Yellow-bellied snake - scary, but not dangerous. Yellow-bellied snake. Yellow-bellied lifestyle and habitat

From the end of the XIII century. the fortress was one of the outposts of Genoa in the Crimea. Intensified from the second half of the XIV century. Mangup principality (Theodoro) at the beginning of the 15th century. turned into a serious competitor of the Genoese. In the autumn of 1433, the Mangup prince Alexei, having enlisted the support of the Crimean Khan, apparently assisted the inhabitants of Chembalo and the surrounding villages in preparing an uprising against the Genoese. The Italian colonists were expelled, and the fortress passed to the Theodorites. The return of Cembalo required the help of the metropolis. In March 1434, a squadron of 20 ships left Genoa, on which there was a six thousandth armed detachment under the command of Carlo Lomellino. On June 4 (13), the squadron reached Chembalo.

The next day, having cut the chain that blocked the entrance to Balaklava Bay, the Genoese approached the walls of the fortress and laid siege to it, but they failed to take the fortified city even after a fierce battle. On June 6 (15) Cembalo came under fire from naval guns. Part of the fortress wall and one of the towers were destroyed by cannonballs, and the Genoese broke into the city.

The largest artillery piece of World War II

The largest weapon of the Second World War is the railway gun "Dora" (caliber 800 mm) was used by German troops during the siege of Sevastopol during the Great Patriotic War.

Delivered in 1942 near Bakhchisaray in 100 wagons. The barrel of the gun had a length of about 50 m and weighed 400 tons (the whole gun - 1350 tons).

The first shot was fired on June 5, 1942 at 05:35. Distance to target in 25 km the projectile overcame in 44.8 sec. A total of 48 armor-piercing shells weighing 7 tons each and 5 high-explosive shells were fired. One of the first left the deepest funnel in the world with a diameter of 32 m. In general, near Sevastopol in 1941–1942. the most massive use of German artillery during the entire Second World War was noted. Up to 37 guns were concentrated on each kilometer of the front, and up to 74-100 guns on the direction of the main attacks.

longest title

The longest title among the nobles who owned lands in the Crimea, obviously, had Prince Grigory Alexandrovich Potemkin-Tavrichesky. His full title is: His Serene Highness Prince Potemkin-Tavrichesky, President of the State Military Collegium, Field Marshal, Grand Hetman of the Cossack, Yekaterinoslav and Black Sea Forces, Commander-in-Chief of the Yekaterinoslav Army, regular light cavalry, the Black Sea fleet and other land and sea military forces; Senator, Yekaterinoslav, Tauride and Kharkov Governor-General; Her Imperial Majesty's Troops Inspector General, Adjutant General, Acting Chamberlain, Lieutenant Colonel of the Life Guards Preobrazhensky Regiment, Chef of the Cavalry Guard Corps; Orders of Andrei Nevsky, St. George, Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir, St. Anna, Prussian Black Eagle, Danish Elephant, Swedish Seraphim, Polish White Eagle, St. Stanislaus Cavalier.

The first Crimean mud bath

The first mud bath was the branch of the Simferopol military hospital, founded in 1837 (located in Saki). After the establishment of Soviet power in the Crimea, on the basis of a military mud bath in 1922, a sanatorium of the People's Commissariat of Defense (later the Saki sanatorium of the USSR Ministry of Defense) was created.

The first scientific substantiation of the healing factors of the Crimea

The first scientific substantiation of the healing factors of the Crimea was made by the famous Russian doctor S.P. Botkin (1832–1889).

Residents and guests of the South Bank are familiar with the Botkinskaya trail in Livadia and the street of the same name in Yalta, which were named after the stay of the famous Russian doctor Sergei Petrovich Botkin in Crimea.

His first acquaintance with the Crimea took place in 1855 during the Crimean War. Yesterday's student, who graduated with honors from Moscow University, he voluntarily joined the team of doctors formed by N.I. Pirogov. The young doctor practiced in military hospitals and typhoid barracks in Simferopol and Bakhchisaray.

A memorial plaque was installed on the building of one of the buildings of the Crimean Medical Institute, immortalizing the stay in Simferopol of N. I. Pirogov, S. P. Botkin and the first sisters of mercy.

