# 8 keelbacks hiding together



## cadwallader (Nov 13, 2010)

Hey,
So i went on a study break today and went out looking for animals and lifted up a rock near one of the water holes and there was 8 keel backs. i never knew they did this. well the pound they were near was filled with cane toad tadpoles say 2-3 weeks ago and now there is hardly many and they have still not fully morphed. so my question i don't know if anyone can really answer it but as keelbacks eat can toad tadpole with no ill effect, what percentage of the tadpole can make up there diet?
cheers


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## Brodie (Nov 13, 2010)

I know nothing of their dietary habits. Sorry mate... 

But, when I used to work out at Fog Dam, there was a well known (well amongst us) communal nesting site. 500 plus eggs, every year. Nothing cuter than a baby keelback...

Edit:

Oh, and at the same research facility, we had about 100 keelbacks, they always seemed to prefer small toads over taddys.


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## cadwallader (Nov 13, 2010)

i was so surprised ay like have found single one we get a few around here and when i lifted up the rock i was so surprised made my week  was soo careful putting it back how it was after i watch for a bit.
thanks heaps brodie. anyone else know a bit about them 
good to see some of Australia's wildlife adapting to eat the toads


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## nico77 (Nov 13, 2010)

i know they can eat toads but thats all i really know about them .

cheers nico


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## Spot_the_mac (Nov 13, 2010)

cool find , blokes at work were digging up footpath slabs and found 6 yellow faced whip snakes all together. i thought snakes were generally solitary animals but there you go !


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## cadwallader (Nov 13, 2010)

yer i wouldn't have thought hence my surprise when i seen them


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## Jk888 (Nov 13, 2010)

wow you would have been nice an supprised , i also would be too


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## Scleropages (Nov 13, 2010)

Take some photos next time , I love keelbacks!


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## pythons73 (Nov 13, 2010)

8 in the same spot is impressive..


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## scorps (Nov 13, 2010)

Always had a soft spot for keelbacks, there an interesting animal to keep


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## cadwallader (Nov 13, 2010)

ill try and put one up to night got a few what is everyone thoughts on free handling keelbacks?


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## SomeGuy (Nov 13, 2010)

It is not uncommon to get aggregations of many snakes species, sometimes different species mixed in, I am unsure of the reason they do it though. 8 keelbacks sounds like a nice find mate.

Freehandling a keelback is fine, do what you want


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## pythons73 (Nov 13, 2010)

If in Doubt,its defiantly a Keelback...I moved from NSW to QLD last week,within 15mins at the motel i caught my first one..From what i hear there really common,and on many occasions its not that hard to come across a few in a night...


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## cadwallader (Nov 13, 2010)

has anyone been bitten by a rough scaled before?
of know of someone?


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## cement (Nov 13, 2010)

Don't underestimate Rough-scales, they are right up there for toxicity.


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## cadwallader (Nov 15, 2010)

this is one little guy we have found before


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## waruikazi (Nov 15, 2010)

While they can eat toads and have a tolerance to the toxin they are not immune to it. Large doses will still kill them and they can't live off toads as a staple.



cadwallader said:


> Hey,
> So i went on a study break today and went out looking for animals and lifted up a rock near one of the water holes and there was 8 keel backs. i never knew they did this. well the pound they were near was filled with cane toad tadpoles say 2-3 weeks ago and now there is hardly many and they have still not fully morphed. so my question i don't know if anyone can really answer it but as keelbacks eat can toad tadpole with no ill effect, what percentage of the tadpole can make up there diet?
> cheers


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## scorps (Nov 15, 2010)

cadwallader said:


> ill try and put one up to night got a few what is everyone thoughts on free handling keelbacks?



Keelbacks are completly fine, just make sure its not a roughy


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## cadwallader (Nov 15, 2010)

lol yer not too keen to get tagged by one of them... that guy was so calm i was surprised compared to other keel backs ive held..


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## Jonno from ERD (Nov 15, 2010)

waruikazi said:


> While they can eat toads and have a tolerance to the toxin they are not immune to it. Large doses will still kill them and they can't live off toads as a staple.


 
I know a keeper here in QLD who has been feeding their captive Keelbacks solely on Cane Toads for a couple of years now. I was surprised too.


