Common Bamboo Viper

Fascinating facts about the Common Bamboo Viper

• At just under a meter long – 3.25 feet (0.99 m) total, with a 5.5-inch (14 cm) tail – the bamboo pit viper fits on a school ruler, yet it carries a potent hemotoxic-neurotoxic bite, reminding us that danger isn’t always size-dependent.
• Its back bears 21 rows of keeled dorsal scales (sometimes 19 or 23), and a single anal plate, while the belly holds 145–175 ventral scales and 53–76 paired subcaudals, a precise scale-count that lets herpetologists tell it apart from every other Indian viper.
• Although called a bamboo snake, it spends nights coiled on low branches or near streams, dropping to ground level to ambush prey, and climbs higher by day – a daily vertical migration that shows how names can mislead our view of an animal’s true home.
• Females give birth to live litters of six to eleven newborns, each only 4.5 inches (110 mm) long, demonstrating an ovoviviparous strategy that lets the young hatch ready to hunt in the trees right away.
• Its bright green body, occasionally tinged yellow, grey, or purplish-brown, often sports a contrasting streak of white, yellow or red along the outer scale row.

At a glance

About the Common Bamboo Viper

The common bamboo viper, Craspedo​cephalus gramineus, is a vivid snake that moves through low to medium branches of India's forests, its bright green scales sometimes shifting to yellowish, greyish, or purplish-brown, often with a light streak along the outer scale row and a tail tip tinged yellow or red. Its head bears a rostral scale as deep as it is broad, small smooth head-scales, and a narrow supraocular that rarely fragments. The dorsal scales are usually keeled and form 21 rows; ventrals number 145–175 and subcaudals 53–76 in two rows. Adults reach up to 3.25 feet (0.99 m) in total length, with a tail about 5.5 inches (14 cm) long. By day the viper perches high in trees, but at night it descends to ambush prey, feeding on lizards, rats, and birds, and it uses hemotoxic and neurotoxic venom. It is ovoviviparous, with females giving birth to six to eleven young, each about 4.5 inches (110 mm) long.

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