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reptiles

n. (plural of reptile English)

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Reptiles (M. C. Escher)

Reptiles is a lithograph print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher first printed in March 1943.

It depicts a desk on which is a drawing of a tessellated pattern of reptiles. The reptiles at one edge of the drawing come to life and crawl around the desk and over the objects on it to eventually re-enter the drawing at its opposite edge. The desk is littered with ordinary objects, as well as a metal dodecahedron that the reptiles climb over. Although only the size of small lizards, these reptiles appear to have tusks and the one standing on the dodecahedron blows smoke from its nostrils.

Like many of Escher's works, this image was intended to depict a paradoxical and slightly humorous concept with no real philosophical meaning. There were, however, many popular misconceptions about the image's meaning. Once a woman telephoned Escher and told him that she thought the image was a "striking illustration of reincarnation". The most common myth revolves around a small book on the desk with the letters JOB printed on it. Many people believed it to be the biblical Book of Job, when in fact it was a book of JOB brand cigarette papers.

A colorized version of the lithograph was used by rock band Mott the Hoople as the sleeve artwork for its eponymous first album, released in 1969.

Reptiles (magazine)

Based in Irvine, California, Reptiles magazine is a North American magazine dedicated to the reptile and amphibian pet hobby, specializing in the keeping and breeding of these animals.

Fancy Publications, later BowTie Inc., launched the magazine in October 1993. After a year of publishing bimonthly, Reptiles went monthly in December 1994 due to the more widespread keeping of reptiles and amphibians as pets and the resulting increasing popularity of the magazine.

Tips and information on keeping and breeding different herps usually make up the bulk of an issue’s feature articles, but other article topics frequently include field herping, reptile and amphibian health, conservation, and current trends in the hobby. Many contests are held for readers, as well, sponsored by a variety of reptile product manufacturers who provide prizes.

Although popular pet animals, such as bearded dragons, corn snakes, red-eared sliders, leopard geckos, crested geckos, Pac Man frogs, ball pythons, red-footed tortoises and many other common species often appear in the magazine, Reptiles also publishes articles about less commonly kept animals, such as Asian box turtles, Aldabra giant tortoises, various types of chameleons, black headed pythons, and occasionally venomous snakes and crocodilians.

Reptiles articles are written for a broad range of reptile enthusiasts, from the novice hobbyist to the veteran herpetoculturist. Highly respected reptile experts and breeders in the industry have written, and continue to write, for the magazine. Past authors include Bob Applegate, Brian Barczyk, Dave and Tracy Barker, R.D. (Dick) Bartlett, Bob Clark, Tom Crutchfield, Linda Davison, Philippe de Vosjoli, Dante Fenolio, Jerry and Richard Fife, Ken Foose, Russ Gurley, Bert Langerwerf, Jeff Lemm, Bill and Kathy Love (Bill Love's column, "Herpetocultural Queries," has been in the magazine since the first issue), Kimberly Kay Lucas, Dr. Douglas Mader (this well-known reptile veterinarian has been writing the magazine's vet column since the first issue), Bob Mailloux, Kevin McCurley, Sean McKeown, Gerold Merker, John Murphy, Patrick Nabors, Terry Phillip, Louis Porras, Peter Pritchard, Philip Purser, Allen Repashy, Don Soderberg, Robert Sprackland, Jeremy Stone, Ron Tremper, Ernie Wagner, Rico Walder, Trooper Walsh and Romulus Whitaker.

Usually a reptile or amphibian species is featured on the cover, though Slash (musician) (February 1995) and Mark O'Shea (February 2003) were both cover subjects due to interviews they provided. A two-part interview with Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, appeared in the October and November 1999 issues.

In March 2013, BowTie's magazine titles, including Reptiles, were purchased by I-5 Publishing, LLC. Other magazines previously published by BowTie that are now being published by I-5 include Cat Fancy, Dog Fancy and Horse Illustrated.

Usage examples of "reptiles".

But at night even humble carnivorous protomammals must have posed a real threat to the cold-immobilized reptiles, and particularly to their eggs.

Since animal taxa such as mammals, reptiles or amphibians contain members with very different brain sizes, we cannot give a reliable estimate of the number of neurons in the brain of a typical representative of each taxon.

Washburn has reported that infant baboons and other young primates appear to be born with only three inborn fears-of falling, snakes, and the dark-corresponding respectively to the dangers posed by Newtonian gravitation to tree-dwellers, by our ancient enemies the reptiles, and by mammalian nocturnal predators, which must have been particularly terrifying for the visually oriented primates.

In non-primate mammals and in reptiles, comparable ritualized behavior seems to be controlled in the same part of the brain, and lesions in this reptilian component can impair other automatic types of behavior besides ritual-for example, walking or running.

And indeed in human intrauterine development we run through stages very much like fish, reptiles and nonprimate mammals before we become recognizably human.

There is a remarkable separation of fish and reptiles from birds and mammals.

The brains of mammals are ten to one hundred times more massive than the brains of contemporary reptiles of comparable size.

This rule on the relative parental concern of mammals and reptiles is, however, by no means without exceptions.

Other methods of finding a mate have been developed in reptiles, birds and mammals.

It is possible that lower mammals and reptiles, lacking extensive frontal lobes, also lack this sense, real or illusory, of individuality and free will, which is so characteristically human and which may first have been experienced dimly by Proconsul.

I am picturing a late Mesozoic landscape in which the mammals sleep fitfully by day and the reptiles by night.

Our Mesozoic scene has a curiously vampiric quality with the carnivorous reptiles hunting the smart sleeping mammals by day, and the carnivorous mammals hunting the stupid immobile reptiles by night.

While the reptiles buried, their eggs, it is unlikely that they actively protected either eggs or young.

There are very few accounts of such behavior even in contemporary reptiles, and it is difficult to picture Tyrannosaurus rex brooding on a clutch of eggs.

There are today a few remaining large reptiles on Earth, the most striking of which is the Komodo dragon of Indonesia: cold-blooded, not very bright, but a predator exhibiting a chilling fixity of purpose.