In 1870, S.P. Botkin received the title of academician and was the first of the Russian doctors to be appointed as a life physician of the royal family. It was his duty to accompany the persons of the imperial family every summer. One of the first to discover the exceptional climatic conditions of the South Shore, especially favorable for tuberculosis patients. He considered the best zone in the region of Ereklik and Livadia. According to the recommendations of S.P. Botkin, a sanatorium for the Empress was built in Ereklik. Now there is a complex of anti-tuberculosis sanatorium "Gornaya zdravnitsa" here. On his own initiative, a medical building was laid on Polikurovsky Hill, which is now occupied by the Research Institute of Climatology and Climatotherapy. I. M. Sechenov. One of the buildings is now called Botkinsky.

An outstanding doctor wrote: “As a hospital station, Crimea, in my opinion, has a great future ... Over time, it will take a place much higher than Montre.”

First use of bacteriological weapons

The first reliably known use of bacteriological weapons dates back to 1347, and this happened in the Crimea. An epidemic of plague broke out in the camp of the Tatars besieging Kafa (now Feodosia). The besiegers decided not to bury the corpses of the dead, but began to throw them into the city with the help of catapults. The Genoese who fled from the city brought the plague to Europe - and an epidemic began, from which about 75 million people died.

They find corners of solitude with nature in the spacious parks of the city. The many green streets of the resort are unique ecological systems that are home to many animals and birds. Moreover, there are truly unique individuals that live only in the south of our country. Sometimes it is useful and informative to look around and especially under your feet. On hot days of summer, the nature of Anapa is ready to give a meeting with a lot of lizards that have settled in the dense thickets of the Children's Park and warm boulders of the high coast of the pebble beaches of Utrish and Sukko. I wanted to highlight the largest lizard of Anapa - the yellow-bellied or armored spindle. Despite the absence of paws and external resemblance to a snake, the yellowbell is a real and thoroughbred lizard.

Appearance

A lizard masquerading as a dangerous snake, with the funny name yellowbell, can grow up to one and a half meters. An ordinary individual, which can be found in Anapa, reaches a size of 50-70 centimeters. The body does not have the legs inherent in lizards, nature denied the yellow-bellied such luxury, leaving only small tubercles next to the anus. The body begins with a large four-sided muzzle with a pointed nose. On the head there are strong jaws with blunt teeth. The body, consisting of hard scales, is slightly compressed from the sides and ends with a long tail. The abdominal and dorsal region, closing up, form a fold that runs along the body of the yellowbell. The transition from the body to the tail is almost imperceptible. Due to the bone armor in which the string is chained, the body is elastic and dense, such a structure does not allow the lizard to twist into rings like a snake.

The body color of an adult yellowbell has an olive or dark yellowish tint, the ventral part is slightly lighter. Young people are very different from their parents with black stripes that cover the entire body.

How to distinguish a yellowbell from a snake

If, while walking through secluded places, you suddenly meet a creature that looks like a snake, do not panic, maybe it's a harmless yellow-bellied lizard. The main signs by which you can distinguish our hero are the eyes that have eyelids. Take a closer look, maybe an imaginary snake winked at you or slowly blinks, then this is a yellow belly. Also, snakes do not have a pronounced longitudinal fold, and auditory openings on the sides of the head. Our yellow-bellied will not be able to curl up in a ring, strong parts of the shell will not allow.

habits

Yellow-bellied, like all lizards of Anapa, hibernates. After a long sleep, somewhere in April, the breeding season begins. Small lizards emerge from small eggs that the female guards. Egg care is one of the unique features of the light-bellied lizards.
The yellowbell feeds on insects, slugs, large grape snails, sometimes they attack small rodents. By its destruction of pests of fields and vineyards, the yellow-bellied lizard is considered a lizard useful for humans, which people urge to protect.

There are moments when the yellowbell announces the hunt for small rodents. The yellowbell, like a snake, cannot swallow its food whole. The caught victim must be firmly held with his teeth. Then the lizard quickly spins in a circle, when the prey loses consciousness, the yellowbell starts to pinch off tidbits and swallow.
Although a yellow-bellied and a lizard, he does not have the opportunity to discard his tail.

