DAW, Day 1: The Red-bellied Black Snake

Author(s)

Jen Cork
Category

At the Museum
Published

17 September 2011
Read time

2 minutes

DAW? Dangerous Animals Week, of course! To celebrate our new Dangeroz app we're featuring an Aussie creature each day...

DangerOz will be available to download from the App Store on Tuesday, 20th September

Like its name suggests, the Red-bellied Black Snake has a red underbelly and a black back. It enjoys feasting on small mammals and frogs and is one of the larger snake species found in Australia.

Being so distinctive in appearance the snake also features in a number of Indigenous Australian Dreamtime stories, such as “The Moon” & “How the Waratah became red”.

It's quite well known thanks to its distribution along the East Coast, particularly in the Sydney basin area. Coming across the Redbelly is much more likely than say the Tiger Snake, but the Redbelly is a much less aggressive species.

On a personal note, as a child I had a run-in with one of these snakes. Coming home from school, my sister and I were confronted by the sight of one. Its long black body could be seen protruding from behind our garden wall. A hint of red from underneath the snake was also visible.

Lucky for us, we lived in the west of Sydney and a number of our friends were trained snake handerls (Wires Volunteers, can also be contacted). The snake handler came, removed it from the wall and placed it back in the bush away from the house.

So when out and about, remember: be alert not alarmed.

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