PAPUA NEW GUINEA SNAKEBITE PROJECT
DECISION TIME

Back at the Guest House I had one final task to complete with around 16 nonvenomous snakes due for release, the taking of blood for DNA from the caudal vein. I have done this many times and find it is easy with colubrids and pythons but very difficult with the New Guinea boas. I do not take blood from small snakes as they don't have much to spare, but you actually require very little reptile blood for analysis so with big snakes I take 0.1 mm and smaller specimens 0.05 mm using insulin syringes.

Taking a blood sample from the large female Southern white-lipped python, Leiopython hoserae

We had a spot-lighting night drive in the evening, around the estate roads, but no snakes were found.

We now made the decision to quit Mamba early. We were due to fly back to Port Moresby on the 24th and whereas the original plan was to come straight down from Mamba that morning and go directly to the airport, we thought it might be a good idea, given the deficit in venomous snakes up here*, to spend another full day and a morning based at the Ridge on the Higatura Estate.

* The lack of venomous snakes may be down to the dry weather Mamba is experiencing, although Higatura is also dry, we have had no more than a light nocturnal shower in two weeks, or it may be due to a change in management practises, rat poison, fertilizer, crop spraying, persecution of snakes, or historically the fact that Mamba's reputation dates from its days as a coconut plantation with hundreds of highly desirable coconut husk piles for Small-eyed snakes to live in.

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