The Pirmad cat snake is a species of rear-fanged colubrid

Colubrid

A colubrid is a member of the snake family Colubridae. This broad classification of snakes includes about two-thirds of all snake species on earth. The earliest species of the snake family date back to the Oligocene epoch. With 304 genera and 1,938 species, Colubridae is the largest snake family...

 found in the Western Ghats

Western Ghats

The Western Ghats, Western Ghauts or the Sahyādri is a mountain range along the western side of India. It runs north to south along the western edge of the Deccan Plateau, and separates the plateau from a narrow coastal plain along the Arabian Sea. The Western Ghats block rainfall to the Deccan...

. It is named after Pirmedu (also spelled Peermad), a place in Kerala

Kerala

or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....

, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, elevation 3,300 feet (1,006 m). The specific name or epithet, dightoni, is in honor of S. Dighton, Esq., the collector of the holotype specimen.

Description

Boiga dightoni is pale reddish-brown dorsally, with a series of salmon-red blotches. Its head is pale brown with minute blackish dots. Ventrally it is yellowish, finely-dotted with brown. The outer ends of the ventral scales are salmon-pink. It is medium-sized, adults attaining a total length of 1.1 m (3.6 feet).