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## cadwallader (Nov 15, 2010)

wow thats amazing i guess their population has increased since they have been introduced has gone up with the food source??? thats so cool i would like to keep some colubrids soon


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## waruikazi (Nov 15, 2010)

Jonno from ERD said:


> I know a keeper here in QLD who has been feeding their captive Keelbacks solely on Cane Toads for a couple of years now. I was surprised too.



That goes in the face of the literature i've read on them, i haven't found a credible article yet that says they can survive on toads. I guess the proof is in the pudding but!


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## scorps (Nov 15, 2010)

Jonno from ERD said:


> I know a keeper here in QLD who has been feeding their captive Keelbacks solely on Cane Toads for a couple of years now. I was surprised too.



Yeah I know of someone who had some trouble feeding ones and was using toad legs to get them feeding and I am pretty sure they lived on them for at least the first year or so of there lives


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## waruikazi (Nov 15, 2010)

Jonno from ERD said:


> I know a keeper here in QLD who has been feeding their captive Keelbacks solely on Cane Toads for a couple of years now. I was surprised too.



How big were the toads and the snakes? I've only found 1 keelback that looked like it had eaten a toad in the wild, it survived but was belly up when i found it.


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## Laghairt (Nov 15, 2010)

I guess that keelbacks must be slowly adapting to be able cope with Toad toxins. Given that the toads are such a plentiful food source up north it would be an advantage to be able to eat them. I woukld imagine that the tolerance must be increasing with each new generation.


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## Bez84 (Nov 15, 2010)

*The toad's poison is deadly to all Australian predators*

It’s true that Australia doesn’t have any native toads of its own (it’s the only major continent not to), and that toads have poisons different from those of Aussie frogs. So, many predators are unable to deal with these poisons, because they have never had to deal with them over the last few million years of evolutionary history. But some native frog-eating species are perfectly capable of eating toads. For example, keelback snakes can eat all the toads they like without dying. Many birds also don’t seem to have any trouble, and indeed road-killed toads are a popular diet item for hawks in our study area at Fogg Dam. Native rodents happily munch cane toads without becoming ill. And lots of invertebrates handle the toad’s poison also – sometimes you can see meat ants grabbing and eating huge numbers of tiny toads beside billabongs.


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## sandswimmer (Nov 15, 2010)

anouc said:


> I guess that keelbacks must be slowly adapting to be able cope with Toad toxins. Given that the toads are such a plentiful food source up north it would be an advantage to be able to eat them. I woukld imagine that the tolerance must be increasing with each new generation.


 
This is true, but it's not that they are building up a 'tolerance' as such, which implies physiological change, but rather natural selection is resulting in morphological changes in Australian snakes that are preventing them from ingesting lethal doses of cane toad toxin. The head to bady mass ratio in several snake species is decreasing, meaning snakes are unable to ingest large prey despite a large body size (as snakes are limited by gape size). Thus snakes are less likely to ingest a large toad containing a lethal dose of toxin. This paper is an interesting read for anyone interested:
Phillips, B. and Shine, R. (2004) Adapting to invasive species: toxic cane toads induce morphological change in Australian snakes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 101(49): 17150-17155.


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## Laghairt (Nov 15, 2010)

OK thanks that's really interesting.


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## Snakeluvver2 (Nov 16, 2010)

Great paper. 
Just had a read of it. 
Very interesting.


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## gus11 (Nov 18, 2010)

Bez84 said:


> *The toad's poison is deadly to all Australian predators*
> But some native frog-eating species are perfectly capable of eating toads. For example, keelback snakes can eat all the toads they like without dying.



This isn't true, I've seen keelbacks dead with cane toads in their mouths. I've see cane toads fed to keelbacks (part of a research project) which has resulted in the snakes dying. As this paper talks about



sandswimmer said:


> This paper is an interesting read for anyone interested:
> Phillips, B. and Shine, R. (2004) Adapting to invasive species: toxic cane toads induce morphological change in Australian snakes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 101(49): 17150-17155.



there is an influence of sizes of the toads. keelbacks will still die if eating toads that are to big, due to the poison. there is currently work being done on cane toad size selection by keelbacks with comparisons to other frogs

Gus


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## The Devil (Nov 18, 2010)

This is a pic taken in front of my place. I'm told that it is a keelback and it's the first I've seen in the 20 years I've been living here.


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