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Oriental whip snake (Ahaetulla prasina) at the Botanic Gardens. This was my first encounter with the species, which can be found in local gardens, parks and reserves. Its bright green body provides effective camouflage most of the time though, keeping it hidden in plain sight from strollers who would be outraged that facilities for families could harbour these and other threats to limb and life.

But for the most part, the reed thin torso of the animal is draped over bushes and branches, while the snake surveys its surroundings using large, coldly expressive eyes with hourglass-like horizontally stretched pupils, which may aid in enhancing its field of vision for a sideway strike at unwary lizards, tree frogs or birds. A visible groove before the nose also casts a broad net of perception before the two lidless eyes. Prey is dispatched with the aid of venom delivered from fangs to the rear of its mouth. The need to 'chew' in order to inject the venom as well as the rear position of the fangs (unlike cobras and vipers which have fangs at the front of their mouths) means that the snake is likely to have difficulty maiming, much less killing, naked apes with their fat fleshy appendages. It's more probably that the lithe form of the serpent suffer irreparable damage from the hands of humans all too ready to submit to fear.

This 1.5m specimen was spotted earlier this week by the husky at the edge of the gardens' rainforest, and with hopes of breaking my duck, I stalked the area for the snake which had so far proved elusive. It seemed a creature of habit, as I found it at knee-height in a clearing around where the husky saw it. A passing old couple admired the animal, and I told them it wasn't really dangerous. They laughed and said that where they came from (Queensland I think), there were hordes of deadlier things. The snake was docile, putting up with the close attention of three flashing bodies from its perch on a Dillenia bush and slowly ascending to a higher bough. But if pressed, it's said to be able to take off through the canopy with great speed, using the anterior portion of the body like a cantilever to access distant twigs. And as luck would have it, the shutterpup caught sight of another some days later. Like lipids from colubrids, methinks such encounters are mighty ssssuspicioussss....

Comments

[Aydin]

Nice photo!