Sea snake

“ Sea-snakes shed their skin frequently; but it peels off in pieces as in lizards, and not as in the freshwater snakes, in which the integuments come off entire. Several species are remarkable for the extremely slender and prolonged anterior part of the body, and very small head. The eye is small, with round pupil, which is so much contracted by the light when the snake is taken out of the water that the animal becomes blinded and is unable to hit any object it attempts to strike. ”

“ The natives of the Paumotu Archipelago informed me, however, that they are most active in seeking their prey at night-time, and are especially fond of flying-fish, which, as is well known, is one of the swiftest of all ocean fishes. The sea snakes, however, seize them with the greatest ease, by rising cautiously beneath and fastening their keen teeth in the fish’s throat or belly. A snake, not two feet six inches in length, I was assured, can easily swallow a flying-fish eight inches or ten inches long. ”

“ As I watched, I saw the long snake-like body emerge from the water, and the estimate I had made of the size in the afternoon seemed pitifully inadequate. Presently a second and a third snake arose from the water, and then more, until the whole sea and the air above it seemed a writhing mass of huge snakes. I remember wondering why the watch of the Coast Guard cutter didn’t sound an alarm, and then I realized that the thing had arisen on our port side and the cutter was on the starboard. ”

“ He hath commonly hair hanging from his neck a cubit long, and sharp scales, and is black, and he hath flaming, shining eyes. This snake disquiets the shippers; and he puts up his head on high like a pillar, and catcheth away men, and he devours them ”

“ In tropical waters a sea snake is found, which, though very poisonous, rarely bites. Among the inoffensive species are counted the graceful green “tree snake,” which pursues frogs, birds and lizards to the topmost branches of the forest; also several species of pythons, the commonest of which is known as the carpet snake. These great reptiles may attain a length of 10 ft.; they feed on small animals which they crush to death in their folds.
The Australian seas are inhabited by many fishes of the same genera as exist in the southern parts of Asia and Africa. ”

“ The food of sea-snakes consists entirely of small fish; among them species with very strong spines. As all these animals are killed by the poison of the snake before they are swallowed, and as their muscles are perfectly relaxed, their armature is harmless to the snake, which begins to swallow its prey from the head, and depresses the spines as deglutition proceeds. Sea-snakes belong to the most poisonous species of the whole order. Accidents are rarely caused by them, because they are extremely shy and swim away on the least alarm ”

“ This it eventually dropped, and I found it to be some species of sea-snake new to me, about 5 ft. 6 in. in length and 3 in. in diameter, still alive. I am sorry to say this noble bird will kill lambs and weakly ewes; I have caught it in the act. The same day, after some careful stalking, I shot a wader new to me. It appears to me to resemble a Purple Sandpiper, but it is many years since I last saw this bird in Iceland, when the Rev. H.H. Slater secured a specimen, and we took a nest of eggs on snow-covered mountains. Gould's handbook does not mention this bird, so I am in doubt. ”

“ One more singular example of periodical repose, but which can scarcely be called either hibernation or estivation, is seen in the sea snakes, the Hydrophidæ of the Eastern Ocean. Of these Dr. Cantor affirms that they are seen so soundly asleep on the surface of the water, that a ship passing among them does not awaken them. This is the more remarkable because the eyes of sea snakes are organized to endure the glare of light only when modified or subdued through water, and are easily affected when out of it, the reptiles becoming dazzled, and even blinded, by bright sunshine. ”

“ Throughout the entire sea snake area in the Pacific there are only five or six instances reported where the serpents have bitten humans. In every case the victim has died; there is no anti-venom against the sea snake toxin. ”

“ HEAD AND TAIL OF SEA SNAKES. The nostrils are closed by a scale, and, as well as the eyes, are so situated as to have a vertical aspect; the pupils are circular, indicating diurnal activity; the ventral plates, formed of two united scales, are narrow, and occupy only the central line of the belly instead of its whole breadth; there are no spurs, nor any vestiges of limbs.
These Marine Snakes are highly venomous, though their teeth display a structure somewhat differing from that of the fangs of the Viperadæ. ”

