For small snakes especially venomous ones, you can take your specimen and sandwich it between a clear piece of plexiglass and some sort of foam pad, then use dry erase markers to trace along the midline of the specimen. Afterward you can use a grid and photograph of the glass tracing to measure the length in a program like Image-J.
Best of luck, James C. Nifong, Ph. D. Postdoctoral Associate Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences School of Forest Resources & Conservation University of Florida 7922 NW 71st Street Gainesville, FL 32653 Cell: 1(352) 284-9902 -----Original Message----- From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of wresetar Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2014 10:28 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Measuring lamprey Herp folks use glass tubes for measuring snakes and other anguilliform critters. For salamanders we ice them down and then photograph against a grid. William J. Resetarits, Jr. Professor of Biology and Henry L. and Grace Doherty Chair in Freshwater Research Department of Biology The University of Mississippi P.O. Box 1848 University, MS 38677-1848 Phone: (662) 915-5804 Fax: (662) 915-6554 http://www.olemiss.edu/resetaritslab On 11/25/14, 1:14 PM, "Katharine Miller" <[email protected]> wrote: >I am doing research on the Yukon River and we are catching a large >number of juv. lamprey. We would like to be able to quickly measure a >subsample >(~50 per tow) to get a length distribution - but these guys are really >hard to measure! We've tried using soda water to anesthetize them, but >they are resilient. They can actually stay out of water for a long >time without losing any of their vigor, and ee would like to release >most of the lamprey alive after they are measured. > >I was hoping that someone might know of a measuring device that could >be used - maybe my herpetologist colleagues have something they use for >measuring snakes? > >Thanks!
