Western Keeled Snake
Pythonodipsas carinata Günther, 1868
Also calledSydvestafrikansk Kølsnog (dan) · Westliche gekielte Schlange (deu) · Намибийский килеватый уж (rus)
First described in: Günther, A. Sixth account of new species of snakes in the collection of the British Museum.
The western keeled snake (Pythonodipsas carinata) is a species of snake in the family Pseudaspididae. It is native to western Namibia, southwestern Angola, and southwestern Zambia, and is the only member of the genus Pythonodipsas.
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), quoted section by section
Description
P. carinata is unusual in possessing greatly fragmented head shields, a peculiar maxillary dentition (3rd to 6th largest, posterior-most tooth large and grooved), a reduced number of palatine teeth (including a greatly enlarged "fang"), and hypapophyses developed throughout the vertebral column. It was once thought to be a possible evolutionary intermediate between vipers and non-venomous colubroids, but it is now known not to be closely related to vipers.
What it does
P. carinata eat vertebrates, with lizards comprising 67% of the diet, rodents 25%, birds 4%, and unidentified vertebrate bones 4%. Among lizard prey, geckos (39% of all prey) and skinks (18%) predominated. Both nocturnal (Afroedura, Chondrodactylus, Palmatogecko and Pachydactylus) and diurnal geckos (Rhoptropus and Narudasia) were eaten. All skink prey were Mabuya sp. Mammalian prey were eaten primarily by larger snakes.
In the stacks
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Every page naming Pythonodipsas carinata in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
From the GBIF Backbone Taxonomy and occurrence records (GBIF.org), with Wikipedia and the Source Library. GBIF species 2452957.