Balkan wrath snake
| Balkan wrath snake | ||||||||||||
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Balkan angry snake ( Hierophis gemonensis ) |
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| Hierophis gemonensis | ||||||||||||
| ( Laurenti , 1768) |
The Balkan angry snake ( Hierophis gemonensis , syn .: Coluber gemonensis ) is a non-poisonous species of snake from the genus Hierophis in the family of real snakes (Colubridae).
features
Adults are usually smaller than 100 centimeters, but can be over 130 centimeters long. The head is noticeably tall, the overall body is slim but strong. The basic color of the Balkan angry snake tends to be brown, reddish brown, yellow and gray. Numerous, dark spots are occasionally distributed over the entire body, but mostly only the front third of the body. Towards the tail, these can merge into a striped drawing. There are also examples that are completely without drawings. Young animals are similar to adults, but are marked with more contrast.
Habitat and Distribution
The Balkan angry snake inhabits dry, stony terrain with low vegetation, and can therefore be found in the maquis , Phrygana , in loose trees, vineyards and olive groves as well as in rural gardens and ruins from sea level to an altitude of 1400 meters.
Their distribution area extends in the north-west of Slovenia and the Istrian peninsula, along the Croatian coastal area with its islands over the southern part of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro , western Albania to Greece , including the Peloponnese , the Ionian Islands as well as Crete and Karpathos .
Way of life
The Balkan wrath snake prefers to eat lizards and large insects, but also small mammals and chicks.
The female produces a clutch of four to ten eggs. The young animals hatch after an incubation period of 60 to 70 days with total lengths of an average of 15 cm.
Systematics
The first scientific description was in 1768 by Josephus Nicolaus Laurenti as Natrix gemonensis . The terra typica is Gemona del Friuli in northern Italy; the species no longer occurs here.
While Laurenti the Balkan Whip Snake nor the European water snakes ( Natrix zuordnete) and so in addition to the grass snake ( Natrix natrix presented), it was later among others in the genre Zamenis as in the genre of coluber ( Coluber classified). The genus Coluber comprised species of snakes from Europe, Asia and North America, which are very similar due to their physique, which is specialized in hunting for nimble prey such as lizards. Therefore, the Balkan wrath snake was also included in the genus Coluber until molecular biological studies led to a split of the genus Coluber . Together with the yellow-green angry snake and Hierophis spinalis , it now forms the genus Hierophis .
Danger
Although the Balkan Whip Snake on the Red List of IUCN as 
(= least concern - not at risk) is classified, and may in some areas quite often, the spread in Albania appears to be declining. The snake is particularly threatened by increasing road traffic and arson.
literature
- Benny Trapp: Amphibians and reptiles of the Greek mainland. Natur und Tier - Verlag, Münster 2007, ISBN 3-86659-022-9 , pp. 208-211.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Ivancica Strunjak-Perovic, Duje Lisicic, Rozelindra Coz-Rakovac, Natalija Topic Popovic, Margita Jadan, Vesna Benkovic, Zoran Tadic: Evaluation of micronucleus and erythrocytic nuclear abnormalities in Balkan whip snake Hierophis gemonensis . In: Ecotoxicology . Springer Netherlands, 2010, p. 1-6 , doi : 10.1007 / s10646-010-0531-y .
- ↑ a b Hierophis gemonensis in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2010.2. Posted by: Petros Lymberakis, Rastko Ajtić, 2008. Retrieved July 20, 2010.
- ↑ Hierophis gemonensis in The Reptile Database
- ↑ Massimo Capula, Ernesto Filippi, Luca Luiselli, Veronica Trujillo Jesus: The ecology of the Western Whip Snake (Coluber viridiflavus Lacépède, 1789) in Mediterranean Central Italy . In: Herpetozoa . tape 10 , July 1997, p. 65-79 .
- ↑ ZT Nagy, R. Lawson, U. Joger, M. Wink: Molecular systematics of racers, whipsnakes and relatives (Reptilia: Colubridae) using mitochondrial and nuclear markers . In: Journal of Zoological Systematics and Evolutionary Research . tape 42 , no. 3 . Blackwell Verlag, 2004, ISSN 0947-5745 , p. 223–233 , doi : 10.1111 / j.1439-0469.2004.00249.x ( Online [PDF; 200 kB ; accessed on June 4, 2010]). Online ( Memento of the original from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ J. Speybroeck, P.-A. Crochet: Species list of the European herpetofauna - a tentative update . In: Podarcis . tape 8 , 2007, p. 8–34 ( Online [PDF; 1.7 MB ]).
