In honor of #serpentday, here is a quick intro to the snakes I've seen in Australia so far. First, the snakes I'm here to study are the common tree snake and the northern tree snake.
1. Common tree snake (Dendrelaphis punctulatus) - your typical diurnal tree snake, these guys have big eyes and are relatively long and thin. They come in a lot of color variations around Australia. The ones at the DRO are nearly totally black on top and vibrant yellow on the bottom. Just a few hours away in Cairns, they are more of a speckly blue. In the south, they tend to be grey-green with blue flecks. They are also sometimes yellow (in the north) or sky blue. 2. Northern tree snake (Dendrelaphis calligastra) - looks relatively similar in face shape to its sister species, but tends to be smaller bodied with bigger eyes. They only come in one color: bronze back and cream/yellow underside. They also have these gorgeous blue flecks that appear in between their scales. Incredibly agile snakes, much harder to catch than the common tree snake in my experience. And non-research snakes: 3. Amethystine python (AKA scrub python) - Australia’s longest snake! Can get up to around 5 m long. Known for having this beautiful sheen on their scales that turns a bit purple in the sun. Like all pythons, it's a non-venomous constrictor. Queensland is home to 10 out of 13 species of Australian python; scrubbies are the most common one to see around the DRO. 4. Red-bellied black snake - a highly venomous elapid, but generally they just get out of your way if you get too close (PSA: don’t bother snakes). The ones I've encountered were all very nice about posing for a few photos and then quickly slithering away. Red bellies can be found in several places along the Queensland coast, and their color varies through their range. Apparently, in the south, they can be bright, fire-engine red on the bottom. 5. Night tiger - this snake, also called the brown tree snake, is invasive on Guam where it has decimated the bird population. It arrived in Guam during WWII via shipping containers. It’s a nocturnal tree snake and is fairly easily found when spotlighting at night. The “tiger” thing comes from the faint stripes you can see, which can be much more dramatic in some regions of Queensland. They are rear fanged and only mildly venomous. 6. Keelback - a water snake. At the end of the dry season, I was running into at least one keelback every time I hiked up a creek, as the lack of water seemed to concentrate them near the few remaining sources. Although they’re normally a sort of boring brownish-olive color, the ones in Cape Tribulation are invariably bright yellow with a grey head. They look super cool. Each of their scales has a little raised “keel” in it, which gives them their name. This species's claim to fame is that it is more resistant to the toxin produced by cane toads, which are an introduced pest in Australia. 7. Slaty grey snake - another nocturnal snake, it was hard to get a good picture of this guy. Every time I saw one, it was nosing around the leaf litter, on the move. They look somewhat similar to a venomous species, the small eyed snake, but have a bit more white coming up the sides and more of an iridescent sheen. They also have what's called a loreal scale, between their nasal scales and ocular scales. Elapids (the highly venomous ones) don't have this scale. Of course, once you're close enough to check if a snake has a loreal scale, you're close enough to get bit, so I don't really recommend trying to get an ID that way... 8. Collared whip snake - I actually saw this guy down in Cairns, and I'm not 100% positive on the ID. There are a lot of species of whip snake in Queensland. Really cute little snake, this one was about 8 cm long and very fast.