Animal Diversity Web

Ge­o­graphic Range

The Javan wart snake is found on the coastal re­gions of India and Cey­lon, and also across the Indo-Aus­tralian is­lands as far as the Solomons. It orig­i­nated in India.

• Biogeographic Regions
• oriental
  • native
• australian
  • native

Habi­tat

The Javan wart snake lives in the brack­ish zone of rivers, streams, and es­tu­ar­ies, and it some­times swims short dis­tances into the sea. It is also found near washed out banks.

• Aquatic Biomes
• lakes and ponds
• rivers and streams
• coastal

Phys­i­cal De­scrip­tion

The Javan wart snake has a mus­cu­lar body and the male grows up to a length of five feet. The fe­male is usu­ally big­ger and more pow­er­fully built, with a length of up to eight feet. The top side of the snake's body is brown in color, and its sides and belly are pale yel­low. The skin of the Javan wart snake is loose and baggy, with small rough scales. The scales are formed ad­ja­cent to each other and they do not over­lap. On each scale, there is a sharp tri­an­gu­lar ridge. The ven­tral scales of this snake are of the same size and shape as the other scales, un­like other types of snakes that often have en­larged ven­tral scales.

The shape of the snake's snouted head is flat and broad, with nos­trils lo­cated at the top side of its head, giv­ing this snake a boa-like ap­pear­ance, al­though the width of the snake's trunk is iden­ti­cal to its head. The snake also has a short and mo­bile tail.

• Range mass

  3 to 10 kg

  6.61 to 22.03 lb

Re­pro­duc­tion

The Javan wart snake bears live young, about 20 to 30 off­spring at one time. It has am­ni­otic eggs, which are re­tained in the oviducts of the snake and are fer­til­ized in­ter­nally. The young snakes are semi-ter­res­trial, until their baggy skin is fully de­vel­oped. This is be­cause the baggy skin re­stricts them from mov­ing ef­fi­ciently on land. Be­sides a dif­fer­ence in size, the young can also be dis­tin­guished by the ir­reg­u­lar, lon­gi­tu­di­nal blotches on their skin. These blotches fade over time, and even­tu­ally dis­ap­pear when the adult stage is reached.

Lifes­pan/Longevity

• Average lifespan
  Status: captivity

  4.1 years

  Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

• Average lifespan
  Status: captivity

  5.8 years

  Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

Be­hav­ior

The Javan wart snake usu­ally hides in the day­time and be­comes ac­tive at night. Some­times it will for­age both dur­ing the day and at night. The snake cap­tures its prey by fold­ing its body around it, using its pre­hen­sile tail and the sharp scales to en­sure a firm grip. The Javan wart snake rarely comes onto land. Their baggy skin is de­vel­oped for agility under water and re­stricts them from trav­el­ing ef­fi­ciently on land. Most of the time, the snake stays under the water sur­face, and it can do so for up to 40 min­utes con­ti­nously. When it need to breathe, the snake floats to the water sur­face and po­si­tion its nos­trils above water for 15 to 20 sec­onds.

Food Habits

The Javan wart snake is a car­ni­vore. It feeds pri­mar­ily on fish and other aquatic an­i­mals, but will some­times feed on frogs. An in­ter­est­ing fact about this snake is that it does not bulge after feed­ing like other snakes do. Its body re­mains slack all the time be­cause its skin is so loose and baggy.

Eco­nomic Im­por­tance for Hu­mans: Pos­i­tive

Their skin can be processed for man­u­fac­tur­ing leather goods.

Eco­nomic Im­por­tance for Hu­mans: Neg­a­tive

They are eas­ily ag­gra­vated. Al­though they are not ven­omous, their re­curved teeth break off eas­ily and are left in­side one's flesh if a per­son is being bit­ten, thus cre­at­ing un­pleas­ant wounds.

• Negative Impacts
• injures humans
  • bites or stings

Con­ser­va­tion Sta­tus

The Javan wart snake is be­com­ing in­creas­ingly rare. This is in­di­cated by the fact that they are now sel­dom of­fered for sale. One rea­son for their scarcity is that they have been cap­tured in large num­bers be­cause their skin is used for mak­ing leather goods. The other rea­son is that an ef­fec­tive and suc­cess­ful method of breed­ing is still not avail­i­able yet.

• IUCN Red List

  Least Concern
  More information

Con­trib­u­tors

Ken­neth Chiu (au­thor), Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan-Ann Arbor.

Ref­er­ences

Bern­hard, Grz­imek. 1975. Grz­imek's An­i­mal Life En­cy­clo­pe­dia Vol 6. Von Nos­trand Rein­hold Ltd, New York.

Wal­ter, J. Bock. 1982. Syn­op­sis and Clas­si­fi­ca­tion of Liv­ing Or­gan­isms Vol 2: Chor­data. Mc­graw Hill Inc, New York.

Peter, Braza­itif. Myrna, E. Watan­abe. 1992. Snakes of the World. Michael Fried­man Pub­lish­ing Group Inc, New York.

Lud­wig, Trut­nan. 1986. Non Ven­omous Snakes. Bar­rons' Ed­u­ca­tional Se­ries Inc, New York.