Snakesoftaiwan.com finally online!

Life Pets & Domestic Animals
1

Ladies and gentlefolk,

I’m proud to announce that after six months of gruesome toil, our long-awaited website SNAKES OF TAIWAN has finally gone online.

This website was conceived out of a need for complete, one-stop information on the snakes of Taiwan. Before we created this site, the only comparable resources were a number of field guides in Chinese, most of them outdated. Similar material in English did not exist at all.

With this site we hope to provide exhaustive and current knowledge in both languages: tons of photos and videos from the field, taxonomic descriptions, info on biology, ecology, distribution, etymology, toxicology and more - and if that’s not enough, there are copious links to even more information on the Web.

The site is organized like a field guide, i.e., all species on the main menu are arranged by colors and patterns rather than in alphabetical order. This facilitates quick identification of any snakes you might encounter in the wilds of Taiwan.

Mr. Onionsack and I, the authors of this site, are not professional herpetologists, just two average guys with a strong infatuation for Taiwan’s serpentofauna. We have researched and now present the information on this site to the best of our knowledge and abilities. If you spot any mistakes, errors, blunders, bloopers, typos, or maybe just have a comment or two, or want to link to your site with our banner, we would love to hear from you - please drop me a note!

Thank you very much in advance for your help and your patronage!

Cheers

Hans
PS: The Chinese part is still being translated and will go online in March - we’ll let you know when it’s done :slight_smile:

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Thank you…This is awesome. :notworthy:

3

Great stuff! respect! :bow:

4

Thanks … that has really saved me a lot of time! I had already made a mental note to do research on Taiwan’s snakes before going into the mountains when the weather warmed up.

Edit: How about introducing some sort of categories? I.e. Level of toxicity, region, threat level, etc.

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cool - gonna look once this reply is written

great idea

6

Nice work!

Check your PM box for revised Pinyin for the Mandarin names.

7

This is fantastic. It’s really useful for me as i live in the mountains and often come across snakes and would like to know which ones i should be more careful of.

Do you need more photos? I’m not a great photographer but i can take photos of the snakes i get in my garden and surrounding area and send them to you if they would be useful for you.

Great work.

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Hans,

Nice job on your website!

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Looks good. Thanks for the hard work.

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since Ive had a look now, can I add that a warning triangle tot he poisonous snakes or something on the left margin would be good, since theyre the snakes Im most interested in - or an option to ‘rank by danger’

also good would be how to distinguish the very similar snakes for identification - maybe that would require a new hierarchy and too much work, or could just be done with hyperlinks?

like (at the top of the main page) HELP I saw a snake (click)

main body colour pageselect green/black/brown/striped…

Striped snakes page
Strip combo - select Black and white/brown and tan/…

Black and White Striped Snakes Page
These mainly comprise the sea snakes, such as the coral snake…

The main difference between the snakes is

  1. size about 15-30cm banded coral snake - see more (hyperlink)
  2. bredth of stripes …
11

Very very nice. Congratulations.
In the description of the greater green snake, you might want to add that its the only green snake in Taiwan that has a canary yellow belly. That’s a good identifier.

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Just had a quick peek, but that’s a beautiful and very useful site!

13

Great website.

Now why do I feel I’ve seen at least 1/3 of those snakes in my garden at one time or another? That gives me the creeps!

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TwoTon, Excellent site, well done to you, impressed.

About 5 years back when out biking in mountain areas I’m pretty sure on average I would see at least one snake per trip - but weirdly for past 2 years I haven’t seen a single live snake in similar mountain areas in Taiwan. Anyone else noticed a decline ?

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Absolutely superb, twoton!!!

[quote]
About 5 years back when out biking in mountain areas I’m pretty sure on average I would see at least one snake per trip - but weirdly for past 2 years I haven’t seen a single live snake in similar mountain areas in Taiwan. Anyone else noticed a decline ?[/quote]

Actually, I think my snake sightings are about the same. I even ran over a banded Krait in my car the other day down south (by accident of course) and had to put it out of its misery. Even in the south, they are difficult to come across in the winter. They were also out late last year, as I saw one in the mountains near one of the forts near Keelung on the run up to Christmas.

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They’ll be out and about in a week or two as the weather warms up. Mind your feet! Tons and tons of frogspawn up my hill, which means the snakes won’t be far behind.

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Barring an onslaught of irregularly warm nights (days don’t really count), I don’t reckon so. Thee will be hardly anything of value before the end of March - if then. We’ll have warm days, yes, but the nights are too cold. Nothing but winter-hardy snakes will be out (habus, bamboo vipers, slug snakes) I found my first krait last year in mid-April! I’ll buy anyone a large beer who’ll photograph a cobra in the open before April 1 north of the Northern Cross-Island Highway. Gauntlet thrown!

BTW:

The bamboo viper has a yellow belly…

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It does? I thought it had a white belly. The ones I’ve found all have, at least, while all the green snakes have had bright yellow. I guess there’s a lot of colour variation.
“In a week or two” means “quite soon” in English. Which means before the end of May. :wink:
Anyway, I’ve been going up that hill every day for about several years now, and in my experience, once the frogspawn is laid, the snakes aren’t far behind.
The photos you’ve got are absolutely the best I’ve seen on the subject, by the way. That python – is that found in Taiwan?

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In German, we call that “spitting in an old man’s beard while telling him it’s snowing” :slight_smile:

Thank you. The really good ones (the ones with the names on them) aren’t mine, of course :slight_smile:

Only in Kinmen.

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Great Site!

Cobras aren’t extinct in Taiwan? I’m kind of happy and shocked.