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Australian Wildlife

  Northern Tree Snake (Dendrelaphis calligastra)





Northern Tree Snake | Dendrelaphis calligastra photo
Northern Tree Snake near Cooktown, Queensland.

Image by John Hill - Some rights reserved.    (view image details)

Northern Tree Snake | Dendrelaphis calligastra photo
Northern Tree Snake showing distinctive stripe through eye

Image by John Hill - Some rights reserved.    (view image details)







NORTHERN TREE SNAKE FACTS

Description
Dendrelaphis calligastra is a colubrid snake native to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Australia] It is a slender, large-eyed, nonvenomous, diurnal snake, which grows up to 1.2 m in length and is greenish, brown, or greyish above with a cream or yellow belly. This common snake is harmless, and readily recognised due to its cream to yellow belly and pronounced wide dark facial stripe passing across the eye.

Other Names
Green Tree Snake, Northern Green Tree Snake

Size
1.2m

Habitat
rainforest, urban and farmed regions, and open forest. They often bask in the leaf canopy of small bushes and trees and can escape very quickly through the canopy.

Food
They eat frogs and reptiles.

Breeding
The northern tree snake lays eggs in clutches from five to seven, with one female recorded as laying 11 eggs in January

Range
Northern tree snakes are found in tropical north Queensland, from Paluma to Cooktown and eastern Cape York Peninsula, as well as southern Papua New Guinea.

distribution map showing range of Dendrelaphis calligastra in Australia

Credits:
Map is from Atlas of Living Australia website at https://biocache.ala.org.au licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.



Classification
Class:Reptilia
Order:Squamata (Serpentes)
Family:Colubridae
Genus:Dendrelaphis
Species:calligastra
Common Name:Northern Tree Snake

Relatives in same Genus
  Green Tree Snake (D. punctulata)