Snake ID pls

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redhillkate

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Just before we call the snake catcher. We haven't been able to see it's head and are reluctant to agitate it. About 4cm across, roughly 1.5m long, Northern NSW, mountain side, bush and scrub, been raining but otherwise not near a creek etc. Come in to the house and curled next to the warm modem on shelf. Browns, pythons and occasional arboreal browns common in the area.

Many thanks

snake.jpg
 
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Looks like a Copperhead, DANGEROUSLY VENOMOUS.
I could be wrong, but they do like the highlands of NSW, especialy rainy areas. The're diurnal and are extremely cold tolerant.
 
It's a Brown Treesnake. Very mildly venomous, generally regarded as harmless. Check your ruler, that critter ain't 4cm across. No need to remove this fellow, they're nice to have around :) They're not at all related to the deadly snakes in Australia (elapids), they're in an entirely unrelated group (colubrids), none of which in Australia are considered dangerous.


Looks like a Copperhead, DANGEROUSLY VENOMOUS.
I could be wrong, but they do like the highlands of NSW, especialy rainy areas. The're diurnal and are extremely cold tolerant.

Incorrect guesses, especially when you're the first to respond and you're doing so quickly, cause more harm than good. If you can't yet tell the difference between radically different species, please refrain from making guesses about snake identifications until you have a lot more experience. Especially if you are the first person to respond, it doesn't matter if you say 'I'm not sure but...', people are still likely to act on your advice. Many snake identification groups have strict rules about posting identifications, because an incorrect ID can be dangerous for human safety, and it often results in the death of the snake. Keep in mind that the majority of relocated snakes die. If you want to learn, people sometimes play games where they post pictures of known snakes and have inexperienced people guess at them, where experienced herpetologists are asked not to take part.
 
Oops! Sorry about that.:oops: Brown tree snake? I'm miles off. Definitely not a Copperhead. I was almost going to say green tree snake. Guess I need a little more experience in the Snake ID area.
 
Oops! Sorry about that.:oops: Brown tree snake? I'm miles off. Definitely not a Copperhead. I was almost going to say green tree snake. Guess I need a little more experience in the Snake ID area.

Keep learning :) Just keep in mind that getting it wrong can cause all sorts of problems, including terrifying people, getting snakes killed, or potentially even getting people bitten by something dangerous. Best not to give advice until you're capable of it, especially with anything relating to safety.
 
Its A mildly Venomous Brown tree snake these animals are generally regarded as harmless if this animal bites you its like a bee/wasp sting

And you can confirm this by the picture how?

Scale count/shape, location?

I like learning
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If you want to learn, people sometimes play games where they post pictures of known snakes and have inexperienced people guess at them, where experienced herpetologists are asked not to take part

Dose this happen in the I.D thread?
 
Hi

Can you please explain you I.D please.

You're asking me if I'm sure or how I know what it is?

Yes, I'm sure.

Most experienced Australian herpers could just take a glance at this picture and recognise it without thinking about diagnostic features, much like most people don't really think about any particular diagnostic features when identifying a picture as a bird or dog or fish. The colour/pattern would immediately tell you it's somewhere on the east coast, or maybe somewhere else in northern QLD, but we were given the location anyway.

Some diagnostic features are the lateral body compression, scale count with enlarged dorsal row (we don't have anything else similar in Australia), the scale shape and overlap, the colour pattern isn't reliably diagnostic but immediately tells you what it probably is and everything else confirms it (I didn't think it through like this, I just immediately recognised it because I'm familiar with them, but if I stop to think about it I can see these things, just as you would describe a fish to someone who had never before seen a fish).

The scales are radically different from any python. Pythons all have much higher scale counts. An elapid would have a very different body shape (not are laterally compressed like this) and the scales would overlap more like roof tiles rather than a tesselation/mosaic arrangement as we see on this Boiga. The shape of the scales on the dorsal row are very distinctive. Australia has very few colubrids and no others are anything like this. Even by simply ruling out elapids and pythons you're left with only three species of colubrids to work with and it's clearly not a Dendrelaphis or Tropidonophis, leaving only one option.

And yes, to any pedants, I left out blindsnakes. Deliberately.
 
It would be helpful if people posting in this forum read and adhered to the rules governing its use. These are to be found in the three stickies i.e. permanent threads at the beginning of a forum. These sticky threads state, amongst other things, the requirements that: ‘if you don’t know, don’t guess’ and ‘provide reasons for your ID’s; and they include a sound rationale for each of these requirements.
 
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