I'm John Batcher with Jeremy Zakis, New South Wales, where the floodwaters are all around

New South Wales.

The dam is holding for now, but they've gone to spilling water out of the dam, which of course does not help the downstream flooding.

Part of a phenomenon I've learned in Australia from these years of talking to Jeremy is heavy

rains drive animals away from their

normal habitats to high ground or just escape. Snakes in particular. So we have

three very odd snakes but every time Jeremy reports these are

Australian stories they love these things it gets stranger there's no

normal strange we're going to start with one that has to be explained.

Jeremy, what is a blue snake?

Well, John, a blue snake and this is where it probably gets even stranger. A blue snake is

actually a strap snouthed brown snake, believe it or not and this is no lie.

It is actually one of our brown snake species and the blue snake is a very rare desert brown snake that is

found in the far north region of South Australia so the central part of

Australia and the reason that's called a brown snake is basically because of genetics. It's actually from the brown snake family,

but it's actually blue. And when I say blue, it's a very aqua blue too. So,

John, you can imagine on the desert floor very dusty very red looking very brown looking these

snakes stand out and these are very very blue in color and honestly this is one that

while it's rare to find it is coming up more and more up in the north and in areas where people are because of course in Northern South Australia you have a lot of gas pipelines and a lot of pipelines and a lot of infrastructure going in so guess what John the finding more blue snakes so who would have

thought of we actually our brown snakes are actually blue as well.

All right does that mean it's venomous if it's related to the brown snake?

Yes in fact, the strap snake is reportedly even more venomous than most of the other brown snake. Basically on the toxicity and how much it has a little body there.

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