






































Iguana 12.1


Nabhan, G.P. 2003. Singing the Turtles to Sea: The Comcáac
(Seri) Art and Science of Reptiles. University of California Press,
Berkeley. xviii + 318 pp. Hardcover. $34.95.

Gary Nabhan, professor and director of the Center for
Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University, col-
laborated closely with Seri Tribal Governors and the Traditional
Council of Elders on this ethnoherpetological treatise. If ethno-
herpetology sounds stodgy and suitable only for graybeards of
academia, think again. Nabhan is an award-winning nature
writer who brings both the Seri and the myriad reptiles with
which they interact to life. Also, as Harry Greene notes in his
foreword, lessons abound for all of us interested in conservation:
“Why do reptiles, elsewhere so often reviled rather than pro-
tected, play such a central and positive role in the lives of the
Seri? Can local communities sustainably harvest globally endan-
gered organisms in a framework that encompasses both conser-
vation and traditional beliefs? And more broadly, what can
indigenous peoples teach us about managing and appreciating
our surroundings? How can we as outsiders, onlookers, or even
participant-observers in the life of a particular place steer
between two incomplete and misleading visions: that native peo-
ples always live in harmony with nature, and that exclusive
reliance on Western science will save us from the ever more dev-
astating impact of humans on Earth?”

Nabhan makes the case early on in his introduction that
“indigenous communities’ traditional ecological knowledge is a
curious mix of scientific insight and artistic expression.” He also
suggests that this traditional knowledge “has the capacity to
enrich our own views of the natural world and, accordingly, to
encourage us to better protect natural diversity,” but goes on to
warn that, “If however, this ‘folk knowledge’ is categorically dis-
missed as unscientific and ultimately replaced by Western sci-
entific knowledge alone, we stand to lose something of import,”
not just by diminishing the local culture, but possibly losing
knowledge that could “help protect, restore, and recover threat-
ened reptiles.”

Following a key to the pronunciation of words in the
Cmique Iitom language of the Comcáac1, the foreword by
Harry Greene, and his introduction, Nabhan organized this vol-
ume in two parts: eight chapters that collectively provide a nar-
rative account of traditional ecological knowledge that uses the
Seri people’s voices to raises issues and offer general answers and
a second part, consisting of a single “chapter” that provides “in
essence a status report on what is known of the herpetofauna of
the Comcáac homelands from both indigenous and Western sci-
entific perspectives.” Following part 2 is an appendix listing
specimens of reptiles from the Sonoran Coast of the Sea of
Cortés and nearby islands, an extensive literature cited (testa-
ment that, despite the volume’s narrative format in part 1, this
is, in fact, a rigorous study), and an index that is both complete
and utilitarian.

Typographical errors are very few and both editorial and
production standards are high. On a minor note, I did not like
the use of different fonts to distinguish stories from analysis or
(instead of italics) to emphasize certain terms. I found that affec-
tation distracting, although I thoroughly, like most readers, I sus-
pect, enjoyed the stories, which brought a vibrancy to the nar-
rative that might otherwise have drifted, at least occasionally,
into the drier prose of traditional academia. I particularly liked
those anecdotes that addressed cultural conflicts, many of which
mirror those I’ve experienced myself in other places. More
importantly, as a biologist, but not an ethnobiologist, I very
much appreciated the excerpts from the notes and literature of
the latter discipline that were used to highlight specific points
and introduce individual chapters. They lent insights into per-
spectives of both the Comcáac and ethnobiologists that I, to my
detriment, would otherwise have missed.

The color plates (25 plates on 16 pages) and the black and
white figures are of consistently high quality, especially consid-
ering that many are historical and would normally reveal the rav-
ages of age. However, I wanted desperately to see more images
— especially of the phenomenally realistic portrayals of many
reptiles by Seri artisans. I also believe that the book would have
benefited greatly from portraits of the animals themselves (only
a few species are illustrated), as many readers will not be famil-

50 IGUANA  •  VOLUME 12, NUMBER 1  •  MARCH 2005 BOOK REVIEW

B O O K  R E V I E W

The Art and Science of Reptiles

1 Nabhan uses “Comcáac” to refer collectively to the people and their
culture and “Seri” to refer to activities peculiar to one or a few indi-
viduals within the community, as well as to products advertised to
the outside world as “Seri Indian.”



