Yeah… same experience here. Many DOR, not so many alive. I wonder if people drive over them on purpose, confusing them with green vipers or just out of repulsion.
Something I’ve been observing these years is that the “main population” of snakes in an area changes from yea to year, meaning that while year X you mainly find kraits, the next year you mainly find habus (just an example). Quite weird. I shared this with some herpetologists years ago and they said that yeah, it’s something possible to happen. I wonder if these snakes are very territorial as in kicking other snakes out from their zone of operations or even if they eat each other. I’ve seen (and taken pictures) of cobras trying to eat coral snakes (the last laugh was from the coral snakes, making their way out through the contender’s neck), but not sure about vipers VS kraits.
Yes, that has been my experience with people…thats why im joking about it. You do see a lot of boiga dor as well, maybe its also an intelligence thing? I have never kept and observed behaviours of either species so couldnt say.
Population spikes ar n ormal, for most species. Itvwould be quite odd if it were snake.on snake crime. Thats almost certainly bullshit. What is far more likely is the circle of life. As an example, if w have 2 years of drought and massive chemical bombardment by humans, frog populations will likely fall and frog eatin species of snakes will probably suffer in 2 to 5 years down the road. This is very normal, and probably quite predictable most of the time if there are people really monitoring the situation. The other likely issue is with say low rainfall and low aquatic life, the food chain is stymiedd quite alot. This makes things like birds, small/medium mammals etc also go after snakes more due to desperation. All this is pretty standard. Everything is hungry, and that is often what dictates population densities along with habitat availability. Humans included.
Not sure how that would explain that year 1 I find mainly habus, and year 2 they’re gone but I see lots of kraits. I guess that there are many factors and they move around and all, but I would have expected these things to be more stable. Frogs are always there, lots of them.
Its true kraits eat snakes. They are part of the food chain. I just mean that i highly doubt they are THE cause, and probably many causes…including just the fact what we find doesnt actually represent a real population. kraits are uusally very common island wide, every year.
But there are litteraly hundreds of trillions of variables that can lead to one species’ abundance or scarcity. It seems unlikely its just a bumper year for kraits that made you find less habus.
Yeah, I know. It’s just that I feel that these “mass substitutions” of one species with another should have some explanation, even if it’s multifactor. And that one (temporarily) “disappearing” has to be related with another’s predominance.
I agree. But i also think its impossible you, or I, actually have a full tally of the real population to begin with…i mean, the logistics of actually getting a reliable population count is insanely difficult with most species. Perhaps trees are easy, but small animals are next to impossible.
Perhaps a good way of looking at something is this. Break down how many square cm of surface areas there are in forest. Be it ground, cracks, hokes, caavees, trees an plants etc. Even if you just choose anything with space 2cm plus only. there are likely a few trillion square cm surface every couple.metersmeters. then claclulate how many square cm your eyes viewed.
Then extrapolate that for the time you spent looking aat that spot and comparebit to a 24 hiur, or 1 month or whatever time scale. Then claculate that against expected occurance of said animal, with its surface area, and its expected frequency and range. then account for expected population density. Te odds become way way low. Of course we can pick and choose spots to look. For example.roadways where snakes get trapped tend.to be hotspots for herpers,t hough hey dont represent actual natural population densities due to them accumulating via transit in certain areas due to obstacles, in this case man made ones.
Pppulattions rise and f.all, naturally they have to unless thye have farming (food production) techniques… like ants an people. But also trillions of variables may dictate occurances of ppulations that are acually stable. such as rain, cold, heat etc. I have no doubt that some snakes have very minor migration patterns based on such triggers and they move accordingly. of course not.like canada for hibernation, but taiwan.does have weather patterns that i would assume could move snake densities either high, lower, into valleys, out of valleys etc.
The only real threat to populations i can think of really is just humans. Especially for species that are either disliked and/or valuable. Then some species which are both disliked and.valuablesseem to breed so much thy are the most common thing around…eg cobras.
You should blame yourself based on quantum theories that you wished too hard and you ended up killing an entuire dimension of future cat snake realms.
Just kidduing. That is a sad find, id bet some babies inside too move onto the descending side of the road and take peace in knowing you averted possible other deaths feeding off this carcass.
RIP
Edit. Sorry. I changed my mind after looking at your full body pic. That looks much more like a compaction. A monster shit, if you will. Doubt thats pregnant. Perhaps someone else can confirm, but it surely looks like an anal issue more than a pregnant snake.
Althoigh…damnb i keep looking, it was nearly about to pass them, which would explain the consistency in lump size and location…maybe it was about to pop. That seems quite likely as well.
Maybe if @onionsack were around he would confirm on whether that’s pregnancy or constipation…
You see? I’m not believing those interpretations of reality. Recently I had a discussion with a couple of friends (well, same discussion but separately) and apparently I’m at fault of they believing esoteric things I wouldn’t because many years ago (I didn’t even remember) I talked to one of them about this:
Anyway, when I laid that snake down on the side of the road I was really hoping insects would feast on it to the bones and then the little babies would be unleashed and would take revenge against the unfair World that took their mom away!!!
In other news, I think I saw my first Taiwan whatever water snake(s) the other day in a river in the mountain. Problem is… I can’t ID them. there was one “small”, and another one like 3/2 larger:
I thought they could even be Chinese mountain snakes but they were too comfortable swimming from here to there AND staying underwater for “long” periods of time.
move onto the descending side of the road and take peace in knowing you averted possible other deaths feeding off this carcass.
