(Source: Yangmingshan National Park Headquarters)

Mountain pit viper

The Ali-shan’s turtle-pattern snake is a mid-sized snake of about 1.2m maximum length. It has a short and fat body, a blunt triangular head, and black stripes stretching to the back of the head from the lower part of the eyes. The color on the top of its head is universally reddish brown. Though it is darker in some, there is still a reddish brown band between the dark bands. This band becomes broader at the end. Some have a light Y-shaped pattern on the back of the neck and a dark coffee, light coffee or grayish purple body. It has white small spots on the tail, pits and venomous teeth. Though it has spikes on the scale, they are smoother than the others. It has about 23-27 rows of scales, and a nearly white abdomen.

It is a Taiwan-unique subspecies distributed at the bottom of mountain forests at mid- and high-elevation, and it is rare. It is nocturnal, slow in movement and has hemorrhagic toxins. Small mammals are its staple food. It lays about 3-18 eggs each breeding cycle in summer. It takes about one month to hatch these eggs. The baby snakes are about 18cm long. A mother Ali-shan’s turtle-pattern snake habitually protects her eggs.