Summer may be over but that doesn’t mean the snake danger has passed with experts warning the public to be on the lookout for baby serpents as they begin hatching in droves.
Humid conditions at the start of autumn will see a baby snake boom across Australia, as hatching season for the deadly eastern brown snake reaches its peak.
Both Snake Catchers Adelaide and Sydney based Snake Catchers Australia have reported countless brown snake sightings in their respective cities in the final weeks of summer.
This baby brown snake was found taking a dip in Tennyson in Adelaide this week
Snake Catchers Adelaide were asked to identify this two-week-old brown snake, which sought refuge in a child’s lunchbox in this week
With the recent warm temperatures, this brown snake in Adelaide was thirsty for a drink
Snake Catchers Australia reported more than 50 Eastern brown snake sightings in Sydney’s west and south west in recent weeks on its Facebook page.
In South Australia where the weather is still warm, Snake Catchers Adelaide are even busier.
‘We’ve been smashed this week,’ snake catcher Rolly Burrell told Daily Mail Australia.
‘For the last eight weeks, we’ve been getting a 60 calls a day with around 15-20 of them for Eastern browns. We’ve been working 12 hour days, seven days a week since last August. With the way things are going with the weather, it doesn’t look like it’s going to drop off anytime soon.’
Snake Catchers Adelaide has been inundated with brown snake sightings this week
Temperatures are expected to rise to the mid 30s in Adelaide by Wednesday.
Mr Burrell doesn’t expect brown snake sightings to drop off until late autumn.
‘October is breeding season for brown snakes, so late summer is when the babies start to hatch,’ he said.
‘Brown snake sightings usually don’t drop off until May or June.’
He warned a baby brown snake is just as deadly as an adult.
‘The message to people is to not interfere with it,’ Mr Burrell said.
‘If you have a healthy respect for the snake, it won’t hurt you 99.9 per cent of the time.’
Sean Cade from Snake Catchers Australia said while both brown snake and red-bellied black snake young were leaving the nest, the two species had very different breeding methods.
‘Red bellies – they call them live bearers [but] it’s an embryonic sac, it looks like cling wrap,’ Mr Cade recently told the Illawarra Mercury.
‘They’re fully developed … then mum pops them out and they might hang around mum for a couple of days but as soon as they shed their skin they need to get away because mum will eat them. The difference between that and baby browns is the brown snake will lay 10 to 20 eggs and she’ll leave them like a crocodile.’
Mr Cade said while older snakes tended to avoid homes, baby snakes were yet to learn to be cautious of humans.
The brown snake is considered the world’s second-most venomous land snake and is responsible for around 60 per cent of snake bite deaths in Australia.
Envenomation can result in paralysis, uncontrollable bleeding and death if left untreated.
An Adelaide resident trapped this brown snake with cricket stumps recently