Barely visible as it sits coiled around the branches of a rainforest tree, this jungle serpent can attack large prey with no warning. The green tree python spends most of its life high in the canopy, using its large size, good camouflage and powerful muscles to trap its prey before ingesting it whole.

Poised for Action
This brightly coloured python spends its day resting high in the trees, often coiling itself into complex positions to help it balance. Although the snake looks relaxed, the greater part of its body mass is made up of muscles that can spring to attention at a moment’s notice. Its strength enables it to stretch out unsupported, moving effortlessly from branch to branch and even over gaps between trees. When night falls, the python hunts by ambush: its keen sense of sight and heat-detecting thermo-sensory glands alert it to the slightest change in temperature caused by approaching prey. It rarely needs to move from its coiled position in the trees, as it prefers to let its prey come closer before striking out with deadly speed.

Devoted Mothers
During the mating season, a male will crawl after a female, and then climb on to her. They rear up and sway together, wrapping their bodies around one another. The female usually lays a large clutch of eggs on the ground – the only time she leaves the tree – or in a tree hole, which she guards with her life for the following few months. She gathers the eggs into a pile and wraps her body around them to protect them from cold temperatures and predators, only leaving them on rare occasions when she needs food or water. In order to keep the eggs warm, the female shivers repeatedly, raising her body temperature and incubating the clutch. When the young hatch out, they are a wide variety of colours, including orange, yellow and blue. This makes them targets for hungry predators, so they enter the trees as quickly as possible, and develop their green colouring by the time they are two years old.

Lazy Hunter
The predominantly green colouring of this python acts as perfect camouflage in the dense vegetation of the rainforest canopy. Although it will occasionally move through the trees and along the ground in search of food, the python prefers to wait for its prey to come to it. It hides its head in the coils of its body and can remain motionless for long periods of time, ready to dart out to snatch unsuspecting lizards, frogs, rodents or birds. This cunning snake uses its tail as bait. When it detects a potential meal, the python will wriggle the tip of its tail in order to imitate a worm, grub or caterpillar, luring the creature forward until it is close enough to snatch.