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Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
Friend who is an Air Force environmental person told me that the Air Force does thorough and extensive inspections of any airplane which might have encountered a brown tree snake. Occasionally they find one.
Its funny that he didn’t know if the snake was poisonous or not. My understanding is that all snakes in Australia are poisonous. Anyone know if that’s true?
Not all of them no. Now, we’ve got poisonous mammals, poisonous cephalopods, venomous spiders (of course) and poisonous drop bears (extremely deadly), and most of the world’s most venomous snakes. However, it’s simply not the case that all of our snakes are poisonous.
Now, in this case, it wasn’t a native species, so I don’t think the pilot can be blamed for not recognising it.
Australia is the only continent with a majority of snake species being poisonous, but they have a good many non-poisonous species too. Notably pythons.
Has it been established that the snake in the plane was a brown tree snake? The news report I heard on the radio indicated the snake had disappeared in the plane and no one knew what it was. Has it since been found?
Last I heard it was a golden something-or-other. The experts recognised it from the pilot’s description of how thin it was.
And no, they hadn’t found it by last night. They reckon when it gets hungry it will find its own way out of the equipment.
And, Joel, that comment about the drop bears wasn’t fair.
You’re not supposed to spoil the fun for schoolkids visiting the USA. My kids had great fun agreeing with poor little US innocents that they rode kangaroos to school and warning everyone about avoiding attacks from drop bears.
Thanks, Adelady. Found it: Golden Tree Snake.
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/324613/20120405/golden-tree-snake-pilot-makes-emergency-landing.htm
Still seems like the ID would be more certain if they could get their hands on the thing.
I’m reminded of a moment in a Terry Pratchett novel when a character asked for a list of all of the dangerous creatures in the Australia-equivalent of the world setting (Fourecks, Discworld, of course)
After being buried under dozens of volumes, the character asks for a list of the NON-venomous creatures of Fourecks and the entire list consists of “Some of the sheep”
Every Australian I’ve met agrees with this scenario…