Black Headed Python

Pythons are non-venomous (but can still bite)

All pythons are members of the Boidae family

The largest of the two Aspidites snakes.

The Woma/ Sand python is in this group too and both these snakes do not have the heat sensing pits.

The Black Headed pythons tail length is approx 2.5m.

This snake has a distinctive glossy black head and nape. This snake can pop its head out into the sun to warm up its brain and sense organs before having to move its whole body out as its black head will heat quicker than its paler body.

This is a burrowing snake.

Photographed at a shopping centre display this young snake is around my daughter. The young snakes have stronger colour banding.

Snakes don't have eyelids that can move instead they have a transparent spectacle that protects the eye even when going into the water, kind of like wearing a contact lens.

Photographed at Perth Zoo

Pythons scales are small and numerous of 30 or more rows. The anal scale is a single scale i.e. not two scales side by side and below this scale the scales can either be divided into two columns, or a single column or single then divided columns.

Shelters in hollow logs, crevices, caves and abandoned burrows of monitors or mammals.

Before mating males may fight each other. After mating the female will not eat and will lye in the sun with her belly facing sideways or lying upside down. Clutches of 8-11 eggs are laid and the female will coil around the eggs. She will spasmodically contract her muscles which produces heat when the air temperature is too cold for the eggs. As the eggs can take two months to hatch the female python has to be able to maintain her body temperature through out this time regardless of the air temperature.

This snake prefers woodlands, rocky ranges and outcrops of sub humid to humid northern Australia. Absent from extremely arid areas. From northwest Cape Western Australia north and across to Queensland.

What do they eat?

They mostly feed on snakes and other reptiles such as monitor lizards. They also eat a small amount of frogs, small mammals and birds. The desert death adder and other elapids are prominent food item for black-headed pythons. This python is more likely to feed during the day and is not affected by the venom of venomous snakes. Cannibalism has also been reported both in wild and in captivity.

This is a Desert Death adder Go Here to see our page on this snake.

Text;
"Australian Reptiles A Photographic Reference to the Terrestrial Reptiles of Australia" by Stephen K Wilson, David G Knowles.
CD Rom "Australian Reptiles and Frogs" by Herald Ehnann and Micheal Tyler
"Australian Snakes A Natural History" by Rick Shine
http://www.kingsnake.com/aho/bhp.html

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