A view of Bangkok while reptile-hunting after dark with herpetologist and Bangkok-based cobra researcher Christopher Shannon.
Chris Schalkx
BANGKOK - It looked like a string bean at first. My guide, Thai American snake expert Christopher Shannon, caught it in the beam of his flashlight, the snake’s chartreuse skin a few swatches brighter than the tall grasses it was trying to blend into. Shannon quickly identified it as an Asian long-nosed vine snake, with a pointy snout and slit-like pupils that gave it, in his words, “binocular vision.”
Within minutes we spotted several more critters: A flying fox, the world’s largest bat species, trashed through the trees overhead; just below, a puff-faced water snake writhed through the cloudy water flowing through a concrete ditch. Shannon pointed out a large-eyed pit viper, looped around a branch behind a clutch of parked motorcycles and, moments later, he gently lifted another one from a tangle of leaves nearby.
A viper seen while herping, or reptile-hunting, in Bangkok after dark with herpetologist and cobra researcher Christopher Shannon.
