:''Common names: Arafura File snake, Elephant Trunk Snake or wrinkle file snake.'' ''Acrochordus arafurae'' is an aquatic

snake Snakes are elongated, Limbless vertebrate, limbless, carnivore, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes . Like all other Squamata, squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping Scale (zoology), scales. Ma ...

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

found in northern Australia and

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu Hiri Motu, also known as Police Motu, Pidgin Motu, or just Hiri, is a language of Papua New Guinea, which is spoken in surrounding areas of Port Moresby (Capital of Papua New Guinea). It is a simplified version of ...

. No subspecies are currently recognized. This snake was first described by Samuel Booker McDowell in 1979

Description

Adults grown to 8.25 ft (2.5 m) in length.Burnie D, Wilson DE. 2001. Animal. Dorling Kindersley. 624 pp. . They have amazingly loose skin and are known to prey on large fish, such as

eel-tailed catfish The eel-tailed catfish, ''Tandanus tandanus'', is a species of catfish (order Siluriformes) of the family Plotosidae. This fish is also known as dewfish, freshwater catfish, jewfish, and tandan. This species is a freshwater fish native to th ...

. Females are usually larger than males and they have been known to give birth to up to 17 young. The skin is used to make drums in

In Aboriginal language and culture

The indigenous peoples of northern Australia often hunt these snakes as they are quite common. As the snakes are near immobilized without the support of water the hunters merely throw each newly caught snake on the bank and continue hunting until they have enough. In the

Kunwinjku The Kunwinjku (formerly written Gunwinggu) people are an Australian Aboriginal people, one of several groups within the Bininj people, who live around West Arnhem Land to the east of Darwin, Northern Territory. Kunwinjku people generally refer t ...

language of West Arnhem Land, the snakes are known as ''kedjebe'' (or ''bekka'' in Eastern dialects), while in the

Yolŋu The Yolngu or Yolŋu () are an aggregation of Aboriginal Australian people inhabiting north-eastern Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia. ''Yolngu'' means "person" in the Yolŋu languages. The terms Murngin, Wulamba, Yalnumata, M ...

language of East Arnhem Land they are called djaykuŋ, among other names.

References

External links

Acrochordus.com
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at ''Life is Short but Snakes are Long'' Acrochordidae Snakes of Australia Reptiles of Western New Guinea Reptiles of Papua New Guinea Reptiles described in 1979 Snakes of New Guinea {{Alethinophidia-stub ru:Яванская бородавчатая змея