Please ID the snake

Please ID the snake

Postby Bearhug » Sat Apr 21, 2012 4:46 pm

I stay in the Limpopo Province in the Waterberg district. All bushveld around our town. One of my neighbours called me to catch a snake but unfortunately it went underneath a wendy house. Today they killed it. Can anyone help us ID the snake. It's colour is beige brownish with a whitish belly. It was approx 80cm long. The pictures are unfortunately of a poor quality since I took it with my cellphone and I apologise for that. In the 1 pic you will notice small fangs.

Slang 005.jpg


Slang 006.jpg


Slang 006.jpg
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Re: Please ID the snake

Postby Bearhug » Sat Apr 21, 2012 4:56 pm

More pics. Could this possibly be an olive whipsnake?? To make sure it was dead and not suffering, I shot it 3 times through the head with a pellet pistol. A section of its body touched the head and is the yellow drop on the body its venom??
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Re: Please ID the snake

Postby Ruan Stander » Sat Apr 21, 2012 5:04 pm

Could be an olive whip snake, but I find identifying the species in the Psammophis genus very confusing, so I can't be sure. Definitely Psammophis sp. And harmless. Very sad to see it killed indeed.
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Re: Please ID the snake

Postby ISZY » Sat Apr 21, 2012 5:08 pm

Grass snake? its hard for me to ID dead snakes
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Re: Please ID the snake

Postby Ruan Stander » Sat Apr 21, 2012 7:33 pm

Yes it is one of the grass snakes without a doubt.
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Re: Please ID the snake

Postby Bushviper » Sat Apr 21, 2012 8:07 pm

Yip Olive grass snake. They could have left it alive as it posed no threat.
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Re: Please ID the snake

Postby Ruan Stander » Sat Apr 21, 2012 8:47 pm

I agree Bushviper. I think it is a huge problem in this and many other African countries and it needs to stop. People need to be educated and begin to understand the importance of all organisms in an ecosystem and stop killing animals out of fear, and often simply because they can or for pleasure which sickens me to my core.
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Re: Please ID the snake

Postby Bearhug » Sun Apr 22, 2012 12:44 pm

Thank you guys for the information. I was also sad to see the snake dead but when I got to it, it was already chopped almost in half. It was still writhing and wriggling and, since it was only connected to the head by a small piece of skin and 1 or 2 muscles, I decided to kill it to put it out of its misery.
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Re: Please ID the snake

Postby Daniellouw » Sun Apr 22, 2012 1:46 pm

Juvenile psamohpis mossambicus. Quite commom in the Lowveld too. Gets really big down here and people often think they are dangerous and because of it's size and the fact that they loose colour definition as they graw bigger, they are confused with female boomslang.
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