Grass snake of Esculape

The grass snake of Esculape ( Elaphe longissima ) is a Serpent Colubridés.

Description

It is a snake of approximately 1,10 m to 1,60 m length (seldom 2 m) to the thin long body and its head is fine and long and its muzzle is round. Its neck is more or less marked. The pupil is round and average and nonprojecting, the scales are smooth and punts except the ventral ones which show an edge on each side. Its scales and its plates are triangular on its face, as broad as long, in direct contact with the supraoculaires; the parietal ones are longer but about as broad as the frontal ones. The slightly projecting rostrale, far from visible of top, broader than high, more or less divided. Large the loréale, as high as long; 1 préoculaire of size virtually identical to the 4th supralabiale; 2 postoculaires and 2+1 temporal; 8 or 9 supralabiales (4 and 5 in contact with the eye) and 9 or 10 infralabiales. Dorsals smooth and glazed, sometimes slightly ducted in the posterior area, on 21 or 23 rows with half-length. Ventral broad and narrow 212 to 248 (frequent anomalies); 60 to 91 urostèges divided. Anal divided they too.

Its back is uniform; dorsal parts brown, grisâtres, yellowish, ocher, brown, greenish. On the side of the neck, broad growing, more or less fuzzy, yellow clearly, bent towards the temporal ones. Labial and rostrale yellow pale, mouchetées supérieurement of brown; 4th supralabiales separated from 5th by a thin dark vertical line; it is found low, but less clear, between 5th and 6th infralabiales. A small bluish white point marks each dorsal subsequently. Clear and dark longitudinal bands appear on the back of certain individuals. Sides and pale yellow belly, plain or slightly mouchetés of brown with dorso-ventral separation. The tail follows the coloring of the trunk: gray, brown iris soft. Rare Melanism, but frequent albinism.

Name and Classification

N.B.: the systematic one of the reptiles and squamates being in full change, classifications suggested can differ according to the sources and the moments.

For example, according to EMBL, the kind S Coluber and Elaphe were cut out in several kinds: Pantherophis , Orthriophis , Oreophis , Oreocryptophis , Euprepiophis , Pseudelaphe , Zamenis . Thus according to certain authors this species would be called Zamenis longissimus Utiger and Al 2002.

Habitat

It is a snake which attends the clear and sunny mediums but flees extreme heat. She lives on the ground but it is a climbing good which one can meet posted in the trees and shrubs from 15 to 30 Mr. He nourishes mainly small mammals (field voles) that he chokes but also oisillons or of lizards. The grass snake of Esculape is not savage and approaches the dwellings, climbs to the balconies without problem. The grass snake of Esculape is nonpoisonous.

Distribution

It meets in Europe in a band which goes from the center of France to Czechoslovakia and the south of Poland, Spain in Greece, and to Turkey until the north of Iran.

General information

Asclépios, the God-doctor of the old Greeks, become Esculape in Rome, carried in its right hand a stick surrounded by a snake; it is thought nowadays that it was about this large grass snake to brilliant delivered. It is also it which one would find around the Caducée of Hermes, nowadays emblem of the doctors and the pharmacists. The Romans venerated Esculape in the terrestrial shape of a long Snake and " blanc" ; they were to raise with this Grass snake questions about the cure of their evils, the answers being given via the priests. Were thus kept in captivity in the temples and even in the houses of Ophidiens alive (which one supposes of the species Elaphe longissima , grass snakes of Montpellier taming down less better), in pits or vases of ground. The Romans invading Gaulle carried with them these potteries and the problem is always posed to know if they are not escaped individuals of the temples which populated various French areas. To note that the form existing in France is the personal one and not the romana . One finds the relation between medicine and Elaphe longissima in the popular Germanic and Celtic traditions, where medical knowledge could be acquired by ingestion of the flesh pulp of a snake " blanc" (Morris).

External bonds

See too

List of the snakes

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