Where to see in Anapa

The armored spindle avoids human eyes; when meeting with a person, it tries to quickly hide from view. In the hands of the yellowbell, it begins to get out, to make frightening sounds. If all preventive methods have failed, the offender must be doused with excrement that has a pungent odor. Despite the strong jaws, the yellowbell does not bite a person and is absolutely safe. In Anapa, you can meet an amazing lizard in the secluded places of the Children's Park and on the stone slopes of Bald Mountain.

Date: 2011-03-15

R. Pushkin, Moscow

In the mountains of the Caucasus and Central Asia lives a strange creature - yellowbell(Ophisaurus apodus). Seeing it for the first time, anyone will decide that it is a snake: a long, more than 100 cm, cylindrical body, an elongated tail, a characteristic way of moving - all this is the most consistent with our ideas about snakes.
In reality, this is a completely harmless lizard, only legless. True, upon closer examination, one can see on her body small papillary outgrowths on the sides of the base of the tail - the rudiments of the hind limbs. It confirms that the yellowbell belongs to lizards and the presence of ear holes - after all, real snakes are deaf, they have no ears. Yes, and the eyes of the animal have eyelids; it can blink, while snakes even sleep with their eyes open.

Yellowbelly photo

This reptile belongs to the spindle family (Anguidae). including 80 species of lizards living in the countries of South, Central and. partially, North America, North Africa. Southwest, South and Southeast Asia. On the territory of the CIS, it is common in the Crimea, the Caucasus and Central Asia, where it is often found in river valleys, bushes and cultivated lands. Another representative of the spindle family lives with us - the brittle spindle, which is popularly known as a very poisonous snake, although it is also a completely safe legless lizard.

The second largest lizard in our fauna, second in size only to the gray monitor lizard.
This reptile is active during daylight hours, but on hot days it switches to a twilight lifestyle, willingly goes into the water and bathes for a long time. When frightened, it is able to move very quickly, especially downhill, while in a calm state it moves slowly and clumsily.
A person is truly afraid of panic. If other reptiles crawl away silently and imperceptibly, then the yellowbell makes so much noise, the grass above it sways so much that it is very difficult to confuse it with other reptiles. Perhaps such a non-trivial way of escape is a kind of protective measure, since a lizard incapable of active defense, making so much noise, imitates a large animal hiding in the grass.
When caught, she does not even try to bite, but, rotating along her own base. trying to get out of his hands. If this does not help, then he hangs lifelessly on his hands, closes his eyes, as if saying: I'm dead, throw me away. The only manifestation of a protective reaction on the part of the yellowbell can be considered hissing and sharp movements of the tail, which is twice as long as the body.

During the breeding season (June-July), the female yellowbell lays 6-10 eggs. Of these, in August-September, young animals 100-125 mm long are born. Their slender yellowish-gray bodies are decorated with zigzag transverse stripes. In juveniles, the longitudinal ribs on the scutes are much more distinct than in adults: they merge into long (from the head to the tip of the tail) costal stripes. From this, their bodies look faceted and shimmer in the sun with yellow highlights.
In general, the coloration of young animals very little resembles the dirty yellow or copper-red tones of adult animals. However, the characteristic skin fold located along the sides allows you to accurately determine the species. Unlike other lizards, and even from snakes, the body of the yellowbell is hard to the touch, as if encased in a shell.

Yellowbelly photo

The diet of yellowbells in nature consists of invertebrates: snails, beetles, slugs, earthworms. But rodents, lizards, frogs, chicks and bird eggs quite often become part of their menu. Large prey yellow-bellied, holding in strong jaws, stuns with sharp shaking of the head. He does not shy away from carrion. A considerable share in the diet of the lizard is the fruits of various plants.
The variety of food consumed by the yellowbell allows us to consider it one of the most omnivorous inhabitants of the terrarium, which does not cause feeding problems to the owner. In captivity, he betrays both live food (mice, frogs, worms, snails), as well as meat and fish in the form of minced meat or pieces. In the absence of animal food, you can replace it with vegetable food: apples, grapes, grated carrots. And yet, depriving lizards of animal protein is not worth it; vegetable components are best used only as a top dressing for a variety of diet. Cottage cheese and white bread moistened with a raw egg are also a good addition.
live in captivity for a long time and breed even in small terrariums. For a pair of adult animals, a room with a bottom area of ​​​​70x50 cm and a height of about 40 cm is quite enough. Coarse river sand is best used as soil. From the scenery, large heavy stones or snags are suitable, they also serve for shelters.

