snake in Christchurch

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feathergrass

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ok i wasnt sure how to do this so i jut copied it

this was found on a nz news site called stuff




[h=1]Dead snake found on Christchurch street[/h] [h=2][/h] NICOLE MATHEWSON Last updated 05:00 09/01/2012
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KRIS NEHO
LONG WAY FROM HOME: The snake found on a suburban Christchurch street.

A Christchurch man was shocked to discover the well-preserved body of a brown snake on a suburban street.
Somerfield resident Kris Kaan was walking with a friend along Cashmere's Ashgrove Tce on Thursday evening when they came across the unusual find.
"Me and my mate were just walking along. We saw a lady standing on the side of the road looking down at the ground."
Kaan's friend saw the snake first, and he heard him ask the woman "is that real".
"Then I looked down and just thought it was some rubber snake.
"I kept saying `is this real, is this a joke'."
The snake was at least a metre long and was tan-brown in colour, with a yellowish belly, he said.
"My mate picked it up and I touched it. It was definitely a snake."
They saw "small fangs" and "bits of goo" on the snake.
"It was quite fat, but the head was quite small."
It appeared to have been run over, Kaan said.
"Its body was still quite pliable. We looked closer and could see the scales and see where the tyre had gone over."
Kaan said he had never seen a snake in real life before, and finding one in Christchurch was "weird".
"It was just bizarre. I honestly didn't believe it was a real snake; it took me a while until I touched it."
A Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry spokeswoman said MAF was aware of the find, but the snake was not a biosecurity risk as it had been preserved in fluid.
It was not alive or recently dead, she said.
- © Fairfax NZ News
 
Random... I wonder if it had been legally imported a long, long time ago or smuggled in? I'm not sure what the import standards would have been for dead and preserved specimens. Bizarre.
 
youd think they would import preserved specimens... in my zoology course we did a lot of work with preserved reptiles. Quite a few corn snakes might i add =/
 
lol and only the other day i was watching ''the zoo'' and they had a 25yr old legless lizard on that they used in a demo because the 'don't have any snakes in New Zealand'
 
lol and only the other day i was watching ''the zoo'' and they had a 25yr old legless lizard on that they used in a demo because the 'don't have any snakes in New Zealand'


Lol, I always tell other kiwi's that's a naive assumption. My husband didn't believe me when I told them they were illegal; when he lived over there as a kid he visited a friend who had a massive set-up complete with carpet python. They're there, but kept quiet by whoever has smuggled them in/keeps them.
Bloody idiots really, the risk to NZ's eco-system is not worth the effort; survival odds aren't great for most species given the climate, but introduced diseases could cause havoc to what herps are native to the country. The tuatara are struggling as it is without that drama on top of it.
 
this one was preserved though so could be over a hundred years old... not sure what the import laws were back then. Im sure universities would have preserved specimens as well, its pretty vital to zoology...
 
this one was preserved though so could be over a hundred years old... not sure what the import laws were back then. Im sure universities would have preserved specimens as well, its pretty vital to zoology...

I'm pretty sure I remember seeing preserved specimens (or at least skeletons) in a museum when I was a kid, so you're dead right there.
 
i saw preserved ones n a museum in auckland and i think christchurch but as for no snakes kiwis up north are being warned about a sea snake related to the cobra is funny as they be swimming to nz :)
 
Lmao I just got images of a bunch of kiwis going "Yeah? Really?" and swimming out to look for one hahaha; a lot of people I grew up with would react that way :p
Christchurch Museum was the one I was talking about.
 
lol and only the other day i was watching ''the zoo'' and they had a 25yr old legless lizard on that they used in a demo because the 'don't have any snakes in New Zealand'

i saw that one to,thought you could have snakes in NZ
 
i think snakes would do well in the far north of nz i think the south island would be too cold for them
 
Possibly. It's not something I gather DOC or MAF would be keen to find out though lmao.
I didn't think of Tasmania, I keep forgetting it's a part of Aus lol (sorry to all the Tassie APS members)... Good luck to any snakes trying to survive in Chch at the moment though, there won't be much left the way the earthquakes are going. Stupid tremors, and efforts to convince my family members to gth out of there are proving fruitless at the moment :(
 
Possibly. It's not something I gather DOC or MAF would be keen to find out though lmao.
I didn't think of Tasmania, I keep forgetting it's a part of Aus lol (sorry to all the Tassie APS members)... Good luck to any snakes trying to survive in Chch at the moment though, there won't be much left the way the earthquakes are going. Stupid tremors, and efforts to convince my family members to gth out of there are proving fruitless at the moment :(
:cry:
 
Ironically I was actually thinking of you when I apologised Tassie97 ;)
 
theres plenty of snakes found at the wellington docks from aussie cargo ships. id be fairly suprised if any/many snakes could survive a south island winter.
i lived in nz from 80-96 so i know how cold it can get..
 
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