Large Eastern brown snake - DOR Cassilis 20/09/2024

It was a perfect Friday afternoon, 20th September 2024.  I had just entered the upper Hunter valley, it was a perfect bluebird sky, 28 degrees C, the 4WD was on cruise control and the traffic was nearly non-existent.  Tex Perkins and the cruel sea were mumbling on about a black stick, and I was in bliss - heading for home after a fortnight working in the dust and flies of a remote mining town.  I noticed a very solid elapid on the road verge, and hoped it would still be there when I turned the vehicle around . . .   

I guess you should be careful what you wish for - because unfortunately he was still there - dead as a doornail - right on the side line of the road.  

Notice the head is fairly similar to the size of the neck? It's been run-over by a car, so it's a little deformed, and this is a large, quite old adult specimen. If it was a smaller snake, it's head would be a lot more "delicately-built".

In life, if this snake was really defensive (and it doesn't take much to make an Eastern brown snake VERY defensive), it would flatten it's neck out quite a lot - which gives rise to the name of it's genus - "Pseudonaja".  By the way, "Naja" is the genus for cobras - hence it is quite well described as a "pseudo-cobra".  Pretty good description, because its hood looks a little like a cobra when it's really, really annoyed, except our Brown snakes are about 1,000 times faster, more deadly and vastly more agile than a cobra.      

       

Here's what the ventral surface looks like - the yellow belly with orange spots is fairly characteristic of Eastern brown snakes.  

Final point - the red flesh protruding from the snakes' anus above is not intestine - they are hemipenes - yes - male snakes have two penises.  Lizards do too.  If you zoom in on the hemipene on the top, you can clearly see the barbs and spikes on his manhood - similar to a domestic tom-cats'. 

So in closing, this was a very large, very old male Eastern brown snake.  A wild guess, he would have been around 20 years of age, and a real survivor.  Such a sad way for a magnificent animal to end his days.