Australian Scrub Python

About the Australian Scrub Python

The Australian scrub python (Simalia kinghorni), also known commonly as Kinghorn's python and simply as the scrub python is a species of snake in the family Pythonidae. The species is indigenous to forests of northern Australia. It is one of the world's longest and largest snakes, and is the longest and largest in Australia. In 2014 it was reclassified to the genus Simalia from Morelia, alongside the rest of the scrub python species.

American herpetologist Olive Griffith Stull described this taxon as Liasis amethistinus kinghorni in 1933 from a specimen at the Museum of Comparative Zoology which had been collected at Lake Barrine in north Queensland, classifying it as a subspecies of the amethystine python based on its larger number of scales. The specific name, kinghorni, is in honour of Australian herpetologist and ornithologist James Roy Kinghorn. It was first raised to species status by Wells and Wellington in 1984, and given the name Australiasis kinghorni. American biologist Michael Harvey and colleagues investigated the amethystine python complex and confirmed its classification as a separate species based on cladistic analysis of mitochondrial cytochrome b sequences... Wikipedia →