IGUANA  •  VOLUME 12, NUMBER 1  •  MARCH 2005 51BOOK REVIEW

iar with the many peculiar forms native to the region. The lat-
ter concern could be addressed by keeping close at hand a copy
of Lee Grismer’s excellent Amphibians and Reptiles of Baja
California, Including Its Pacific Islands and the Islands in the Sea
of Cortés (2002. University of California Press, Berkeley — both
it and the volume at hand are parts of the University of
California Press’s series on “organisms and environment,” which
also includes Lizards: Windows to the Evolution of Diversity by
Eric Pianka and Laurie Vitt, 2003; reviewed in IGUANA
11:183–184). Although Grismer’s volume does not address
specifically the Sonoran fauna, it does portray and discuss the
many endemics of the islands in the Sea of Cortés, plus many of
the Sonoran species have close counterparts on the Baja
California Peninsula. 

To best illustrate the colorful range of cultural perspectives
regarding Comcáac responses to reptiles — which include the
naturalistic, aesthetic, mythic, and utilitarian — I have chosen
to excerpt quotations (some rather extensive) from each chapter,
mostly from the stories, which, as I mentioned previously, lend
so much life to the narrative. Better than any summary I could
provide, the use of the author’s words dramatizes both the scope
of this volume and much of its appeal.

Chapter 1: Islands of Uniqueness. Endangered Cultural Knowledge
of Endemic Creatures. “It dawned on me that we were partici-
pating in a sacrament, one that has been performed ever since

the Comcáac first became seafaring people. By blessing this
yound woman’s rite of passage with the meat and blood of
moosni cooyam [Green Sea Turtle], they were linking her life to
the very creature that swims through their culture’s stories, songs,
dreams, and diet. 

“I felt honored and humbled to be part of the communion.
But as I looked up again into the face of the sea turtle shining
in the firelight, another wave of emotion washed over me.
Because I once shared quarters with a marine biologist who
worked tirelessly to protect the nesting beaches of sea turtles, I
had for twenty years boycotted any restaurants that featured sea
turtle meat, eggs, or soup.

“Caught up in the moment, perhaps flattered by the invita-
tion to share sea turtle with Seri friends, had I suffered some eth-
ical lapse, somehow forgetting that sea turtles are endangered? Or
had I not let my ethics slip, but instead accepted a tenuous bal-
ance between how I express my concern for an endangered peo-
ple and how I express my concern for an endangered animal?”

Chapter 2: Mapping the Comcáac Sense of Place. Seri Homelands
and Reptilian Habitats. “I remembered what Amalia Astorga said
to me when she learned a month ago that I would be going to
the island she called Coftécöl, ‘Giant Chuckwalla’: ‘Don’t go out
there unless you are with someone who knows the song to pla-
cate Coimaj Caacoj. He’s the giant serpent who lives underwa-
ter between Islas Tiburón and San Esteban. By writhing along
on the ocean bottom there, he churns up the water between the
two islands much of the time. If you try to cross his place
between the islands without paying him respect, he’ll smash your
boat to bits.…’

“Alfredo was in his late fifties and had harvested fish and tur-
tles from the waters between the islands for decades. He had
always maneuvered these waters in boats equipped with less than
optimal equipment — old engines, cracked or bent props, leak-
ing hulls. And yet, by following the routes he had been taught and
remembering certain sacred petitions, he had been spared the dif-
ficulties to which other, more reckless, pangueros had succumbed.”

Chapter 3: The Shape of Reptilian Worlds. Island Biogeography and
the Herpetofauna of the Sea of Cortés Region. “I quietly crawled
toward the resting chuckwalla, then advanced upslope from it,

A Sidewinder (Crotalus cerastes) carved out of ironwood by José Luis
Blanco. Photograph by Helga Teiwes (from Nabhan 2003).

A Green Sea Turtle (Chelonia mydas) carved from Elephant Tree wood
by Armando Torres. Photograph by Helga Teiwes (from Nabhan 2003).

