John C. Murphy

John C. Murphy is a naturalist with a focus on snakes. When he is not hiking in the desert or examining specimens in the lab, he is often writing about reptiles. Murphy is a retired science educator who got serious about his life long fascination with lizards and snakes in the early 1980s when he and his family made their first trip to Trinidad. The work on Trinidad and Tobago provided valuable lessons that shaped his views of nature and evolution. Today he still working on the eastern Caribbean herpetofauna. In the 1990's he worked on homalopsid snakes in Southeast Asia with others from the Field Museum. Today he resides in southeastern Arizona and is involved in multiple projects that involve arid habitats and the impact of climate change on biodiversity. His two most recent books are Amphibians and Reptiles of Arizona, A Natural History and Field Guide, and Giant Snakes, A Natural History (with co-author Tom Crutchfield). Murphy was born and raised in Joliet, Illinois and first learned about snakes on his grandfather's farm by watching Eastern Garter Snakes emerge from their winter dens and Snapping Turtles depositing their eggs at the edge of a cattail marsh.