Snake Men by Zach St. George — Tetrapod Zoology

All in all, Snake Men is a highly entertaining, well-written overview of one furiously over-active taxonomic vandal in particular and I really enjoyed it. It’s required reading for those interested in the bizarre life and times of Raymond Hoser, and St. George never has to work hard to show Hoser’s true colours. The book says enough about taxonomic vandalism in general to be of broader interest too, and I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in the more arcane side of taxonomy or in reptiles or biology in general.

My thanks to W. W. Norton & Company for provision of an advance review copy.

St. George, Z. 2026. Snake Men: Rebels, Reptiles & the Race to Name Earth’s Creatures. W. W. Norton & Company, New York. ISBN 9781324134084, hardcover, pp. 272. $29.99. Here from the publishers.

Hoser names and taxonomic vandalism have been mentioned or discussed on a few previous occasions at Tet Zoo. See…

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Refs – –

Kaiser, H., Crother, B. I., Kelly, C. M. R., Luiselli, L., O’Shea, M., Ota, H., Passos, P. Schleip, W. & Wüster, W. 2013. Best practices: in the 21st Century, taxonomic decisions in herpetology are acceptable only when supported by a body of evidence and published via peer-review. Herpetological Review 44, 8-23.

Naish, D. 2025. Taxonomic trolling. The Biologist 72 (2), 26-29.

Rhodin, A. G. J., Kaiser, H., van Dijk, P. P., Wüster, W., O’Shea, M., Archer, M., Auliya, M., Boitani, L., Bour, R., Clausnitzer, V., Contreras-MacBeath, T., Crother, B. I., Daza, J. M., Driscoll, C. A., Flores-Villela, O., Frazier, J., Fritz, U., Gardner, A., Gascon, C., Georges, A., Glaw, F., Grazziotin, F. G., Groves, C. P., Haszprunar, G., Havaš, P., Hero, J. M., Hoffmann, M., Hoogmoed, M. S., Horne, B. D., Iverson, J. B., Jäch, M., Jenkins, C. L., Jenkins, R. K. B., Kiester, A. R., Keogh, J. S., Lacher Jr., T. E., Lovich, J. E., Luiselli, L., Mahler, D. L., Mallon, D., Mast, R., Mcdiarmid, R. W., Measey, J., Mittermeier, R. A., Molur, S., Mossbrugger, V., Murphy, R., Naish, D., Niekisch, M., Ota, J., Parham, J. F., Parr, M. J., Pilcher, N. J., Pine, R. H., Rylands, A. B., Sanderson, J. G., Savage, J., Schleip, W., Scrocchi, G. J., Shaffer, H. B., Smith, E. N., Sprackland, R., Stuart, S. N., Vetter, H., Vitt, L. J., Waller, T., Webb, G., Wilson, E. O., Zaher, H. & Thomson, S. 2015. Comment on Spracklandus Hoser, 2009 (Reptilia, Serpentes, ELAPIDAE): request for confirmation of the availability of the generic name and for the nomenclatural validation of the journal in which it was published. (Case 3601; see BZN 70: 234–237; 71: 30–38, 133–135, 181–182, 252–253). Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 72 (1): 65-78.

St. George, Z. 2026. Snake Men: Rebels, Reptiles & the Race to Name Earth’s Creatures. W. W. Norton & Company, New York.

Wells, R. W. & Wellington, C. R. 1983. A synopsis of the Class Reptilia in Australia. Australian Journal of Herpetology 1, 73-129.

Wells, R. W. & Wellington, C. R. 1985. A classification of the Amphibia and Reptilia of Australia. Australian Journal of Herpetology, Suppl. Ser. 1, 1-61.