Skip to main content

Hatching Snakes

Chanced upon these Black House Snakes hatching from the eggs. In late January 2014 in Moglaa of the Savelugu-Nanton district of the Northern Region of Ghana.

Black house snakes are one of two common house snakes in Ghana in the Genus Lamprophis. Members of this Genus are harmless with no fangs. They normally visit homes to feed on mice.



Fig 1

To chance upon a hatching clutch of snake eggs in the wild is not an everyday occurrence. I am happy to have chanced upon this.

Hatching snakes have an egg tooth with which they use to pierce the egg to come out. This tooth is lost in their first moulting (shedding of skin).

Black house snake (Lamprophis fuliginosus)
This was chanced upon when i was doing my IDEAWILD EQUIPMENT sponsored field survey. Thanks to IDEAWILD, i got field equipments to carry out this survey


Fig 2

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Egg-eating Snakes

Are harmless, non venomous snakes that feed on only eggs. They are specialised egg-eaters. They swallow eggs wholly, spines in the neck break the eggs, the content is swallowed and the shell spat out. From old text, Ghana supposedly has about four egg-eating snake species. I have confirmed three so far. Two shown here from the Northern savannah part of Ghana and one from the Atewa forest (picture later).  The D. Gansi appears to be the most commonest as i have handled over 30 so far within a 10 year period and only two of the D. scabra and only one of the D. fasciata ? (from the forest) For more details on egg-eaters click here Rhombic egg eater ( Dasypeltis scabra ) Gan's egg eater ( Dasypeltis gansi )
Post a Comment
Read more

Monitors Lizards

Are generally large lizards with long necks, powerful claws and tails. The largest lizard in the world is a monitor, the Komodo dragon . Click here for more details on monitor lizards in Ghana
Post a Comment
Read more

Ghana

Ghana, my country is a small West African country that is bordered to the north by Burkina Faso, East by Togo, West by La Cote d' I voire and south by the Gulf of Guinea. Ghana has been among the top three producers of cocoa worldwide and also among the top 10 producers of gold. Has produced great leaders such as Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and Kofi Annan, Wold boxing champions such as Azumah Nelson (three times world champion in two weight classes), Alfred "The Cobra" Kotey, Ike "Bazooka" Quartey, Joshua Clottey, Agbeko Joseph, Kofi Jantuah and D. K. Poison among others. In soccer Ghana has won the African cup 4 times and several Junior world cup trophies; The Black meteors (under 23 team) won  bronze in Barcelona 92, The Black Satellite (Under 20 team) won Gold : Fifa world cup in Egypt in 2009, and The Black Starlets (Under 17 team) won the Fifa world cup twice, 1991 in Italy and 1995 in Ecuador and were runners up twice in 1993 in Japan and 1997 in Egypt. A m...
Post a Comment
Read more