Instituto Butantan, Brazil - March/April 2016.
It took a long time to arrange, but I'm currently part way through my first ever residence in a zoological institution. Brazil's Instituto Butantan (in Sao Paulo) is one of the world's most important herpetological collections. There are so many different areas here : they extract venom, develop vaccines, describe new taxa and maintain amazing reference collections, and among many other areas of interest, they have a small hospital which specialises exclusively in treating envenomations. These days the living collections on display are limited to three areas: the 'serpentarium' - a series of outdoor enclosures for snakes; the biological museum - an outstanding reptile house; and the 'macacario' - a series of macaque enclosures currently being renovated (and thus not open to the public).
I had hoped that I could visit the reptile house at some point during my stay, so I was very happy to get a guided tour on my first day.
A really nice experience. The visitor route starts a little tamer than I'd like, with common boas and anacondas, but quickly picks up the pace with a series of green racer species, vine snakes and Burmese pythons before starting the venomous snakes. A tremendous 12 species of the genus Bothrops are on show; with a few more off-display too. Some of these are very rare, such as the rare golden and Alcatrazes lanceheads, which are endemic to single islands.
Coral snakes are displayed next to identical false corals, showing that the 'red, yellow, black' rhymes can be useless, even dangerous. With some you can only clearly tell the difference by looking at the teeth (or the teeth marks on your skin if you've harassed them enough).
Similarly, recently split rainbow boa species are displayed side-by-side, and an amphisbaenian (!) is supposedly displayed next to a worm lizard, but you'd be lucky to see both above ground at any given time!
The museum are big on education, and they try to correct misconceptions : morays are displayed, for instance, with signs to reinforce the fact that they are not sea snakes.
Frogs are next displayed, followed by a series of vivaria for Brazilian tarantulas displayed opposite the smaller, deadly spiders and some scorpions. A fascinating display at the end compares different aspects of reptilian life, from the size of eggs in the animal kingdom to differentiation of snake hemipenes.
Although not a huge place, this is clearly a reptile house of great importance. One of the facilities in the Instituto Butantan is an animal reception where people can bring in spiders and snakes that they fear from around their homes (dead or alive), can get them identified, discover some new facts and donate them to the collections. So the museum tends to have a good range of specimens available to display at any given time.
I tried to return daily to see some of the better-hidden animals.
