Lígia Pizzatto
Snakes and my personal history...
I was born in Campinas, São Paulo State, Brazil, and since I can remember I am fascinated by animals. When I was a kid I liked to keep lady beetles and woodlouses in match boxes, I used to build mazes for ants and watch how they found the sugar... Besides being a cat lover I always had a tendence to like "disgusting creatures". I was always "saving" my mother from house gekkos and tree frogs...
My passion for snakes was a big charade in my life. During my childhood I had no contact with these animals. Only once I saw a rattlesnake in a country house, at night, stretched beside the swimming pool. My father and the housekeeper had killed this "dangerous creature" with a mattock. The swimming pool had lots of blood. They kept the rattle, as a Brazilian costume. I think the legend says it brings good luck. As far as I remember I was about six years old... That scene made me terified, it was a dangerous animal but I felt sorry for it.
I grew up dreaming to become a vet.
When I was preparing myself to enter the uni, I visited the "Universidade de Campinas" (Unicamp) during an open visit to the community. There, again, I met snakes. I was observing a pitviper for such a long time that I missed my group and the tutor... I was hypnotized by the simple effect of the breathing moviment on the drawing pattern of the snake...
In 1997, attending my mother insistence to stay in our home town, I entered in the Biological Sciences course in the "Universidade Estadual de Campinas" and fell in love! After attending the basic field classes about Introduction to Ecology, which is part of the program of the Biological Sciences course in the first semester, I quit the vet course in São Paulo city right in the first week of this course. I gave up from sick animals to "take care" of them in their most healthy and amazing state, in their own home: Nature!
In
1998 I started volunteer work in the herp lab at Unicamp. With the help of the
MD. Paulo Roberto Manzani I stat studying snake taxonomy and biology. In January
1999, during the summer vacation, I did volunteer work in a small Zoo where
the biologist Sergio Rangel Pinheiro were responsible for the reptile and bird
houses at that time. With his help I learned more about snakes and fell in love
with them. Back to classes, I started volunteer work in the Herp
lab of Instituto Butantan, in São Paulo, researching reproductive
biology of the false coral snake Oxyrhopus guibei, under advisement
of Dr. Otavio
Augusto Vuolo Marques. This project became my iniciation into science, concluded
in late 2000 when I graduated. During this time at the lab I also colaborated
on research with Dr. Selma
Maria de Almeida Santos. Besides good tutors they become good friends of
me. Nowadays I am still colaborating with them in some research, specially about
snake reproduction.
In 2001, I started my Master in the Ecology couse at Unicamp, having Otavio Marques as my advisor again. I studied reproduction of four populations of a common water snake, Liophis miliaris. I also did other studies, including the "mussuranas" (genus Clelia and Boiruna), the legless lizard commonly known as glass snakes, coral snakes... I also started studying snake symbolism, encouraged by Dr. Adilson Nascimento de Jesus, responsible for the group of studies in dance, I jointed in 1999. Studying symbology I realized the true meaning of my passion for snakes. Today, snake, research, dance and symbology are part of what I really am.
I finished my marter in early of 2003 and started my PhD to study my favorite group: the Boids. I went farther than only reproduction inlcuding in my thesis some ecomorphology studies. In my PhD I still had Otavio as my advisor but I also had much help of MD. Hebert Ferrarezi, who is an expert in systematics. I got one more tutor and friend. In 2005 I had the spetacular chance to make my work more complete by goingAustralia, to study the pythons under supervision of Dr. Richard Shine. One more dream came true and after four months I went back to Brazil, defended my thesis and got a new fellowship to return to Australia and start my post-doc with Rick Shine. My post-doc project is to radiotrack newborn water pythons (Liasis fuscus) in order to discover what they do in the first months of their lives.
The future? Who knows? But I am pretty sure it will have lots of snakes!
E-mail: ligia.oceanica@gmail.com
