Venomous Snakes of Udon Thani

jai yen yen wrote:Has anyone ever heard of a small green snake about 10 in.long and about 1/4 in. thick with 4 legs. I found one in my shed outside curled up in a ball looking a piece of rubber. I touched it wIth a long stick and it jumped about a foot into the air and stood there glaring at me. It looks just like a snake except for the legs, my gardener said it was very dangerous. Any ideas?

Sounds more like a Lizard than a snake...
Although I read a story about a snake in China that had grown a leg and claws not so long ago...bit of a mutant snake.

look here about 2/3rds way down, elongated skink.

http://www.mark-ju.net/wildlife/reptiles.htm

Very few lizards are poisionous, and only usually larger ones. But sure MichaelC knows best.

It had a long slim body like a snake, did not resemble a lizard at all and was a very light green, almost a yellow color. My Thai gardener and others were very afraid of it. They also could run very fast. The snake that is, not the gardener.

Pythons are the only snakes in Thailand that possess a vestigial pelvic girdle, along with vestiges of hind limbs, but they appear externally only as a nail sticking out of the body and one really has to look closely for these structures because they almost appear as scales. If the reptile you saw had visible legs, it had to be a lizard.

The description of small legs indicates a skink, but we do not have any species of skink close to us that is green and skinks are not very accomplished jumpers. This lizard might appear as green (more green than in the picture):

If it is this, it is Takydromus sexlineatus, belonging to the same family as the wall lizards in Europe- and equally dangerous . Until recently, the only lizards considered venomous were Heloderma spp. (Gila Monsters and Mexican Beaded Lizards) of the US and Mexico. Studies over the past 5 years have shown that many lizards have venom producing glands (Iguania and Varanoidea/Platynota), but only Varanoidea/Platynota produces venoms powerful enough to cause any possible life threatening effects (Gila Monsters and Mexican Beaded Lizards). Monitors also belong to this Infraorder; although their venom is much weaker, a bite from a 2.5+m Water Monitor or a Komodo Dragon could be dangerous, besides the damage done by the teeth (and not from the bacteria as suspected before). Our local Varanus bengalensis nebulosus (Clouded Monitor) could cause some damage with its teeth and maybe even take a finger, but no lizard in our area is dangerous.

Calotes versicolor, our common garden lizard can also turn a bit green, but neither Takydromus sexlineatus or Calotes versicolor usually would curl up into a ball (except in the egg).

Your most recent description, made while I was writing the reply, is of Chrysopelea ornata (Golden Tree Snake/Flying Snake งูเขียวดอกหมาก)- pictured at least a couple times in this thread already. It is rear-fanged snake with a very weak venom, that should be considered harmless. Many of our local ants carry a much more potent venom. This snake would also be able to spring up into the air; although, it usually only uses this motion when springing (flying) from tree to tree. Since many Thais mistakenly believe this snake to be dangerous, this also fits in with the fear exhibited by your gardener. You might have been seeing things, since this snake does not have any legs.

It definately had legs and looked more like a snake than your picture with it's head being the same size as it's body. This was in Hua Hin and was as solid yellow green color.

Found this one...similar...?



http://www.californiaherps.com/identifi ... es.id.html

or..

Yes, similar to those but slimmer and a very light solid green color. It also rolls itself into a small ball and looks like a piece of surgical rubber and almost the same color.

I'm beginning to think we should call our place "Cobra Acres". We had another spitting cobra visit today but we managed to keep this one out of the house. Our dogs started carrying on about something in the front yard and when my wife went to look it was another cobra headed in the general direction of our house. This one was a little smaller than our first one, "only" 3 feet long. I took a Thai style hoe to it with the result you can see in the pictures. I would have just as soon chased it back to the field but we don't have a wall surrounding the yard and we go out in the fields too often to want too many of these guys roaming around. But it won't go to waste. My wife is going back home for a few days and they were excited to hear she'd be bringing them a treat tomorrow.

These guys keep on twitching for a while after you kill them. I didn't move the snake between the first and the second pictures. It moved itself. And this was about 5 minutes after I nearly severed its head.

