Watch: Juvenile Western Whip Snake Captured In Rare Hunting Stance In Malta
Local activist and ranger Cami Appelgren captured a pretty cool video of a western whip snake hunting in a Maltese nature reserve.
In the footage, the juvenile snake can be seen in a hunting stance which is quite rare.
“The hunting behaviour seen is rarely captured since the snake wouldn’t do this when it’s aware of anyone nearby. I was very well hidden and used a camcorder with 90x optical zoom,” Cami wrote on social media.
Lovin Malta spoke with Ellie Dobbs, who is currently doing extensive research on snakes on the Maltese islands, to hear more about the western whip species.
“The western whip snake is one of Malta’s native species, known as serp iswed in Maltese and Hierophis viridiflavus in Latin, with the other being the lifgħa, known as the leopard snake in English,” Ellie explained.
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“The western whip snake is also the largest of the four resident snake species. Interestingly it’s actually black and yellow in the rest of its native range in mainland Europe but in Malta and parts of southern Sicily, it’s all black once it matures,” she said.
Due to this, the juvenile western whip snakes are actually often mistaken for being leopard snakes.
“They’re a very generalist species which basically means they can survive pretty much anywhere and eat anything they can,” she continued.
Western whip snakes are also known to eat other snakes but researchers are still unsure as to how much this happens in Malta.
“They can grow up to two metres but I doubt we have ever had one that big in Malta – I’d say they usually get to max a metre and a half maybe slightly bigger but rarely.”
“The one seen in this video was quite a largely immature specimen, the immaturity is determined by its colouration as it hadn’t turned black yet so it was not a mature adult specimen yet. However, Cami said it was over a metre which is large for an immature specimen, it may be that it would darken on its next shed,” Ellie said.
“The Westerns do seem to like water and if there are frogs on site the specimen may have been on the hunt for those. They also like eating wall lizards and skinks and the juveniles have a habit of biting off more than they can chew.”
Have you ever spotted a wild snake in Malta?
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