Be sure to have a reservoir suitable in size not only for drinking, but also for swimming. The pond must be fixed so that your pets cannot turn it over.
Like many reptiles, the yellowbell often defecates into the water, so you need to constantly monitor its cleanliness and replace it in a timely manner.

To heat a terrarium of the specified size, a krypton lamp is sufficient, located in the corner and reliably protected from animals. The power of the lamp is selected so that the air temperature is not lower than 25-27°C. To maintain its stability, you can use an aquarium thermostat. At night, the heating should be turned off to simulate a natural decrease in temperature to 18-20°C.
In addition to heating and lighting, the yellowbell, like other reptiles, needs ultraviolet radiation. Usually, erythema lamps or Photon-type devices are used for this. Sessions are carried out 1-2 times a week for 20-30 minutes from a distance of 50-100 cm. The first procedures should not exceed 5 minutes, then their duration is gradually increased.

Yellowbelly photo

Despite the ease of maintenance, yellowbellies cannot be attributed to animals that are widespread among lovers of home keeping of reptiles. One of the main reasons for this is the amazing ability of the lizard to mess up the terrarium, quickly destroying the scenery created there. It must be remembered that the yellowbell is a strong animal, and the constipation of the terrarium must be strong enough.
With good care, regular feeding (2-3 times a week), attention to animals, you will get real pleasure from watching, learn a lot of interesting things about the wonderful world of reptiles.
In conclusion, I want to say: having met a yellow-bellied in nature, do not harm him. Remember that this is a useful lizard that destroys a huge number of mice, grasshoppers and locusts, beetles, leaf beetles, slugs, weevils and other pests of agricultural land.

