00:00One of the most common questions that I get asked in my line of business is, can you identify
00:06a snake from its skin?
00:08All reptiles shed their skin, in fact even crops, turtles and lizards do, and the reason
00:13why is because their skin doesn't grow with them, so they need a new skin probably two
00:17to four times every year for the rest of their life.
00:20When snakes shed, everything comes off, in fact they even have a transparent scale on
00:25their eye that comes off as well.
00:28I always find it really interesting that we humans have something in common with reptiles.
00:32Our hair and nails are made out of the same material as their scales, keratin, well my
00:38nails aren't because they're fake.
00:39So the question still remains, can we identify a snake by its skin?
00:44Well there is a method that we can use to narrow it down, it's called scale counting.
00:49If you find a skin like this, you want to look at the widest part of the mid-body where
00:53its belly is.
00:54I've got a skin here from my pet carpet python Jezebel, and you can see quite clearly she's
00:59got lots and lots of back scales.
01:02So what you want to do is you count the scales going across like this, and if you find that
01:06there's more than 31 scales, you've got a python.
01:09In fact I'll show you the difference, because I've got here a red belly skin, as you can
01:13see it's not black at all, and I've got a python skin.
01:16So when you're looking at the belly scales, the red belly's got a really, really wide
01:20one, and the python's got very small ones, which explains why they have much, much less
01:25scales on their back.
01:26In fact a red belly will only have about 17 scales.
01:30Having said that, tree snakes also only have 15 scales, so it won't tell you if it's a
01:34venomous snake or not, but at least you can determine if you've got a python on your property.
01:40And if you do, leave them be.
Comments