92 SEA SNAKES 



cold-blooded animals, and especially, as one would expect, to fish. On the 

 other hand, very few cases are on record in which the bite is known to have 

 been fatal to man, and the carelessness with which they are handled by 

 fishermen is not suggestive of any great danger. The reason for this, 

 as far as I can make out, is that most sea snakes are very disinclined 

 to bite when out of the water. They made an extremely inoffensive im- 

 pression when attacked with the tweezers, and in fact I was on the point 

 of dispensing with this precaution when I was warned that not all sea 

 snakes are equally placid. In the Straits of Malacca we caught some spe- 

 cimens of a comparatively large and clumsy species. When I grasped it 

 in the usual manner it wriggled so violently that I several times dropped 

 it, and it bit fiercely and vigorously at the tweezers. When T e\'entually 

 got it into an aquarium where there were already some other sea snakes, 

 it continued its frenzy, snapping at the other snakes and furiously attack- 

 ing the glass walls of the aquarium. This little experience shows that 

 there is reason to handle sea snakes with caution until we know more 

 about the danger of the respective species. 



Another incident on the Galathea serves to illustrate that there are sea 

 snakes and sea snakes. The aquaria in which we kept our live sea snakes 

 were about half full of water. As none of the snakes had made any attempt 

 to leave the water, and moreover were quite incapable of moving about 

 on land, I suppose I had grown rather careless about covering up the 

 aquaria. One night the pump engineer was having a cup of coffee in the 

 quartermaster's mess after being relieved from duty when he had the 

 shock of his life, at the sudden sight of a long snake slithering over 

 the floor. It was a fairly easy matter to catch it and put it back in 

 the aquarium, but feelings were rather excited until a "census" of all the 

 snakes showed that this was the only one that had got out. To my shame 

 I must confess that I slept through the whole episode, but being told 

 of the affair the following morning I was at once able to establish the 

 species. There is, in fact, only one species of sea snake in this region 

 which is capable of betraying the confidence I had shown in it. It be- 

 longs to the genus Laticauda, which in several respects is more primitive 

 than other sea snakes; among other things, it has well-developed ventral 

 shields and altogether a more normal snake form. Doubtless it was these 

 characteristics which enabled it to traverse the comparatively long way 

 from the laboratory to the quartermaster's mess. 



In an aquarium I had one day put two sea snakes. The next morning, 

 I found on looking into it that there were five. The three newcomers 

 were rather smaller than the other two, being about the size of a common 



