While Professor Dar Roberts’ interests include remote sensing of vegetation, geology, ecology and ecophysiology, they certainly don’t preclude herpetology. As Dar puts it, “My fondness for snakes is the reason my lab is called the Visualization and Image Processing for Environmental Research Lab, often called the Viper Lab or Viper Pit.” “I like snakes, which is why I have a pair of corn snakes named Ice Cream and Popsicle…I generally take every opportunity I can to catch snakes and have, in the past, captured Rattle Snakes.”
“Fluffy,” pictured with Dar, is a young green anaconda owned by Robert Green, a former PhD student from our department (Robert took the picture while Dar was visiting him recently). “The only rules I was given for handling Fluffy included to move slowly, not wave my hand in front of his face, and to avoid letting him get fully wrapped around my neck. I would guess Fluffy is around 6 feet long, but it’s only a guess. Fluffy could conceivably live 31 years and grow to a length of 26 feet.”
