Boiga drapiezii
Encyclopedia
The white-spotted cat snake (Boiga drapiezii) is a long and slender rear-fanged colubrid
that is common throughout its range. The epithet is in honor of the Belgian naturalist Drapiez
.
, Borneo
, Peninsular Malaysia
, Thailand
, Philippines
.
s, frog
s and other smaller snake
s in the wild.
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...
that is common throughout its range. The epithet is in honor of the Belgian naturalist Drapiez
Pierre Auguste Joseph Drapiez
Pierre Auguste Joseph Drapiez was a Belgian naturalist.He founded with the French botanist Jean Baptiste Bory de Saint-Vincent and the Belgian chemist Jean-Baptiste Van Mons the Annales générales de Sciences physiques consacrées aux Sciences naturelles published in six volumes between 1819 and...
.
Description
There are two known phases. The green phase has a marbled green body with a more robust head and width. The brown phase is much more slender with orange brown triangle-like bands across the body. This species is in need of urgent review, with possibly more subspecies awaiting discovery and subsequent description.Geographic range
IndonesiaIndonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
, Borneo
Borneo
Borneo is the third largest island in the world and is located north of Java Island, Indonesia, at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia....
, Peninsular Malaysia
Peninsular Malaysia
Peninsular Malaysia , also known as West Malaysia , is the part of Malaysia which lies on the Malay Peninsula. Its area is . It shares a land border with Thailand in the north. To the south is the island of Singapore. Across the Strait of Malacca to the west lies the island of Sumatra...
, Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
, Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
.
Habitat
The white-spotted cat snake, while arboreal, can often be found moving about on the forest floor in search of prey and travel. They are found in tropical rainforest, sometimes on branches near streams.Diet
The white-spotted cat snake feeds on geckoGecko
Geckos are lizards belonging to the infraorder Gekkota, found in warm climates throughout the world. They range from 1.6 cm to 60 cm....
s, frog
Frog
Frogs are amphibians in the order Anura , formerly referred to as Salientia . Most frogs are characterized by a short body, webbed digits , protruding eyes and the absence of a tail...
s and other smaller snake
Snake
Snakes are elongate, legless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes that can be distinguished from legless lizards by their lack of eyelids and external ears. Like all squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales...
s in the wild.