Magazine Aquarium 1999 №2

The largest lizard of the Crimea. - Yellow-bellied (not dangerous to human life.). This is a very large lizard. The record length for the species is 144 cm (with tail). The tail is about twice as long as the body. The head of the yellowbell passes into the body without the slightest hint of a cervical interception. It has a shape characteristic of lizards, uniformly tapering towards the tip of the muzzle. The rudiments of the hind limbs are preserved in the yellowbell, which do not play any role in his life. The teeth are very characteristic - powerful, blunt, adapted to crushing. The body of the yellowbell is hard and inflexible, as it is covered with large ribbed scales, under which there are bone plates about 5x5 millimeters in size, forming a bone shell. Because of this feature, the genus that includes the yellowbell is called "armored spindles". There is a gap between the abdominal and dorsal parts of the bone chain mail, which from the outside looks like a lateral longitudinal fold of the skin. It is formed by one or two rows of smaller scales without a bone base. Thanks to these folds, a slightly greater mobility of the body is provided. In addition, folds allow you to increase the volume of the body when eating or when carrying eggs. Adult yellow-bellies are colored in yellow and brown tones. On this background, small dark spots are sometimes scattered. The underside of the body is lighter. Young yellowbellies look completely different: they are striped. The background color of their body is yellowish gray, the stripes are dark, transverse, zigzag. Where does the yellowbell live? Yellowbelly is a southern lizard. In Europe, it is found only on the Balkan Peninsula and in the Crimea; widely distributed in Asia Minor and the Middle East, Central Asia and southern Kazakhstan. In Russia, it is known from the Krasnodar and Stavropol Territories, Kalmykia and Dagestan. In the areas of its distribution, the yellowbell uses a variety of open habitats: steppes and semi-deserts, mountain slopes, sparse forests, vineyards and abandoned fields. It occurs at altitudes up to 2300 meters. He has daily activity, and he often catches your eye - crawls out onto roads, climbs into buildings. In contrast to the shade-loving and humidity-loving spindle, the yellowbell prefers dry and sunny biotopes. But on the other hand, he willingly enters shallow water and can stay in the water for a long time, although he practically cannot swim. At night and on a hot afternoon, the yellowbell hides in thickets of bushes, under objects lying on the ground, in heaps of stones. In some places, yellowbellies are a common and common lizard. Despite the relatively little flexibility of the body, the yellowbell can crawl at a fairly high speed. At the same time, it intensively wriggles in waves with a large amplitude, and, having overcome several meters, stops for a short while. Then the next powerful jerk, and again a short pause. Such crawling is markedly different from the smooth and uniform movement of snakes. The yellowbell has to move a lot - in a day he masters the territory with a radius of about 200 meters. What do yellowbells eat? Yellowbelly is one of the few lizards specialized in feeding on certain “products”. Powerful jaws and developed blunt teeth are adapted to crush the outer shells of animals, primarily mollusks. Both in nature and in captivity, yellowbellies prefer this particular prey. If the spindle chooses naked slugs or cunningly pulls snails out of the shells, then the yellowbell simply cracks through their “houses” like a nutcracker. Even such large mollusks with a thick shell, like the grape snail, are defenseless against the yellowbell. He is actively looking for his prey. Having noticed it, it can creep up very slowly and then, from a distance of several centimeters, rush at it with lightning speed with its mouth wide open, which, as it were, covers the victim from above. He not only crushes snails with his jaws, but also, holding them in his mouth, crushes them against nearby stones. Swallowed shells and their fragments are digested in the stomach of the yellowbell. Just like snails, the yellowbell bites through large hard insects - beetles, orthopterans. On occasion, he will eat a bird's egg, and a chick, and a mouse-like rodent, and a toad, a lizard, and even a snake. He tries to crush the captured prey, quickly spinning around his axis, so that the victim is crushed on the ground. Like the spindles, two yellowbellies, grabbing one prey from both ends, can, rotating in different directions, break it “brotherly”. Unlike the spindle, the yellowbell includes plant foods in its diet, for example, apricot carrion, vizhnrad berries. The omnivorous yellowbell eats even carrion - a rare food for reptiles; in nature, they observed how the yellowbells tried to swallow the corpses of pikas and magpies. Reproduction of yellowbellies Almost nothing is known about the social and mating behavior of yellowbellies. In captivity, lizards of this species are peaceful towards each other and towards snakes kept together with them. Males are much more common in nature than females. Perhaps females are less active and spend more time in shelters. The yellowbell has powerful jaws, but rarely uses them for defense. Taken in hand, he tries to free himself with the help of energetic writhing and rotation around his axis. The enemy can also be doused with excrement. These lizards reproduce by laying eggs. In laying 6-10 large eggs in an elastic white shell; their length is 3-4 centimeters, width is 1.5-2 centimeters. A case was noted when a female guarded her clutch, wrapping herself around her, as some snakes do. Young yellowbellies about 10 centimeters long hatch in a month and a half. It remains a mystery why adults in their habitats are common and often found animals, and their juveniles are extremely rarely seen. Perhaps this is due to the still unknown features of the biology of young yellowbellies. Like the spindle, when shedding, the yellowbell shifts the dead layers of the skin to the tail. Large size and bone "chain mail" protect adult animals from most natural predators. They are attacked by some birds, as well as foxes and dogs. Yellowfins do not regenerate. In nature, you can find a lot of individuals with traces of injuries and torn ends of the tails. In some populations, the proportion of such persons with disabilities is as high as 50 percent. Obviously, the main culprits of these injuries are predators, grabbing lizards by their long tails when they crawl into shelters that do not fit entirely, and the defenseless tail is left outside. Hedgehogs are especially dangerous in this regard - they cannot cope with a large and strong lizard, but they can easily tear off or bite off a piece of its tail. It is possible that the yellowbell's tail freezes during sudden frosts. It is also possible that yellowbellies themselves can inflict injuries on each other in fights or during mating. Injured and tailless lizards do not differ from healthy ones either in behavior or in the nature of activity. Many of these lizards are destroyed by man in his eternal struggle with snakes. They are also caught for keeping in captivity (yellow-bellies live well in terrariums and in open-air cages). But a person inflicts no less damage indirectly: yellow-bellies die on the roads, fall into various pits, ditches, structures from which they cannot get out.

