Venomous Snakes of Udon Thani

The guess from the description you gave was right, it is a Chrysopelea ornatus (Golden Tree Snake).

Yes, polehawk, they can slowly climb walls and up the side of the house by using the small imperfections in the smoothness of the cement. Their ventral scales, the wide scales on the belly, have special keels on the lateral sides which allow them to grip onto seemingly smooth surfaces. It is a morphological adaptation (evolutionary selection) to climb up trees with smooth trunks, which is found in the three snake species of this genus found in Thailand.

Your friend is correct about their movements. I have observed them in the field using a spring-like motion to spring to other branches and trees. Their ribs are capable spreading out laterally, giving them a greater lateral surface area enabling them to glide through the air, but with a much faster fall rate than Draco, the flying (gliding) lizards found in the forest. Yes, Thailand has 'flying' snakes, 'flying' lizards, and 'flying' frogs.

I just killed this snake the other day in my neighbor's yard. It was about 7 feet long. Anyone have a clue what type of snake it would be? Sorry if the picture is not that clear, but it was raining.

I finde this one

Sappiajk, your snake is a Ptyas mucosus (Common or Oriental Rat snake). Their pattern often mimics an Ophiophagus hannah (King Cobra). It is completely harmless, except for the large teeth with the large sizes that it attains- over 10' (320cm).

Benzman, that is another Xenochrophis flavipunctatus. It appears that in our area we have ones with orange blotches and those without these orange blotches. I have yet to catch enough to determine whether this is a characteristic of sexual dimorphism.

thx MC i find them here in Udon at the bulding place for mingolf and climbingwall near to Global

if i find more i try to take photos of them

I spotted this snake under the belly of a dinosaur at Phu Foilom a couple of days ago. Couldn't see it's head though.

It may be stating the obvious, but I was recently reminded of the wisdom of wearing suitable footwear when walking away from roads etc, - on paths and in parks or similar.

I had gone to Phu Foilom, wearing only my usual open sandals, and was being fairly vigilant as the place was crawling with ants and as we had seen a snake on one of the dinosaurs. As we got to the top of a rocky climb, I felt a sharp jabbing pain on my big toe, and instinctively kicked out vigorously, initially for some reason thinking it was ants, though it was a much sharper jab than an ant bite. Something (crash) landed in the adjacent grass/undergrowth, and when I looked to see what it was, I saw a Tukay looking up at me. (see photo).

I had a half inch cut on my big toe, which was bleeding, and blood was spattered on an adjacent tree, as well as a drop on the Tukay's nose.

I really hadn't seen it, and can only guess I must have either trod on it, or kicked it, or almost done so, whilst distracted by the view.

As a precaution I later took myself to a hospital in a nearby village where, they cleaned and dressed the cut, and gave me a course of anti-biotics, as a precaution, oh and of course some paracetamol - all for 180 baht!

Upon reflection, I realised that it would have saved me a lot of hassle, and risk had it been a snake, by wearing sensible shoes or boots or even trainers.

good advise indeed arjay . weve got one of those living in our garden shed , hence the wife wont go in there untill i kill it , which i refuse to do . besides its quite a timid thing and always hides when it sees me , maybe it heard the wife telling me to kill it ! . but i have been led to believe that if they do bite , you literaly have to cut there heads of to get them to release , which ive always put down to thai overkill on anything that looks slightly dangerous . your story does confirm its a myth . but it also comfirms they can give a nasty bite . so i will certainly be a little more respectful of the little critter in future .

Arjay, your snake was Chrysopelea ornata, a snake that I mentioned rather recently at the top of the page and previous page of this thread. It is a very inoffensive snake.

The gecko is Gekko gecko and they a really hard bite. You are lucky it did not hold on, because they do not let go for a very long time.

This person was bit on the finger and it held on. We held it under water to the point of drowning; it would not let go. We put it in ice water; it would not let go. We tried to lever its mouth open using the handle of a fork; its mouth bent around it and it held on. He eventually had to rip the 30cm gecko off of his finger.

They are usually very shy, but if a finger or toe is brought to them and they feel threatened, they will bite and bite very hard. They are very nice to have around, because they eat large and medium sized insects along with small rodents (pretty much anything smaller than it that they can swallow).

so my mrs was right then ? dont you just hate it when that happens ? O K , now i know , i will certainly treat it with much respect , but i still wont kill it . i think ill call him winston . my mate had a bulldog called winston and there the same , bite you , and lock on !!!!!

This ended up being tea

I am sorry to say this but IMHO the moderators did a tremendous job to hide this really helpful and important thread at the most unlogical place. I just had a poisonous snake in my garden and searched for about 10 minutes until I rediscovered this thread. And I would have never found if I had not known about it before.

IMHO it should be placed in Topics - General - Announcements (wrong name but sticky and easy to see). Plus it should be sticky on the front page.

I went to the search box at the top and typed in "snakes" and it led me to this thread in 0.23 seconds. The list of topics is a dead loss as there are too many undescriptive and ambiguous titles. I NEVER try to find something by going through the list of topics, unless I'm just surfing around not looking for anything in particular.

Use the search box. Google is your friend.

It is certainly worthy of a sticky

Fussychunk, sorry, I was out in the field and running around academia in Bangkok for the past 10+ days. Your snake is a type of Ptyas sp., but which one, I cannot determine without seeing the whole snake and the head. Ptyas is a genus of Asian rat snake, so it is not dangerous.