rarely bite defensively, even when handled roughly.
I have caught many hundreds of these snakes -
sometimes underwater but more often on shore -
and not one has ever tried to bite me while being
captured, although they should always be handled
as though they can and may bite. The greatest risk
of a bite is when milking individuals for their venom.
information slowly accumulated. On our first
analyses of the data, it became clear that two quite
distinct species were included in the sample from
this one tiny islet: a large species growing to a
metre or more and considered identical to the
common Yellow-lipped Sea Krait that ranges from
Myanmar to Tonga, and a dwarf species growing to
‘ I have caught many hundreds of these snakes,
and not one has ever tried to bite me while
being captured. ’
On our first trip to Vanuatu in search of sea kraits,
we collected around 50 specimens from one small
coral islet in the lagoon off north Efate Island. These
were all regarded as young to adult Yellow-lipped
Sea Kraits. The islet was no more than about 50
metres long, and so the venom samples taken from
these specimens from this one tiny location were
mixed together as a single sample for study back in
Japan, where the venom’s chemistry was analysed
and the results published soon afterwards. In the
meantime, back in our Australian Museum labora-
tory, many months went by as the morphology of
these snakes was carefully examined, including
various scale characteristics and counts, and
about 60 centimetres in length, also similar in
almost all external features to the Yellow-lipped Sea
Krait. This dwarf species subsequently proved to be
identical to a species, Laticauda frontalis, known
from a single specimen said to be from New Britain
in Papua New Guinea. We eventually identified
small differences in body pattern and in scale
configurations that could be used to separate the
two species in the field. Subsequent field work in
the Pacific recorded this dwarf species only from the
islands of Vanuatu and the Loyalty Islands of New
Caledonia, leaving us unsure as to whether the type
specimen from ‘New Britain’ could really have come
from that island.
2 qtr page ad