Report from Singapore
Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2015 4:57 pm
Hi Folk,
I wanted to share with you my herping time when I stayed in Singapore (2014-2015). Despite the fact that the city is highly developed and populated, many green areas subsist (parks, gardens, patches of secondary to degraded primary forest and even mangroves). I think I will keep posting in the topic for the next few weeks to cover these different habitats and the associated reptiles or amphibians found.
As a snake enthusiast, I must in first place introduce to you some of the inhabitants of the mangroves found after the sundown. Interestingly they belong mainly to the homalopsid. A family of rear-fanged snakes found in aquatic environment from Pakistan to Australia.
The most commonly spotted in the Singaporean mangroves was the dog-faced water snakes (Cerberus schneiderii), hunting mainly on fishes and usually found in water and small ponds.
I was lucky enough to find few crab-eating homalopsids: the crab-eating water snake (Fordonia leucobalia) and the rare Gerard’s water snake (Gerarda prevostiana). Both eat crabs, but it was demonstrated that Gerard’s water snake hunt mostly freshly moulted crabs (= soft shell). In other hand, the crab-eating water snake attack mostly hard shell crabs. And believe me… crabs in the mangroves are really an abundant prey items…
Hope you enjoyed the post!!
Cheers
Guillaume
I wanted to share with you my herping time when I stayed in Singapore (2014-2015). Despite the fact that the city is highly developed and populated, many green areas subsist (parks, gardens, patches of secondary to degraded primary forest and even mangroves). I think I will keep posting in the topic for the next few weeks to cover these different habitats and the associated reptiles or amphibians found.
As a snake enthusiast, I must in first place introduce to you some of the inhabitants of the mangroves found after the sundown. Interestingly they belong mainly to the homalopsid. A family of rear-fanged snakes found in aquatic environment from Pakistan to Australia.
The most commonly spotted in the Singaporean mangroves was the dog-faced water snakes (Cerberus schneiderii), hunting mainly on fishes and usually found in water and small ponds.
I was lucky enough to find few crab-eating homalopsids: the crab-eating water snake (Fordonia leucobalia) and the rare Gerard’s water snake (Gerarda prevostiana). Both eat crabs, but it was demonstrated that Gerard’s water snake hunt mostly freshly moulted crabs (= soft shell). In other hand, the crab-eating water snake attack mostly hard shell crabs. And believe me… crabs in the mangroves are really an abundant prey items…
Hope you enjoyed the post!!
Cheers
Guillaume