“ On the 6th of July, 1734, there appeared a very large and frightful sea monster, which raised itself so high out of the water that its head reached above our main-top. It had a long, sharp snout, and spouted water like a whale; and very broad flappers. The body seemed to be covered with scales, and the skin was uneven and wrinkled, and the lower part was formed like a snake. After some time the creature plunged backwards into the water, and then turned its tail up above the surface, a whole ship-length from the head. ”

“ Total length, 250 millimetres; tail 20.
Habitat: Desert regions of Southern California, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah.
F.—HYDROPHIINÆ (SEA-SNAKES) .
The Sea-Snakes, which are found in great numbers on the shores of the Indian Ocean, are common throughout the whole of the tropical zone of the China Sea and the Pacific. They are met with from the Persian Gulf to the west coast of Equatorial America, but are entirely absent from the east coast of the same continent and the west and east coasts of Africa.
They often travel in companies. All are poisonous, and very savage. ”

“ He further remarks that it is difficult to procure Sea-Snakes, for though often caught in nets, they are held in such dread by the native fishermen, that the offer of almost any inducement will scarcely procure them. ”

“ The usual habitat of sea snakes, he said, were the tropical seas generally, but some had been captured in the comparatively cold waters of the New Zealand coast, at the Catlins River. These latter were all yellow-banded; those from the islands of the Fijian Oroup were black-banded, and those taken from the Australian coast grey-banded. There were, he said, no fewer than seventy species, which, without exception, were fanged and provided with glands secreting a virulent poison. ”

“ The most common with us were the brown, black, and whip snakes, and the death-adder, all poisonous; and the carpet-snake, harmless. The brown and black snakes run from two to eight feet in length, frequent the long grass, chiefly in the neighbourhood of swamps, and from the snug way in which they coil up, and their disinclination to move, are highly dangerous. The latter is very handsome, the back of a brilliant black, and the under portion of a sea-shell pink. Their skin is sometimes used by bushmen as a cover to their waistbelts, which are much beautified thereby. ”

“ Whether the sea contains any creature at all answering to the popular idea of a 'sea-serpent'—that ophidian monster which is annually reported to have been interviewed by various crews and persons—is a problem which will only be solved by the actual capture of one of those visitors. There are, as will presently be pointed out, certain well-known true sea-snakes, the Hydrophidæ of the Indian Ocean, which swim by means of their compressed fin-like tails ”

“ In some of the mountainous islands of the South Pacific, such as Samoa, Fiji, &c, there were several species of land snakes, all of which were perfectly harmless, and were familiar to many people in Australia and New Zealand, through being brought there in bunches of island bananas—it was singular, he thought, that the sea snakes alone should be so highly venomous. ”

“ All snakes are able to swim, and the more aquatic kinds may spend a few hours under the water. A Python molurus is known to have remained alive in a basket sunk for thirty-six hours in a river. The best adapted for aquatic life are the Hydrophiinae, or Sea- snakes, most of which never leave the water, and are quite helpless and soon die when brought on shore ”

“ The sea-serpents mentioned by Aristotle, Pliny, and Diodorus were, doubtless, real sea-snakes, true marine ophidians, which are more common in tropical seas than is generally supposed. They are found most abundantly in the Indian Ocean; but they have an extensive geographical range, and between forty and fifty species of them are known. They are all highly poisonous, and some are so ferocious that they more frequently attack than avoid man. [Pg 54] The greatest length to which they are authentically known to attain is about twelve feet. ”

“ Furthermore, he supplied me with the following observations based on his field work along the coast of Michoacán from the Río Coahuayana to Maruata from March 1, to April 15, 1956. At that time many sea snakes were observed; in some places living and dead individuals were seen on the beaches; innumerable snakes were seen in the surf. When live individuals were taken from the beach and thrown into the ocean, they usually swam to shore. Many partially eaten individuals were seen protruding from crab holes. ”

