Chinese Beauty Snake

1 Overview

The Chinese beauty snake (Elaphe taeniura) is a large, non-venomous snake, called ‘cauliflower snake’ in Sichuan and Guizhou. Heavily hunted for its medicinal value, its numbers keep falling. Nine subspecies are now recognised.

A large non-venomous snake, safe to keep; adults reach about 2 m. It loves rats and is known in the south as the ‘house snake’ and the ‘rat-catching king’.

SOURCE NOTE: the source listed the family as ‘Megapodiidae’, which is a bird family (megapodes); the correct family is Colubridae. The binomial Elaphe taeniura is retained (some authors use Orthriophis taeniurus).

2 Appearance

The head and body back are yellow-green or brown-grey; a clear black stripe behind each eye gives the name ‘black-brow’. The front and mid back carry black trapezoidal or butterfly blotches like weigh-stars (hence ‘weigh-star snake’). From mid-back the blotches fade but four clear black longitudinal bands run to the tail tip; central dorsal rows weakly keeled.

The key feature: two obvious black stripes from behind the eyes extending onto the neck, like black eyebrows – hence ‘black-browed beauty snake’. Back brown-grey or earth-yellow; from mid-body two clear black side bands to the tail tip; rear with four black stripes to the tail end. Belly grey-white; body over 1.7 m, large ones about 2.3 m.

3 Care & Temperament

Fierce-tempered; when startled it rears head and neck in an S and attacks. At 24-31 C it feeds vigorously and turns more aggressive. Mates around May, lays 6-12 eggs June-July; incubation 35-50 days, temperature-dependent, occasionally up to 2 months.

4 Diet & Feeding

Loves live meat – birds, rats; no interest in frogs. In captivity, economical to feed culled quail or chicks. Strangers trigger a strike; on a mouse it turns, rears the front and lunges fast as an arrow, usually hitting; if the mouse flees it strikes again until caught. It bites and will not release, then coils and constricts; sometimes the prey’s eyes, nose or mouth bleed until it suffocates, then swallowed from the head. A 50 g mouse takes 3-5 min; over 250 g it extends its throat past the mouth to breathe, taking 25-40 min. It forages by roaming; capture rate is high.