Sauromalus varius is found on islas San Esteban and Roca Lobos and
may have hybridized with S. ater and/or S. hispidus on Isla Acatraz.
This is the focal species at the Captive Breeding Exhibit at Punta
Chueca. Photograph by Brad Hollingsworth.



where I carefully began removing cobbles on either side of the
ledge it was hidden under. As I dislodged one cobble, the par-
tially exposed chuckwalla stirred, revelaing another, smaller,
chuck tucked in safely behind it. 

“After taking a deep, quiet breath, I made my move. My
right hand clasped the bigger chuckwalla, a male, just in front
of his back legs. He tried to dig further in under the ledge, but
I lifted his lumpy black-and-buff body up into the air before he
could lodge himself deeper into the crevice. He flailed his
chubby legs for a moment, but then, as I stroked his underbelly,
he grew calm and tame.

“He was the size of a Sunday newspaper rolled up and
thrown onto your porch. That made him far larger than any I
had seen on the mainland, and he had many more black
blotches than those I recalled from my earlier trip to Isla San
Esteban with two Seri men from Punta Chueca. I remembered
how Alfredo López had held one of the Piebald Chuckwallas
there, looking at its buttonlike femoral pores on the back legs,
which he likened to poker chips.

“‘Yes, this one is a male,’ he said, laughing and pointing to
the swollen hormone-charged pores lining the crease of its back
leg. ‘He’s muy macho; see his winnings?’ He told a story about
chuckwallas being good gamblers and winning their femoral-
pore ‘poker chips’ from other inhabitants of San Esteban.

“I held my own chuckwalla up in the dusky light and saw
that five or six large pores were oozing goo out along the ridges
of each back leg. This confirmed that the chuck was indeed a
male, but I was not sure what species he was. He looked as
though he had gathered traits from several different species, like
the melting-pot descendants of immigrants who had passed
through Ellis Island off New York. [See also Hollingsworth.
2004. IGUANA 11:78–85].

“Whatever his species, this giant was my ‘winnings’ for the
night. Catching him was no big deal, but spending time in the
hunt had helped me better understand a creature whose history
is intimately linked to that of the Comcáac. I sensed that the
Comcáac had created a distinctive ‘breed’ of chuckwallas, just as
much as the Navajo had shaped their own breed of Churro
sheep, and Australian aborigines had shaped the course of dingo
evolution.

“My friends hollered for me to get back to the boat, and I
placed the chuckwalla on a flat rock still warm from the day,
released it, and watched as it lumbered off into the darkness.
Once I and my party headed home, vacating the island, the
chuckwalla once again became the largest flightless land animal
on Isla Alcatraz, the 1,800-gram king of the mountain.”

“To say that there are Seri individuals intimately familiar with
the locations of reptile nest sites is to understate the matter.
Between 1978 and 1982 biologists S. Reyes-Osorio and R. B.
Bury conducted Desert Tortoise surveys of Isla Tiburón, work-
ing together with Seri field assistants, and in so doing they
claimed to have recorded one of the highest densities of Desert
Tortoises ever found. One of their Seri fieldhands, Alfonso
Méndez, later told me that he worked as their “finder” of Desert
Tortoise congregating places. He recalled finding several hiber-
nating groups — one numbering no less than seventy-five indi-
viduals holed up in a single cave — that the biologists told him
were much larger than any they had ever found on their own.

Whether this Seri hunter simply had a knack for tracking
down hibernating colonies, or whether he had a good recall of
places where other Seri had formerly found them, I do not
know. However, in spring 2001, Méndez joined me and my stu-
dents on Isla Tiburón and relocated several tortoise caves he had
seen previously. Historically, both Comcáac women and men
would seek out these iime shelters with the aid of dogs, which
could smell the hibernating Desert Tortoises long before humans
could see them. (The exact location of some iime for chuckwal-
las, tortoises, and rattlesnakes could also be deduced by tracing
the tracks and tail draggings left on sand- or silt-covered beaches
back into the rocks where these animals were sequestered.) Since
any given area has only a few suitable shelters, these iime were
likely used by generations of tortoises over many centuries. The
Comcáac community has consequently kept in its collective
memory a living record of where particularly large congregations
of Desert Tortoises can be encountered during extended periods
of cold or drought.”