“ Some of the water-snakes are very beautifully marked with blue, gold, or green bars on a velvety black ground; they glide and coil themselves in and out of the coral branches. I was much struck by the immense size of some sea-anemones, as large as a wash-hand basin: these also, are of all sorts of colours. These are the chosen play-fellows of most exquisite tiny fish, like morsels of black velvet, with a pattern exactly like a fairy peacock's feather on either gill. ”

“ Most of them are beautifully marked and spotted, and some shine like gold in the sun, while others have pale, soft tints; but these lovely colours fade in death, just as those of fish do; so that a snake in all its glittering beauty can only be seen when alive. They often change their skins, creeping out of the old and appearing ready-dressed in the new. A traveller along the banks of the Nile has often found these cast-off skins in the fields; they are always turned inside out, for the old skin, which is very soft, folds back as the snake slips out of it. ”

“ But if, again, you met, as you may meet in the tropics, a lovely little coral snake, braided with red and white, its mouth so small that it seems impossible that it can bite, and so gentle that children may take it up and play with it, then you might be tempted, as many a poor child has been ere now, to admire it, fondle it, wreathe it round the neck for a necklace, or round the arm for a bracelet, till the play goes one step too far, the snake loses its temper, gives one tiny scratch upon the lip or finger, and that scratch is certain death. ”

“ From the fish let us turn to the snake, a gliding creature without limbs and without joints. It is much like one of the fishes, the eel, in shape, but not in anything else, while no other animal is so much feared and hated by man. We hate this creeping reptile from the fact that a few species [290] of snakes carry a deadly poison in their teeth, and the strongest of men, bitten by one of these, has often only a few minutes to live. ”

“ The insect is half an inch in length; its bite is severe, but not very venomous. We could only make good our landing at one spot, covered with long, coarse grass, which the natives [pg 83] twist into ropes for the rigging of their canoes, and the finest of it they clean, stain with different colours, and fabricate into hammocks, which are made like a net with large meshes.
I had strolled from the boat with one of the men, when he called out, “There goes a large water-snake! Take care, sir!” It came close to me, when I made a stroke at it with my hanger. ”

“ But they appear to be never at a loss. On a boarded room, or even a marble floor, they will manage progression of some sort,—many by the pressure of the tail to push themselves forward, and others with an action that can be compared only with swimming. With the same rapid, undulating motion as swimming, the active snakes skim through the grass, or over soft herbage, on which they seem to make no impression. Their swift sinuations are almost invisible to the eye. You only know that a snake was there, and now has vanished. ”

“ Of the Swamp-Snakes there are three sorts, which are very near akin to the Water-Snakes, and may be rank'd amongst them.
The Belly of the first is of a Carnation or Pink Colour; his Back a dirty brown; they are large, but have not much Venom in them, as ever I learnt. The next is a large Snake, of a brown Dirt Colour, and always abides in the Marshes.
The last is mottled, and very poisonous. They dwell in Swamps Sides, and Ponds, and have prodigious wide Mouths, and (though not long) arrive to the Thickness of the Calf of a Man's Leg. ”

“ But I had on stout shoes, and the fangs of these serpents—unlike those of the pit-vipers—are too short to penetrate good leather. I promptly put my foot on him, and he bit my shoe with harmless venom. It has been said that the brilliant hues of the coral-snake when in its native haunts really confer on it a concealing coloration. In the dark and tangled woods, and to an only less extent in the ordinary varied landscape, anything motionless, especially if partially hidden, easily eludes the eye. ”

“ It appears to me more than probable that many marine animals, unknown to science, and some of them of gigantic size, may have their ordinary habitat in the great depths of the sea, and only occasionally come to the surface; and I think it not impossible that amongst them may be marine snakes of greater dimensions than we are aware of, and even a creature having close affinities with the old sea-reptiles whose fossil skeletons tell of their magnitude and abundance in past ages.
It is most desirable that every supposed appearance of the "Great Sea-serpent" shall be faithfully noted and described ”