Raymond Hoser

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Raymond Hoser (Born: 1962 U.K.) is an Australian herpetologist and author. He writes about reptiles, but has also written about official corruption in Australia. The corruption interest came up when he found apparent problems in the wildlife services in New South Wales. This was first covered in his book "Smuggled" where he alleges that officials were involved in the illegal wildlife trade. He later moved to Victoria and allegedly came across further corruption with Vicroads when working as a taxi driver. His experiences here were first covered in his book "The Hoser Files".

Raymond Hoser has come under fire from the Australian reptile community due to his practice of removing the venom glands from venomous snakes, and displaying them as "Venomoids" - a term for a venomous snake that has undergone such a procedure. The main argument against this procedure is the fact the snake's basic instinct to strike the prey and await its death before eating is completely disrupted.

He runs the website Smuggled.com which is a mixture of information about reptiles and official corruption.

[edit] Works

Papers

1998. A new snake from Queensland, Australia (Serpentes: Elapidae). Monitor 10, 5–9.
2000. A new species of snake (Serpentes: Elapidae) from Irian Jaya. Litt. Serpentium 20, 178–186.
2002. An overview of the taipans, genus (Oxyuranus) (Serpentes: Elapidae), including the description of a new subspecies. Crocodilian - J. Vic. Assoc. Amat. Herpetol. 3, 43–50.