February warm weather has awakened the reptiles early.
Here in the Valencian Community lives the horseshoe snake, so named because on its head it has a horseshoe-shaped design. Along the spine, it has a diamond design line.
It is one of the most agile and fastest snakes that exists on the planet. But it is completely harmless. Like any species of snake, it tends to flee at the slightest sign of danger. If a horseshoe snake or viper is captured, it will produce a horrid smell as a defence mechanism.
There are also ladder snakes that are so called because when it is young, it has a line of discontinuous spots that literally look like a ladder. When in adulthood, the pattern becomes two parallel black stripes that run along the spine with a deep gold coloured background.
Reptiles need an external source of heat to survive. The problem with reptiles is that both during the day and at night, they rest on the asphalt on the roads to absorb the sun’s energy, which is a thermal regulation process that occurs in reptiles and amphibians that need to capture as much solar energy as they can. And during the night they still need to capture a heat that is higher than their normal body temperature. Unfortunately, this is why many reptiles and amphibians perish on the roads.
On the other hand, the “Bastard snake” ( Culebra Bastarda), also called the “great green snake”, is poisonous, but as it has poisonous glands located in the lower part of the upper jaw, it is considered harmless.