In the reservoirs of the eastern Crimea lives a rare bog turtle. It can be distinguished from land species from the Balkans and the Caucasus by the swimming membrane between the fingers. The size of the shell of a marsh turtle is approximately 15 centimeters. As the name suggests, she cannot live without water; It feeds on all kinds of aquatic animals, small fish, and plants. At night, it sleeps at the bottom of a river or pond, and winters there, buried in silt. In spring, turtles lay their eggs in depressions on the banks of water bodies. Two months later, small, very mobile turtles are born and run headlong to the water. Until next spring (until the shell hardens), they do not go out on land: it is too dangerous.

quick lizard

rock lizard found only in the Crimean mountains. Courageously and deftly she jumps on the rocks and even catches prey (small insects) on the fly.
In the steppe Crimea, there is a large one (up to 12 cm), with a white stripe along the back,. In late spring - early summer, you can watch funny jousting tournaments of male lizards with bright green bellies for the attention of an inconspicuous, gray female.

Resembling a snake - the largest (up to 110 cm) Crimean legless lizard. Yellow-bellies live in the mountains and on the coast, no further than Feodosia. They settle among rocks overgrown with grass and stone blockages, but closer to people. The eyes of the yellow-bellied, unlike snakes, are protected by eyelids with which the lizard blinks. On her abdomen, rudimentary rudiments of hind limbs can be found.

Yellow-bellied never bites a person, although it has excellent teeth and, as A. Bram wrote, it can bite and swallow even an evil poisonous viper. The diet of this harmless lizard: insects, terrestrial mollusks (snails and slugs), common lizards and small rodents. Useful yellowtubs need to be protected.

The largest Crimean snake - yellow-bellied snake. When this snake crawls, its head is raised, and its neck is arched, like the front of a sledge snake - hence the name.

Less common yellow-bellied four-stripe snake. Both species are non-poisonous, but dangerous for their indomitable temper. Worried, the snake fiercely defends itself, and guarding the laying of eggs, it may be the first to rush at a person to bite until it bleeds. Polozov was called in the old days "a family of evil snakes."

Leopard snake

Since ancient times, it lived on the entire east coast, up to Sudak, the most beautiful of the Crimean snakes - relic. Now he is on the verge of complete extermination.

Copperhead- a small, beautiful non-poisonous snake with a copper-red abdomen, up to 60 cm long. Its back is covered with longitudinal rows of dark spots that merge into a pattern resembling a crown on the neck and head. Hence the Latin name of copperhead - Coronella. This snake is not dangerous to humans. Copperhead lays eggs in which already developed serpents are visible through the transparent shell. They can only break through the barrier and crawl, which happens very soon after laying eggs.

ordinary snake has two orange spots on the sides of the head. Feeding on frogs and toads, he willingly swims, but he catches mice and lizards far from the water.
Water already slightly larger than usual (up to 120 cm), has no characteristic spots on the head, and its abdomen is colored orange with black rectangular spots. It feeds on fish and leaves water bodies only for hibernation. Water snakes are found off the coast of Karadag, there are many of them on the coast of the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov. The snakes are harmless and peaceful.

steppe viper

In unplowed areas and in forest belts, we may meet. In recent years, due to a decrease in the area of ​​cultivated land and less use of pesticides, the number of vipers has increased. In spring and summer, the viper catches small rodents; in autumn, insects, including those harmful to agriculture (for example, locusts), and small rodents make up most of its diet. For the winter, vipers hibernate, hiding in holes - vipers. In March, they usually wake up and crawl out to hunt.

The viper, like any venomous snake, has venom glands on the sides of its head. They give the head a triangular shape. Unlike other Crimean snakes, the viper breeds not by laying eggs, but by live birth, and brings 15-20 kites once a year, in July-August, which immediately spread.

The nature of the viper corresponds to its name. Extremely quarrelsome and vicious, she, nevertheless, avoids a person and can only bite in defense. If this happens, you need to apply a tourniquet above the bite and try to suck out the poison. You can put a medical jar for this purpose. Burning the wound with fire is useless. Without delay, consult a doctor; the bite is more dangerous the closer to the head. Although no deaths from viper bites have been reported in Crimea, take this last piece of advice seriously.