“… herpetologist Lee Grismer has concluded that the presence
of spiny-tailed iguana populations on Islas San Esteban and
Cholludo ‘is probably the result of aboriginal introduction by
Seri Indians who once inhabited the island. The coastal distri-
bution of C[tenosaura]. hemilopha on mainland Sonora only
extends as far north as near Guaymas, approximately 115 km
south of the nearest coastal mainland locality opposite Isla San
Esteban.’

This distributional anomaly is matched by an ecological
anomaly: San Esteban is the only island out of more than one
hundred in the Sea of Cortés where both spiny-tailed iguanas
and gigantic chuckwallas occur together. Contrary to predictions
from ecological niche theory, they successfully coexist there, for-
aging for largely the same plants in the very same habitat, at the
same time of day, over the same season.” (See also Grismer.
2002. IGUANA 9:3–8).

“Preliminary results illustrate the obvious: (1) children more eas-
ily catch lizards than adults do; and (2) contemporary Comcáac
villages serve as artificial oases for some native species, but they
repel others. Despite the fact that villages offer permanent
sources of water, structural heterogeneity for roosts, and plenty
of artificial crevices for nesting or escape, they also pose signifi-
cant threats to reptilian well-being: fast cars, carnivorous pets,
parasites, and microbes. Only Western Whiptails and Side-
blotched Lizards seem to thrive in the presence of such perils,
while Tree Lizards, banded geckos, and Zebra-tailed Lizards find
these new habitats to be both a blessing and a curse. The risks
of Comcáac villages today are vastly different from those of the
historic encampments, where a small number of families stayed
for only a few weeks and so had a relatively short-term impact
on lizards’ and snakes’ habitat.”

Chapter 4: Naming the Menagerie. How to Sort One Snake from
Another. “During a time when the Comcáac knew just one kind
of chuckwalla within their prehistoric territory, it was apparently
called simply coof, polysemous with a verb, ‘to hiss’ or ‘to blow
air.’ Later, when they encountered a second kind of chuckwalla
on Isla San Lorenzo or Ángel de la Guarda, they called this large,
dark-colored species coof coopol, or ‘chuckwalla blackish.’

52 IGUANA  •  VOLUME 12, NUMBER 1  •  MARCH 2005 BOOK REVIEW



IGUANA  •  VOLUME 12, NUMBER 1  •  MARCH 2005 53BOOK REVIEW

However, when they came upon another kind of reptile in the
mountains that reminded them of chuckwallas, they fashioned
a name for it using a modifier in front of the generic term for
chuckwalla: hast coof, for instance, a name that means something
like ‘chuckwalla-like mountain dweller’ and is now used for col-
lared lizards.”

Chapter 5: Reptiles as Resources, Curses, and Cures. How the
Comcáac Recognize Beauty, Utility, and Danger. “While the mere
sight of certain animals would terrify my own aunts or my
O’odham neighbors, the same sickening feeling came to my
Comcáac friends not with rattlesnakes but with geckos. Not
with seasnakes but with night lizards. Not with coralsnakes but
with Desert Iguanas. And not with Gila Monsters but with col-
lared lizards.

“To the Comcáac, it does not matter that the former crea-
tures deliver toxic bites while the latter are known to be nonven-
omous. Their fear of particular reptiles is rooted in the notion
that considerable psychosomatic harm can come to anyone who
does not behave appropriately around geckoes, night lizards,
Desert Iguanas, collared lizards, and even their usually benign
friends horned lizards, Desert Tortoises, and Leatherback Turtles. 

“Danger, like beauty and utility, is in the eye of the beholder.”

