המועדפים של amdurso

Being eaten by a water monitor (Varanus salvator macromaculatus). The lizard started trying to eat it about 30 mins before dark - it was about 33 C during the day so probably would have killed the lizard to try earlier. It had to stretch and bend its whole body to push the snake into its stomach. Movement occurred in 1 or 2 minute bursts with a rest in between. Took the monitor about 30 minutes to swallow the snake.

Snake was dead before the monitor started. How it died is unknown.

Look at how he takes up an entire lane! That thing had to be pushing 1.8 or 1.9 meters and still was hardly as big around as my finger.

That first picture was later stolen off of my website and turned into numerous memes, many of which were shared tens of thousands of times. It then was taken by a software company for use in a viral ad campaign that was very successful. Finally, I was contacted by a board game company asking my permission to use the picture in their meme-based board game, which was the first I had known that people on Twitter and Instagram were using the photograph with abandon. I mean....he WAS a very photogenic snake, and I'm all for sharing pictures, but it feels dirty for people to just grab something off of someone else's page on the web and then profit off of it, especially the shady profits that come from viral advertising.

https://bangkokherps.wordpress.com/2011/05/01/long-nosed-whip-snake/

About 7 - 8ft long; I only noticed this snake as it lunged out of the water at an approaching full grown Marsh Deer - obviously a defensive gesture, I gather this species can be particularly aggressive when threatened! Defensive or not, it was quite the sight to see - 1m of angry snake lunging at the face of a large deer!!

The story as I remember it on this one. Someone sent me a text saying they found this snake and had it in a bucket but wanted me to ID it. They "tossed a lizard in with it". I got there later and looked in the bucket under something they had and it was eating the ground skink. Kind of freaked me out when I saw it for two reasons, they had a protected species in a bucket which is a no no and the fact that it was eating a skink. Any website you go to at this point only listed crowned snakes as their food source. Since this pic you see more than just snakes listed. I caught a lot of hell for this pic I took and encouraged the home owner to release it back where he found it after it finished eating

Aberrant coloration. At first we thought it was a N. fasciata x N. clarkii hybrid but the dorsal pattern is too banded (not stripey) and the ventral pattern is unstriped but not plain, albeit very low contrast (orange vs yellow half-moons). Compare a few other "hypomelanistic" N. fasciata from nearby:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/67151325

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/109373290

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/70033204

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/67151325

Found dead on the side of the road. It was dead for a few days by the time I took photos.

A few side notes: The body was roughly 6 inches long, with an oddly short tail. Considering the bloating and decomposition, this was still a stocky and odd rodent from what I see. I immediatly scratched off black rats and norway rats as the tail was too short, and I ended up by process of elimination finding the round-tailed muskrat the closest option.

Both barbouri and ernsti occur within this stretch of river. Hybrids do exist, but pure forms of parental species occur as well. (Godwin et al 2014). This individual showed characteristics of barbouri (short nose, chin bar, and those orange-ish tips to the vertebrals)

Rough Greensnake catching an orbweaver spider. It got close to the web and then stayed there for what felt like 10 minutes (not sure it was waiting to figure out how to catch the spider or because I had disturbed it). After a while, it finally caught the spider and seemed to have no trouble eating it. My first time seeing a wild snake catch its prey!