Another Cantoria

I encountered Cantor's water snake (Cantoria violacea) again! It was about 2am on 29 May 2007. The snake was swimming along the water's edge at the mouth of Sungei Tampines.

Read more about sightings of this snake posted in May and August 2006.

Cantor Lost It's Golden Rings

Joe Ong spotted a Cantor's Water Snake (Cantoria violacea) on the mudflat in Pasir Ris Park Mangrove Swamp on 19 August 2006, 10pm. The scale pattern of this individual is slightly different from that of the other snake I found on 4 December 2005. The golden rings of the former are not present throughout the whole body and tail as in the latter. Chan Kwok Wai captured wonderful close-up shots of this beautiful snake.

From left to right: Dorsal side of head; Right side of head, Dorsal side of body, Ventral side of body; Cloaca; Ventral side of tail.

* All photographs by Mr Chan Kwok Wai.

Cantor's Water Snake (Cantoria violacea)

The first time I met this beautiful snake was back in 2001, while helping Harold Voris and Daryl Karns in their survey of homalopsine snakes in Pasir Ris Park Mangrove Swamp. I chanced upon this species again at the same place on 4 September 2005, 12.25 am. It has a very slender elongate body and can reach lengths of 120 cm (Rooij, 1917). This species has a wide distribution and is found in Burma, Thailand, Peninsula Malayasia, Singapore, Sumatra, Borneo, and Timor (Rooij, 1917; Frith & Boswell, 1978). The diet records of this species was first published only in 2002, about 145 years after its description! Voris and Murphy (2002) discovered that Cantoria violacea feeds on the giant mangrove snapping shrimp Alpheus microrhychus. Incredibly, there is almost nothing else we know about this snake!

From left to right: Dorsal side of head; Left side of head; Dorsal side of body.

* All photographs from Mr Lim Swee Cheng

REFERENCES

De Rooij, N., 1917. The reptiles of the Indo-Australian archipelago (II Ophidia). EJ Brill Ltd. Leiden, p. 190-191.

Frith, C. B. & Boswell, J., 1978. Cantor's Water Snake, Cantoria violaecea Girard; a Vertebrate New to the Fauna of Thailand. Natural History Bulletin of Siam Society (Bangkok) 27: 187-189.

Voris, H.K. and J. C. Murphy. 2002. The prey and predators of homalopsine snakes. Journal of Natural History, 36(13):1621-1632.