King
brown snake is definitely to be considered dangerous.
It
is one
of the better
known Australian venomous snakes, found
in almost all of Australia, except the far south.
It is also known for its fair
size,
often reticulated appearance, the fact that it often lives near humans,
that it delivers large
quantities of
venom, and is specialised in eating reptiles, including
other
snakes, even of its own species.
Once upon a time when I lived in Charters Towers, I had one in my back
yard shed, but more of that below...
Distribution and Habitat
King Brown
snake has
a very wide distribution
- some
say the widest amongst all Australian snakes.
It is also called mulga
snake,
and it's true that it lives in
mulga country,
however it is
not restricted to it.
One particular
habitat where it does not live is rainforests, but it is found in
all drier vegetation
zones.
It is not found in Victoria or Tasmania, coastal New South Wales,
southern South and Western Australia, or the very south eastern corner
of Queensland.
It is found in all of Northern Territory and most of Queensland,
including Cape
York and our northern neighbour Papua New Guinea.
Appearance of King Brown Snake
While
Australia's largest
snakes are pythons, these are not venomous snakes.
King brown snake is one
of the very
largest
of the venomous ones - in fact it takes the first place in
weight, and the second, after taipan, in length, in Australia.
It can grow up to three metres in length, although 1.5m is more usual.
They are known to grow
larger in
northern Australia than in the south of the country.
King brown snake is also a heavily built, robust
snake with a broad head.
Like with most other snakes, its colour can vary - colour is never a
good indicator in snake identification.
As with all snake identification, you would have to be very experienced
to identify a snake 100% just by seeing it.
Often more complicated methods such as scale counts need to be
involved. But it so happens that
king brown
snake does
have a characteristic that gives you a good hint:
Often, each of its scales has a darker and a lighter part, giving the
snake a subtle pattern.
That in combination with its large size and bulky head is often enough
for recognising it fairly surely.
Behaviour
Mulga
snakes have widely
adapted to eat other
reptiles.
Other reptiles are their favourites, however they do eat frogs, birds
and
mammals too.
They happily eat other
snakes,
including all the poisonous ones, and
even cannibalise on their own species.
How aggressive they get can depend on the time of the year and other
factors (such as location - the northern ones are known to be more
aggressive than the southern individuals).
But they are not
generally known as
especially
aggressive unless provoked. The snake in our
shed.
That was
what
happened to the snake in my shed.
It was not particularly aggressive when first disturbed, but
because I went to
take photos, and at the same time being inside the shed the snake would
have felt cornered,
it did
start moving aggressively towards me.
What saved me from trouble was that the snake was eating another snake
so it was not into chasing or biting, but I did take the whole thing as
a good lesson. Eating another
snake.
On top of that we don't
outrun snakes
if they want to chase us!
Venom and Treatment
The
poison of mulgas is not
the world's strongest, but what makes them so dangeous is that they
deliver a lot of it.
They are known for the
largest snake
venom output in the world - up to ten times of the amount
of a
tiger snake for example.
They can give multiple
bites
and are even
known to
chew
while hanging onto the prey in the process of the lengthy
delivery.
The name of king brown snake is misleading - they do not belong to the
Australian brown
snake family.
They belong to the family of black snakes, and it's the black snake antivenom
that needs
to be used as treatment of the bite of this snake.
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This is the ORIGINAL Cape York Travel Guide run Locally on the Peninsula.