The Australian scrub python (Simalia kinghorni), or simply scrub python is a species of snake in the family Pythonidae. The species is indigenous to forests of northern Australia. It is one of the world's longest and largest snakes, and is the longest and largest in Australia. Recently, it has been reclassified to the genus Simalia alongside a few other former Morelia species, but scientific debate over this continues.
American herpetologist Olive Griffith Stull described the taxon in 1933 from a specimen at the Museum of Comparative Zoology that had been collected at Lake Barrine in north Queensland, classifying it as a subspecies of the amethystine python based on its larger number of scales.[1] The specific name, kinghorni, is in honour of Australian herpetologist and ornithologist James Roy Kinghorn.[2] It was first raised to species status by Wells and Wellington in 1984, and given the name Australiasis kinghorni. American biologist Michael Harvey and colleagues investigated the amethystine python complex and confirmed its classification as a separate species based on cladistic analysis of mitochondrial cytochrome b sequences and morphology.[3] In 2014 cladistic analysis of nuclear and mitochondrial genes of pythons and boas, R. Graham Reynolds and colleagues concluded that the support for its distinctness was weak.[4]
This snake is commonly considered arboreal or tree-dwelling, making it one of the world's largest and longest arboreal species of snakes. This snake has an ornate back pattern consisting of browns and tans, with many different natural variations. Its belly is usually white, sometimes with some yellows.
S. kinghorni exhibits an unusual sexual dimorphism among pythons. Males are usually a third longer and twice as heavy. Females reach sexual maturity with a snout-vent length of about 2.27m (07.45feet) while males reach sexual maturity with snout-vent length of 1.34m (04.4feet).[5] On Tully, a river about 140 km south of Cairns, 24 adult females were measured. They had an average length from head to body of 2.68m (08.79feet) and a mass of 3.4kg (07.5lb). In the same place, 80 adult males had an average snout-vent length of 2.91m (09.55feet) and a weight of 5.1kg (11.2lb). Of these, the largest male had a head-to-body length of 3.76m (12.34feet) and a weight of 11kg (24lb).[6] In the past, data on the lengths of individuals longer than 6 meters were repeatedly mentioned in the literature, and all of them today can no longer be verified and cause serious doubts, in particular, in Fearn & Sambono (2000). The most extreme information comes from Worell, who reported in 1954 second-hand about an animal allegedly 8.5m (27.9feet) long from Greenhill in Cairns, described it as 7.6m (24.9feet) in 1958 and repeatedly mentioned the same thing in 1963 under the first length. He leaves open the question of whether the mass refers to a corpse or to skin stretched more than 3m (10feet). Dean also describes an extremely large specimen from Barron Falls in 1954 with a total length of 7.2m (23.6feet), which, however, consisted of an artificially stretched frame that decomposed in the tropics for more than two days, though it was considered reliable by the staff of the Guinness Book of World Records.[7] The largest female Australian scrub python, seriously measured to date, was caught in Palm Cove near Cairns in 2000, had a total length of 5.65m (18.54feet), 12cm (05inches) on the head and 75cm (30inches) on the tail, a circumference in the middle of the body of 36cm (14inches) and a weight of 24kg (53lb).[8] [9] The largest male seriously measured to date was discovered in Kuranda in 2002, its length was 5.33m (17.49feet), of which the length of the head was 11cm (04inches), and the incomplete tail was 60cm (20inches), and the weight was 19kg (42lb).[9] [10] However, individuals are also known measured even more large sizes, some can weigh more than 27kg (60lb) with a length of more than 5m (16feet).[11] [12] [13]
S. kinghorni in mostly is found in Northern Australia, in Queensland and Cape York Peninsula. The species also occurs in several Islands of Torres Strait (e.g. Hinchinbrook). On the mainland, its range extends from the tip of the Cape York Peninsula south along the coastal rainforest through the Atherton Tableland, the forested eastern foothills of the Great Dividing Range, along the coast through Mount Speck to the Burdekin River south of Townsville.[14] In 2004, an even more southern population was described in the Conway rainforest, south of Airlie Beach.[15] Accurate information about the population size and possible connections with more northern populations is not yet available. However, it is assumed that it was installed in 1990 by adult animals that escaped from the local zoo, and has been successfully distributed since then living within various forests and more densely vegetated parts of the Australian bush.
S. kinghorni is one of the largest land predators in Australia, and depending on the habitat, age and size, the prey range can vary from small mammals, birds and reptiles to wallabies. The basis of the diet consists of birds and mammals.[6] Among them, for example, rainbow bee-eaters (Merops ornatus), bush rats (Rattus fuscipes), northern quolls (Dasyurus hallucatus),[16] spectacled flying fox (Pteropus conspicillatus), northern brown bandicoots (Isoodon macrourus), long-nosed bandicoots (Perameles nasuta) and striped possums (Dactylopsila trivirgata). In addition, on the outskirts of settlements, the species repeatedly feeds on domestic poultry.[17] Relatively often there is also predation of pythons on small wallaby species[18] [19] [20] [21] [22] in particular agile wallabies (Notamacropus agilis), red-legged pademelons (Thylogale stigmatica) and Bennett's tree-kangaroos (Dendrolagus bennettianus). One of the largest animal victims documented to date was a 10kg (20lb) adult mobile wallaby, which was swallowed by a female python 4.33m (14.21feet) long and weighing 13.5kg (29.8lb).[23]
The Australian scrub python is somewhat rare in the pet trade outside of Australia. However, with captive breeding projects and hobbyists interested in the species, it is becoming more available, with its New Guinea counterparts being much more available (especially in the United States).