“It is remarkable how many men, women, and children in the
Comcáac community handle venomous and nonvenomous
snakes, dead or alive, without the flinching of their non-Seri
neighbors. They have often had to evict rattlesnakes from their
camps or kill them with stones or sticks or process the skins,
meat, oil, and bones for practical uses. … Children grow up
among elders who carry, skin, butcher, and roast or boil snakes,
iguanas, and turtles without blinking an eye, and boys acquire
these skills themselves at an early age. They learn stories and
songs about serpents, some of them mythical giants who live
high in the mountains or deep within the ocean. They see rat-
tlesnake designs elaborated in basketry and carvings, and women
wearing rings made from Gila Monster and Western Coralsnake
skins. Clearly, one cannot consider the Comcáac as ophidio-
phobic, or snake-aversive, as many of the other cultures sur-
rounding them.”

“The capture or use of Desert Iguanas is simply not an option
for the Comcáac. In general, it appears that some of the taboos
associated with Desert Iguanas, Regal Horned Lizards,
Leatherback Turtles, and Desert Tortoises are associated with
ancient stories referring to the time when animals could under-
stand Cmique Iitom and could themselves speak and argue. Seri
individuals who fail to heed the message of these stories put
themselves at risk, becoming susceptible to illness or even death.
…, Seri who break a taboo and realize it often experience great
anxiety and psychosomatic trauma that can be relieved only
through a shamanistic purification ritual that restores healthy
relationships with particular animals.”

Chapter 6: What Eats from the Turtle’s Shell, What the Turtle Eats.
Comcáac Perceptions of Local Ecological Interactions. “…, hamísj
catójoj, the name for what English speakers know as the Brown
Vinesnake (Oxybelis aeneus), refers to this snake’s mimicry of the
stems of Ashy Limberbush (Jatropha cinerea), on which it hides.
This name makes perfect sense (and is therefore quite memo-
rable) in a hyperarid land where few true vines even grow.”

“Some ecological processes may simply be more fascinating to
the human mind than others, regardless of their practical value.
I have been struck at the number of times a Seri ecotourist guide
and foreign naturalists have stood together watching ecological
interactions in utter delight: those between whipsnake and rat-
tler, horned lizard and ant, or tortoise and cactus. Academic sci-
entists may ask different questions and answer them using dif-
ferent tools than do local naturalists, but the same sense of
biophilia holds when they witness a female sea turtle lumber
onto a beach to lay her eggs or a spiny-tailed iguana climb high
into the arms of a Cardón cactus.”

Chapter 7: The Comcáac as Conservationists. Practicing What They
Preach, and Benefiting from Alliances. Responding to a proposal
by “several agencies in the federal and state governments …
jointly proposing that the Comcáac community assume com-
plete management authority over the natural resources of the
islands” (Islas Tiburón and San Esteban), “Tribal Governor
Pedro Romero took over the microphone. He reminded the
entire congregation that his people had been the legitimate man-
agers and stewards of the two islands all along. In an eloquent
philosophical tone, he posed a series of rhetorical questions to
the audience: Why, he asked, were there so many animals still
on these two islands that scientists could not find anywhere else?
Perhaps because the Comcáac did not deplete their populations
as some of their neighbors had done elsewhere. Why were ani-
mals like the Desert Tortoise more abundant in Comcáac terri-
tory than nearly anwhere else scientists had studied them?
Perhaps because Comcáac spiritual traditions taught respect for
these animals, and so they had reasons to refrain from hunting
tortoises at certain times, or under certain conditions. Why
should the Comcáac be the managers of this land and not the
state or the federal government? Perhaps because the Comcáac
had detailed local knowledge of the resources unique to the area,
and had shared this knowledge down through the generations
over centuries. Their ancestors had lived and died there. For that
reason alone, it would be hard for them to ever let this land be
destroyed or developed.”

The Desert Tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) features prominently in Seri
traditions. Photograph by Thomas Wiewandt.



Chapter 8: The Historic Decline and Recent Revival of Traditional
Ecological Knowledge. “During the fall of 2000, a traditional
school was inaugurated in Punta Chueca by elder Antonio
Robles as one more means of providing young Seri individuals
with training in the native flora and fauna and their curative
powers. The opening of the school was celebrated with a feast of
traditional foods, including fish, reptile meat, prickly pear,
mesquite, and agave.

