| 1 | Painted bronzeback |
Tongue: bright red.
This Thai and Malaysian snake has a purely red tongue, with no gimmicks. Painted bronzebacks reach 125cm and are harmless to humans. They can stay incredibly still on their leaves, with the only indication they’re not dead being a slightly inflating and deflating chest. Every so often they’ll fleck their red tongues as well, or perhaps they won’t. Unlike the tongue, their body doesn’t have a hint of red. This snake has a cream coloured belly, with a green-brown back.
Their flecking red tongue is designed not to look menacing, but to detect prey scents, carried on the winds or lingering on objects like a log. Painted bronzebacks prey on frogs, one species being Asian rice frogs (Fejervarya limnocharis). They also eat lizards such as Brooke’s house gecko. Their tongue might also help them detect a predator: the Javan spitting cobra, a confirmed predator of painted bronzebacks.
Other family members: this is a huge family with over 50 members. The Burmese bronzeback of Vietnam has an oily black tongue, while the saw-tooth necked bronzeback is another with a red tongue. Red is more common than not.
| 2 | Spotted bush snake |
Tongue: green.
A very common species in Africa. This snake lives from South Africa in the south, all the way to Tanzania and Kenya. Spotted bush snakes measure 90cm, sometimes reaching 130cm. Their bodies contain the following colours: green, cream, and black, but it’s green that dominates. This includes their forked tongue, poking out their mouth and flecking around inquisitively, examining any slightly interesting object they come across.
The spotted bush snake is mainly a savannah species, but also inhabits tree clumps on the edges of agricultural fields. Bush snake is a fairly accurate name. Philothamnus semivariegatus rarely climbs high in trees, but are common on thorny bushes 1 metre high, balancing on the precipitous branches, as well as manmade wooden fences. This is a diurnal (day-faring) species.
The greenness also extends to their eyes. Spotted bush snakes have a large round pupil, surrounded by an avocado-coloured ring. The rest of their eye is a darker jungle green.
Other family members: the common bush snake (Philothamnus irregularis) has a bright blue tongue, sharply divided with black forks lower down. This version is common in West African countries like Sierra Leone.
| 3 | Siamese peninsular pitviper |
Tongue: purple, ends at blue.
This 80cm species really can’t decide on is colours. It’s mainly green, but with a vivid red stripe down its flanks. There are blue-black cracks visible between its scales, and also the occasional white dot on the red line. Its tongue meanwhile, is a mixture of purple and blue.
Trimeresurus fucatus lives in southern Thailand and peninsular Malaysia, and is most common on the island of Pulau Langkawi. They love to rest on branches and have densely coloured scales that barely reflect a camera’s flash. Some believe that fucatus means “with make up” in Latin, referencing their colourful face.
This species is venomous like all Trimeresurus pitvipers, but the exact qualities are unresearched. The family is generally cytotoxic, tearing through skin tissue but without being neurotoxic. The Siamese peninsular pitviper is dangerous, and its rich blue tongue should only be viewed from a distance.
Other family members: the white-lipped pitviper is the most common member, being abundant all over Thailand. This version also has a purple tongue, but sometimes near black.
| 4 | California red-sided garter snake |
Tongue: red with a black tip.
Thamnophis sirtalis infernails is one of the most spectacular of the garter snakes. Technically, it’s a mere subspecies of the common garter snake (found in 47 of 50 states), yet is far more vivid. It has a bright blue stripe down its spine, and bright red patterns on each flank. The redness extends fully to the head, while its belly is bright blue. These colours have led to a wild popularity in captivity.
The California red-sided garter snake only grows more colourful with age. The only area where it isn’t more fabulous than its kin is its tongue. As with all common garter snakes, it’s bright red, with a jet black finish that kicks in just before the fork split. Rather than constantly flecking, garter snakes tend to fleck their tongue for less than a second at once, separated by intervals of 3 or 4 seconds (see this video).
Other family members: a red tongue with a black tip is found in virtually all garter snake members. This includes giant garter snakes in California, terrestrial garter snakes of high altitude, and the eastern ribbon snakes of Pennsylvania.
| 5 | Asian vine snake (morph) |
Tongue: silver.
A resident of Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. With its keyhole-shaped pupils and pointy snout, the Asian vine snake is one of the strangest snakes on Earth. They constantly appear in internet compilations, but a less known fact is their huge number of colour morphs.
For example, the silvery picture above was taken in Tat Mok National Park, located in central Thailand, 200 miles north of Bangkok. This silvery picture was taken in Khao Yai National Park, 80 miles east of Bangkok. Some areas barely have the normal green morph at all. A 2017 study found that in Sakaeret Biosphere Reserve in the north, 54% were silver and 46% were orange.
The interesting thing is that the tongue sticks to the colour like velcro – an orange Asian vine snake will have an orange tongue, and so on. Which means that this is a rare species to occasionally have a silver tongue, which looks like it would be in mortal peril if it ever licked a magnet.
Other family members: the Malayan whipsnake, a resident of southern Thailand, has a green-yellow tongue. But its body is also yellow-green, and the tongue could easily vary with morphs just like its cousin.
| 6 | Red-tailed green ratsnake |
Tongue: blue with a black stripe.
