warrell
Emeritus Professor of Tropical Medicine University of Oxford, United Kingdom

This is an excerpt from A Complete Guide to the Snakes of Southern Africa, by Johan Marais.

Title: A Complete Guide to the Snakes of Southern Africa
Author: Johan Marais
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
Imprint: Struik Nature
3rd edition. Cape Town, South Africa 2022
ISBN 9781775847472 / ISBN 978-1-77-584747-2
Softcover, 17 x 24 cm, 360 pages, 760 colour photos, images and maps

Marais, Johan im Namibiana-Buchangebot

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