“Perhaps the children attending this school will be more
prone to heed the words of their former tribal governor, Pedro
Romero, when he said that ‘Islas Tiburón and San Esteban and
the midriff of the Sea of Cortés have great economic and cul-
tural significance for us, the Comcáac. It is from here that our
people obtained an important part of our nutritional and spiri-
tual sustenance, and received the strength to survive times of
great social or natural adversity.” 

Part 2, Chapter 9: Accounts of Reptiles Known by the Comcáac.
“Part 2 (chapter 9) is perhaps a more ‘standard’ ethnobiolgoical
monograph in that it offers a species-by-species account of the
herpetofauna of the central Sonoran coast and its adjacent
islands.” I use two entries in their entirety as examples to illus-
trate the combination of traditional and practical Seri lore with
“Western” science. Cited references are listed at the end of this
review.

Sauromalus hispidus, S. obesus (S. ater2), S. varius, and hybrids 
English common names: Spiny (Black) Chuckwalla, Northern

Chuckwalla, and Piebald (Isla San Esteban) Chuckwalla,
respectively

Spanish name: iguana
Comcáac names: coof coopol, ziix hast iizx ano coom, and coof,

respectively

Coof is related to the verb coof, meaning “to hiss, snort, or puff”
like a chuckwalla. Ziix hast iizx ano coom loosely means “living
thing that wedges itself into a rock crevice.” Becky Moser
informs me that iizx is from the verb cazx, “to tear or to split,”
which describes the sound heard when one tries to remove an
inflated chuckwalla from its crevice. These three chuckwallas are
distinguished from one another by color and size, with the coof
coopol of Islas San Lorenzo, Ángel de la Guarda, and nearby islets
being the darkest and least blotchy in coloration. The shrubs,
caves, and crevices that these species frequent are well known to
contemporary Comcáac hunters, who formerly scared the ani-
mals out of hiding by whirring wandlike branches of Asclepias
milkweeds overhead to make a windlike noise (Felger and Moser
1985). The bloated animals were also deflated with pointed
sticks and removed by hand. Although the San Esteban people
had few land animals available as food, it is said that they did
not particularly like the taste of chuckwallas so did not overex-
ploit them (Bowen 2000). In one cave near the mouth of Arroyo
Limantur, says Ernesto Molina, during the winter they stacked
themselves atop one another clear to the ceiling, in a behavior
which he called ano yasnan, “blanketing” or “stacking”; here they
would have been particularly vulnerable to overharvesting.

Tom Bowen and the Mosers have recorded an oral history
which suggests supernatural punishment for those who sense-
lessly kill or drown chuckwallas. As Bowen (2000) puts it, “Hast
Cmique said it is wrong to kill animals without reason…. A per-
son who mistreats a chuckwalla by throwing it into the sea will

54 IGUANA  •  VOLUME 12, NUMBER 1  •  MARCH 2005 BOOK REVIEW

Sauromalus ater is the species found on the mainland surrounding the
Gulf of California. Photograph by Brad Hollingsworth.

Sign at the Chuckwalla (Sauromalus varius) Captive Breeding Exhibit
at Punta Chueca. Photograph by Karen Krebbs (from Nabhan 2003).

2 Actually, the proper scientific name is Sauromalus ater; see
Hollingsworth (2004. IGUANA 11:78–85) and the transcript of the
ICZN Opinion 2072 (case 3143), IGUANA 11:86.



IGUANA  •  VOLUME 12, NUMBER 1  •  MARCH 2005 55BOOK REVIEW

be punished when he is at sea, perhaps by being subjected to
strong winds.”

The chuckwallas themselves are known to relish ironwood
leaves and cholla cactus flower buds. A song composed by Jesús
Félix tells of a chuckwalla waiting for the sun to break through
the fog before it goes to eat its favorite things. When José Juan
Moreno went foraging with me on Isla San Esteban, he found a
female chuckwalla on a ridge covered by cacti and agaves, and
caught it with little trouble. At first I throught her snout had
blood on it from biting José Juan’s finger, but he laughed and said
that her reddish mouth was from subsisting on Pitahaya agria,
“sour cactus fruit” (Stenocereus gummosus), over the previous
weeks. Moreno disabled his catch by twisting her legs, and kept
the animal alive until he was back home in Punta Chueca. He
savored the meat, including the fat-laden tail, the next morning.