A citizen of southeast Asia, first discovered in 1827. This snake runs through the full repertoire of colours. Its tail is red, hence the alternative name “red-tailed racer”. Its belly is a mild cream, while its main body is green. Then you reach the eyes, which have some blue tinges. Finally, it opens its mouth, and you are blasted with the most vivid blue tongue of any snake alive.
This species regularly reaches 2 metres, and lives in trees all year, sometimes stashing themselves in trunk cavities. Inspecting this tongue up close isn’t recommended. Gonyosoma oxycephalum is non-venomous, but aggressive and might snap down on your nose as you peer forward. The other risk is that they live in dense jungles and you have to fight your way through crocodiles and pitvipers.
Other family members: its family is also home to the rhinoceros ratsnake (Gonyosoma boulengeri), one of the weirdest snakes alive. Yet this species of China and Vietnam has a mere pink tongue instead – all its weirdness points are concentrated in its sharp horn.
| 7 | Puerto Rican boa |
Tongue: black with a slightly paler tip.
Puerto Rican boas aren’t the most colourful boa, and this extends to their tongue, which is pure oily black. The exception is the very tip, which is light grey. This matches their body patterns.
Unlike the Jamaican boa, which has golden yellow scales, Puerto Rican boas are nothing but black and white. At a distance, they’re a smothering black, while up close, subtle white cracks and lines appear. Puerto Rican boas use their tongues to track down their favourite meals: bats roosting in caves, whether at the fanged entrance or 20 metres deeper inside. It’s possible that their darker shades evolved to prevent them from standing out.
Puerto Rican boas inhabit their namesake island solely, particularly moist karst regions. The flecking tongue delivers scents to the Jacobson’s organ for further analysis, creating a far more powerful smelling sense than any human in recorded history, even a caveman with freakish powers.
Other family members: the Hispaniola boa of the Dominican Republic has a similar tongue, but the white has grown to cover a larger area, forcing the black into retreat.
| 8 | Northern Pacific rattlesnake |
Tongue: violet with a black tip.
Pacific rattlesnakes are a fact of life for citizens of Washington, Oregon, and California, although downtown LA is probably just about safe. Crotalus oreganus has a bite which can devastate skin tissue, but equally horrifying is that their tongue is purple. Pacific rattlesnakes can reach 128.5cm and have a strongly myotoxic venom, targeting muscle tissue. Their purple tongue doesn’t contain these toxins, although given its funky colour, it wouldn’t be surprising. They look like they’ve been drinking from a polluted river next to a factory, but the tongue colour is perfectly natural.
Pacific rattlesnakes are also recognisable by a black stripe starting behind their eye. Their rattle has up to 11 segments, and is a standard colour for the family: yellow-beige. Their eyes are orange, with a vicious vertical pupil, although it’s perfectly possible that they just wish to be friends with voles and mice and are sick of their evil appearance excluding them. This species also inhabits British Columbia, Canada.
Other family members: the red diamond rattlesnake of southern California has a purely black tongue. The timber rattlesnake of the east has also taken the oily black route.
| 9 | Japanese four-lined ratsnake |
Tongue: pink in many shades.
Japan has two ratsnake species: the Japanese ratsnake (Elaphe climacophora), and the 4-lined version, which is simple to distinguish. This species lives on Honshu and Hokkaido, skipping only the southern Ryukyu islands such as Okinawa. They get most of their calories from frogs, including montane brown frogs and tago’s brown frogs, but switch to lizards when none are available. Without their tongue, tracking these meals down would be virtually impossible, and this tongue is a pink colour, with many varying shades. This matches the inside of their mouth, and differs to their eye, which is more bronze.
Japanese 4-lined snakes (Elaphe quadrivirgata) are clearly recognisable in Japan by their namesake 4 lines, which are black against beige scales below. Their tongue also has a line through it – up close, a faint black runs through the pink.
Other family members: The Korean ratsnake (Elaphe anomola) not far away has a black tongue, sometimes with red tinges. The four-lined snake of Italy (Elaphe quatuorlineata) also has a black tongue.
| 10 | Marbled tree snake |
Tongue: very dark brown with a pink tip.
This 60cm African snake has a very unusual tongue. Their bodies are purely dark brown and white, like a marbled cake from a supermarket. This is vaguely divided between a white belly and the rest, but the white intermingles with everything, like a black icing which is cracking to reveal the base underneath. As for the tongue, its colours are a mere extension, with a dark brown base, and a white tip at the very end. Only their orange eyes differ from the strict colour scheme.
This species preys on chameleons like Setaro’s dwarf chameleon. Marbled tree snakes are harmless to humans, but they apparently don’t realise it. When cornered, they’ll flatten their neck, gape their mouth open dementedly, and strike viciously yet harmlessly at the aggressor.
Marbled tree snakes inhabit Africa’s southeast, including South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Their favourite habitat of all is gallery forest on the edges of rivers or lakes. Lake Sibayi in Kwala Zulu-Natal is a confirmed base.
Other family members: its northerly relative Weiler’s tree snake (Dipsadoboa weileri) has a blue tongue. This species lives further north, roaming Cameroon, DRC and Uganda.