Snake

Poisonous Snake

The fangs of pit vipers are long, movable and very prominent.

The legendary king cobra (Ophiophagus hannah), reputedly the world’s largest venomous snake, is one of only 17 poisonous land snake species in Malaysia. These snakes belong to two families, the Viperidae containing eight pit vipers, the only family of snakes in the world with heat-sensing pits for detecting prey in the dark, and the Elapidae, with two cobras, three kraits and four coral snakes.

Information here includes

- Pit vipers
- Cobras, kraits and coral snakes

Nonpoisonous snake

In the most common type of snake movement—serpentine movement—the snake presses its body against the ground, producing both sideways and backwords thrust.

Among the 144 species of nonpoisonous snakes of Malaysia, belonging to six families, are many which play an important role in controlling the rat and snake populations in both forests and cultivated areas.They range from the smallest worm-like blind snakes about 15 centimetres long to the second largest snake in the world, the reticulated python, which can reach 10 metres. Some are very colourful; the coloration of other species blends with their habitat.

Information here includes