Assist with snake identification

[Westley Price]

To me, the face and body looks more like a cobra, but obviously no black species occur there so I'm going purely on appearance, not on distribution.

The eye doesn't look like a Garter. And just the general shape of the body and head puts me off a Garter.

I really enjoy these type of posts (except for the snake being dead of course).

[Unforgiven]

would be nice if cojava would post some more pics

I almost want to say wolf snake(i suck at ID so dont believe me). I have seen a pic of something almost identical on the forum before but for the life of me cannot remember

[Unforgiven]

at the same time it looks striking familiar to a mex black king. still keppers have to be irresponsible to allow a snake to escape

[snake kid]

Wes I have seen a black and I mean black cape cobra so don't abandon your idea.

[COJOVA]

Hi Everyone

Thank you for the wonderful response. Herewith an update and some detail to clarify things.

With regards to size, the snake was at most 35 cm in length and more or less 1.5 cm in diameter at the thickest. The picture was taken using a Nokia N8, I had to reduce the pixels to fit into the 800 x 800 requirements for upload. Location: As mentioned I live close to Northam (Swartklip to be exact) in Limpopo, located between Pilanesberg / Sun city and Thabazimbi. As to the origin of the snake, it was most definitely not someone’s pet. I only have two neighbours and they... lets just say they are not the snake keeping type.

I went back to were I disposed of the snake and due to the hot weather 34 °C plus humidity in the upper 40s there was not much left. More pictures will therefore not be possible. I will in future take the advice of Bushviper and freeze the snake for future reference.

I tried asking some of the long time locals what their thoughts were. Rinkals, black mamba, southern stiletto. I did open the mouth to look for the black patch (black mamba) but did not see anything. I did however noticed (this was my first time looking down the throat of a snake) that the fangs was not situated at the front as I, in my ignorance, expected but was located much closer to the middle/rear.

In the posts the following possibilities was mentioned:

1) Common Purple Gloss Snake:

I’ve read that this snakes’ fangs are located to the rear. This match the location of the fangs of the snake that was killed by the cat. Also the pictures correspond to the one’s on the net.

2) Elapsoidea longicauda:

With regards to Elapsoidea longicauda the picture I found on the net does not match.

3) Mexican black kingsnake

Does this snake occur in SA?

4) Wolf snake:

Again, the pictures does not match.

Based on the location of the fangs and the pictures (not very scientific I suppose) I would say the common purple gloss snake is the closest match.

[monopeltis]

elapsoidea boulengeri picture from the web: