Striping

The standard argument for striping in animals is that it acts as disruption colouration breaking up the animal’s outline and so making it hard to recognise and perhaps having the secondary benefit of making it hard to follow. I actually hadn’t thought about such things with respect to sea snakes, until I saw a few more sea kraits on another walk out on the shore. Sea kraits still lay eggs, and so they need to come back to land to lay them. Besides this, they still spend a lot of time on land even when not breeding which is why I seem to keep running into them on my walks along the coast on the Isle of Pines.

Sea kraits are almost all banded, which should make them very conspicuous in open water, and this seems curious, until one realises that these are snakes that spend very little time in open water. On the other hand they do spend significant time on the seashore where their colouration would be an advantage. Indeed the common sea krait that I keep seeing on Isle of Pines has a light brown head with the same colour often showing itself in the bands which in other sea kraits would be white. Looking at this photo, it is pretty easy to see how well this works as camouflage, whilst at the same time making it very difficult to see the snake as a whole animal. What a fitting tribute to the Isle of Pines, to have a sea krait whose colouration and scales perfectly match the fallen Araucaria columnaris branchlets. I understand that this particular sea krait is endemic to New Caledonia, and now that makes perfect sense, since Araucaria columnaris is is also limited to New Caledonia.

Comments

[Teresa Gilman]

What a delightfully colorful and rich-textured photo. You have made a fitting tribute to Ile des Pins as well.

I've learned many things from your observations and comments. Thanks.

T.

[Philip Gleeson]

The perfectionist in me wishes that it were a little sharper, but sea kraits constantly on the move in low light don't make easy subjects.