The Cat Snake

Semi-venomous

As a snake rescuer the list of species I pick up from human habitation is limited to around ten odd species. Cobras, Kraits, Russell’s Vipers, Ratsnakes, Pythons, Whitaker Boa’s, Striped Keelbacks, Checkered Keelbacks, Wolfsnakes and Bronzeback tree snakes make up ninety nine percent of the snakes I find in people’s houses. Ocassionally I might even find a Vine snake or a Banded Racer but even those snakes are few and far inbetween.

To find the other species one has to go looking in the forests or special areas. My collegues Aaron Lobo, Nirmal Kulkarni and the others regularly make trips into the forest to search for snakes. I routinely suffer a little jealousy when they narrate their expriences to me!

Recently however I made a trip to the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station. I had chosen the peak of the monsoon to be there (the best time to spot herps) and during my two day stay there I came up close with three very rare species of snakes among many species of frogs and other rainforest creatures.

One of the snakes I was lucky to find was a cat snake which fortunately for me decided to coil around a wooded rack just outside the research station. The volunteers there were under strict instruction not to allow anyone to handle the snakes there so I was forced to photograph it in the night itself.

I wasn’t at all happy photographing the snake in the night since the inbuilt flash of my camera tends to ruin most of the photographs. But I tried anyways.

Since we didn’t handle the snake we couldn’t perform a scale count and I therefore cannot be sure about what species of catsnake it might be. I’ve narrowed it down to two species. One being the Ceylon Catsnake and the other being the Beddome’s Catsnake. But even Whitaker’s book says that Beddome’s Catsnake is visually indistinguishable from the Ceylon Cat. However, the former has more belly scales.Another important difference between the two is the number of teeth in the upper jaw, but this is hard to examine in a live snake.

Both these species are nocturnal and arboreal. They usually feed on geckos, lizards, and sometimes small birds which they paralyze with a mildly venomous bite from rear fangs. Both species are oviparous.