Zooarcheologist Richard White (pers. comm.) informs me
that the Comcáac have occasionally brought island chuckwallas
to the mainland for release. Only recently have they formally ini-
tiated translocation for the purpose of wildlife conservation.
Several Comcáac reported to me that their ancestors released
chuckwallas from San Esteban onto Tiburón and Punto
Sargento, and I was able to confirm the latter. In September
1998, the Comcáac community in Punta Chueca launched a
chuckwalla captive breeding program with one male and three
females from Isla San Esteban. By September 1999, the weakest
female had died, but three other males had been recruited from
the island. The Seri then discussed plans to shift the sex ratio of
the group and expand their foraging area and native plant diet.
The project, which they named Ziix Hast Iizx Ano Coom Hant
An Ihacámot, meaning “Chuckwalla Nursery Grounds Refuge,”
remains successful as of the date of this publication.

Chilomeniscus stramineus (C. cinctus3) 
English common name: Bandless Sandsnake
Spanish names: culebra de los médanos, coralillo falso
Comcáac name: hapéquet camízj

Hapéquet camízj means something akin to “causing a pregnant
woman to have a well-formed child.” The bandless morph of
this sand-loving snake is treated with great affection by the

Comcáac. They know that it burrows effortlessly through sand,
and if they encounter one while digging, they will hold it in their
hands and stroke it, then release it. It will not bite them; for their
part, the Comcáac felt that they must protect this friendly snake
from predatory coralsnakes and uncaring humans.

To ensure that a baby will be born with lovely skin, this
snake is captured and passed across the belly or the small of the
back of the expectant mother. This ritual, performed less and less
frequently, is also intended to give pregnant women hopeful feel-
ings and help them give birth to good-looking children.

Did I enjoy this book? Immensely. Why? I’m less sure. Part of
its allure may have been pleasant memories of fieldtrips to the
region around the Sea of Cortés and part of it may be a general
fascination with desert landscapes and their reptilian faunas, but
I think most of my favorable response can be attributed to a
combination of an appreciation for new insights into favorite
topics and getting caught up in the author’s enthusiasm for his
subject. Because I believe strongly in a conservation ethic, I also
benefited from a better understanding of relationships between
aboriginal peoples and the nature on which they depend.

Will other readers be equally enthralled? Maybe. Despite a
broad interest in etymology and the generally utilitarian key to
pronunciation of words in Cmique Iitom, I often became frus-
trated with my inability to translate the strangely spelled words
into anything pronounceable. Others may find this even more
daunting. Also, without a familiarity with the animals of the
region prior to reading the book, many of the references and
insights make sense only in retrospect. Although this is a com-
mon trait in academic monographs, casual readers should be
fully aware that this is inevitable — or make sure to have the
aforementioned copy of Grismer’s guide to the Baja California
herpetofauna readily at hand. If, however, one can cope with
those two issues, the author’s ability as a science writer as well as
a scientist will inevitably make reading this volume eminently
enjoyable. Nabhan’s prose is down-to-earth and resorts to disci-
pline-specific jargon much less frequently than almost any book
that is comparably authoritative. He has invested much of his
life in getting to know the human subjects of this narrative, and
his obvious like of them, as well as of the animals who share the
limelight, carries over to the printed page. His formal training
as an ethnobotanist lends insights that introduce new dimen-
sions for consideration by those of us whose expertise and inter-
ests have largely been limited to animals. Ultimately, however,
what makes this book a winner is its unique ability to provide
perspectives on animals in which we share an interest and which
we could otherwise acquire only by spending years in the
Comcáac territories.

References
Bowen, T. 2000. Unknown Island: Seri Indians, Europeans, and San Esteban

Island. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

Felger, R.S. and M.B. Moser. 1985. People of the Desert and Sea: Ethnobotany
of the Seri Indians. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.

Chilomeniscus stramineus may be banded or uniformly colored and
common names reflect that difference, although both pattern phases
represent the same species. Photograph by Robert Powell.

3 The name Chilomeniscus cinctus is no longer considered valid; see
Powell (2004. IGUANA 11:7) and references cited therein.




