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Pelamis platurus
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Pelagic Sea Snake | ||||||||||||||||
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| Pelamis platurus (Linnaeus, 1766) |
Yellowbelly Sea Snake or Pelagic Sea Snake Pelamis platurus is a species of sea snake found in tropical oceanic waters around the world.
Contents |
- See snake scales for terminology used here
Body compressed, posteriorly more than twice the diameter of the neck; body scales juxtaposed, sub-quadrangular in shape, in 49-67 rows around thickest part of body; ventral scales, 264-406, very small and, if distinct, divided by a longitudinal groove, but usually indistinguishable from adjacent body scales; head narrow, snout elongate, head shields entire, nostrils superior, nasal shields in contact with one another; pre-frontal in contact with second upper labial; 1-2 pre- and 2-3 post-oculars; 2-3 small anterior temporals; 7-8 upper labials, 4-5 below eye but separated from border by sub-ocular; color variable but most often distinctly bi-colored, black above, yellow or brown below, the dorsal and ventral colors sharply demarcated from one another; ventrally there may be a series of black spots or bars on the yellow or brown background, or the yellow may extend dorsally so that there is only a narrow mid-dorsal black stripe, or a series of black crossbars (M A Smith 1943:476-477 gives more complete description of the color pattern variants). Total length males 720 mm, females 880 mm; tail length males 80 mm, females 90 mm.
These snakes breed in warm waters and they are ovoviviparous with a gestation period of about 6 months. They are helpless on land and they sometimes form large aggregations of thousands in surface waters. The snake has a neurotoxic venom that is used against its fish prey. No human fatalities are known. It occurs on both sides of the Pacific and is the only sea snake to have reached the Hawaiian Islands.[1]
Indian Ocean, Pacific Ocean (Japan), South China Sea northward to the coastal regions of Zhejiang and Taiwan, Persian Gulf (Oman etc.) to Bay of Bengal, India, Pakistan, Maldives, Malaysia, coasts of Malay Peninsula and Indo-Australian Archipelago to New Guinea, Gulf of Thailand and Philippines, Andaman Islands, Nicobar Islands, Korea, Russia (S Primorskij Territory; Only one dead specimen was found in Russia: on the coast of the Sea of Japan, near Vladivostok city), Madagascar, Tanzania, Australia (New South Wales, North Territory, Queensland, Tasmania, Victoria, West Australia), New Zealand, Solomon Islands [McCoy 2000].
New Caledonia, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Galapagos Islands, Peru.
- Hecht, M. K., Kropach, C. and Hecht, B. M. 1974 Distribution of the yellow-bellied sea snake Pelamis platurus, and its significance in relation to the fossil record. Herpetologica 30: 387-395.
- Kropach, C. 1975 The yellow-bellied sea snake, Pelamis, in the eastern Pacific. Pp. 185-213 in: Dunson, W., ed., The Biology of Sea Snakes. Univ. Park Press, Baltimore, xi + 530 pp.