Sorry, Micheal. I know you'd have liked to have this one alive but I have neither the equipment nor the expertise, or nerve for that matter, to try to catch and keep one of these things.

Does anyone have any idea how you tell a snake that he/she is not welcome lying on your doorstep?

Day before yesterday our dog was barking a lot, so I went out to see what was happening. When stepping out of the door I heared a loud hissing, so expected a snake somewhere (often the reason why our dog is barking), however I couldn't find it, untill I took better notice where the dog was looking at, turned around, and noticed I had just stepped completely over the stupid thing. It was lying immediately below our doorstep, where you can't see it when you open the door. I was bare footed, and must have stepped straight over it..
I went back inside the house by the veranda-door, got my camera, but when I tried to come close enough to get a good picture the snake got frightened and took a run, finally disappearing over the top of the small wall surrounding our garden and into the garden of the neighbors (who are not at home).

As far as I could see, it was just an average ratsnake, grey with black spots, so non-poisonous I presume and harmless but it definitely is a big one, didn't see them this big, quick estimate is somewhere between 2 and 2.5 mtr in length and almost as thick as my arm. It was lying around and moving in bright daylight.

Anyway, so far so good, snake gone. But yesterday morning I returned home, finding the same animal lying again on exactly the same place right below our frontdoor. Once again, it ran away when I came closer. And just tonight, I open the frontdoor to feed the dog, hear the hissing, look down, and there's our snake again, right below the frontdoor step.
Nasty thing is that our dog now doesn't bark at it anymore, probably he has decided that this must be a friend of the house or something and nothing to be scared about. There are quite a lot of frogs, and I expect this is what is drawing the snake to our garden, however those frogs generally aren't under our frontdoor steps so why it has decided that our frontdoor should become his favourite spot?

Getting a bit irritating having that snake all the time right under our frontdoor and it scares visitors away (not always a bad thing, with some people, we now have a 'guard-snake' instead of a guard-dog). If it's just a ratsnake I see no reason to try to kill it, usually just chase them away, only somehow need to make our frontdoor an unwelcome place for a snake and not somewhere he/she feels at home..

Regards,

Geert



(note arrows mark head and tail of the snake, I liked to get a closer picture but the thing is really fast!)

if you veryify it's not poisonous, well, too poisonous, as much as i hate snakes, i would consider keeping that one around.

I currently live in the country side of Florida and have been using "Snake Away" to keep the snakes away from my house. It works well on the rattle snakes and copper heads. I guess snakes in Thailand would react the same way. Here is the link:
http://www.pestproducts.com/snakeinfo.htm
I'll be retiring to Thailand in 92 more days, see you all then.

laphanphon wrote:if you veryify it's not poisonous, well, too poisonous, as much as i hate snakes, i would consider keeping that one around.

Oh yeah, certainly after some family members have declared that they won't come visiting us anymore if that snake is still around! It's welcome to stay in our garden as long as it likes, only not on my frontdoor step (you can't see if the snake is on the step, until you open the door, and then you're almost on top of it). We now knock on our door before opening .

After seeing it one more time and comparing it with Michaels excellent pictures, I would guess it's a Painted Bronzeback, also based on the fact that I saw it eating a frog. But this one is big, difficult to measure but I would easily give it close to 2 meters, if not more, the one's I saw before were always a lot smaller and thinner and I didn't know they could get this big. Its back is very dark grey, almost blue'ish, with a dark pattern on it (not stripped), the belly is a lot lighter colored, almost greenish. Couldn't really see the coloring on its head though.

It doesn't seem to be very aggressive (well, I stepped completely over it, and it was only hissing) and weird enough the dog doesn't seem to care about it anymore (just stay's clear of it), probably he has seen it so often that he has decided it belongs to the family . I would love to get a good picture of it, but I've got only my phone-camera which hasn't got a tele-lens, so I have to get really close, and it takes a run is soon as I get within 2 meters of it. Once moving, it's extremely fast.

wow, thought i had a couple large ones hanging at the house before, that's a dinner for 4