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Lycodon travancoricus (BEDDOME, 1870)

IUCN Red List - Lycodon travancoricus - Least Concern, LC
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Higher TaxaColubridae, Colubrinae, Colubroidea, Caenophidia, Alethinophidia, Serpentes, Squamata (snakes)
Subspecies 
Common NamesE: Travancore Wolf Snake 
SynonymCercaspis travancoricus BEDDOME 1870: 169
Lycodon travancoricus – BOULENGER 1890
Lycodon travancoricus — BOULENGER 1893: 355
Lycodon travancoricus — WALL 1905: 297
Lycodon aulicus travancoricus — CONSTABLE 1940
Lycodon travancoricus — SMITH 1943: 259
Lycodon travancoricus — LANZA 1999: 98
Lycodon travancoricus — MURTHY 2010
Lycodon travancoricus — WALLACH et al. 2014: 397 
DistributionPakistan, India (Western Ghats, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa = Odisha, SE Gujarat)

Type locality: “Travancore hills, Attraymallay, 5,000 feet elevation, Madras Presidency” [= Attraymallay, Travancore Hills, Kerala State, SW India, 1525 m elevation].  
Reproductionoviparous 
TypesType: BMNH 1946.1.13.75 (and possibly additional specimens).
Other specimens: TNHM (Kerala), see Ganesh et al. 2025. 
DiagnosisUnfortunately we had to temporarily remove additional information as this was scraped by multiple AI companies who sell that data to their customers. These details, e.g. detailed descriptions or comparisons (about 3562 characters), are available for collaborators and contributors. Please contact us for details. 
CommentDistribution: Endemic to India fide MURTHY 2010. Reports from Gujarat have been questioned by Patel & Vyas 2019. 
EtymologyNamed after the type locality. 
References
  • Beddome, R. H. 1870. Descriptions of new reptiles from the Madras Presidency. Madras Monthly J. Med. Sci., 2: 169-176 [Reprint.: J. Soc. Bibliogr. Nat. Sci., London, 1 (10): 327-334, 1940]
  • Bhupathy, Subramanian & N. Sathishkumar 2013. Status of reptiles in Meghamalai and its environs, Western Ghats, Tamil Nadu, India. Journal of Threatened Taxa 5 (15): 4953-4961 - get paper here
  • Boulenger, G.A. 1893. Catalogue of the snakes in the British Museum (Nat. Hist.) I. London (Taylor & Francis), 448 pp. - get paper here
  • Boulenger, George A. 1890. The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma. Reptilia and Batrachia. Taylor & Francis, London, xviii, 541 pp. - get paper here
  • Boulenger, George A. 1894. Catalogue of the snakes in the British Museum (Natural History). Volume II., Containing the Conclusion of the Colubridæ Aglyphæ. British Mus. (Nat. Hist.), London, xi, 382 pp. - get paper here
  • Chandra K., Gajbe P. U. 2005. An inventory of herpetofauna of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Zoos' Print Journal 20 (3): 1812-1819 - get paper here
  • Chandramouli, S. R. and S. R. Ganesh 2010. Herpetofauna of southern Western Ghats, India – Reinvestigated after decades. Taprobanica 2 (2): 72-85 - get paper here
  • CHIKANE, S. & H. S. Bhosale 2012. Die Reptilien von Kaas, nördliche Western Ghats, Maharashtra, Indien, mit Bemerkungen zu Vorzugsbiotopen, Häufigkeiten und Gefährdung. Sauria 34 (3): 3-15 - get paper here
  • Constable, JOHN D. 1949. Reptiles from the Indian Peninsula in the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool. Harvard 103: 59-160. - get paper here
  • Ganesh S. R., Asokan J. R. 2010. Catalogue of Indian herpetological specimens in the collection of the Government Museum Chennai, India. Hamadryad 35 (1): 46 – 63 - get paper here
  • Ganesh, S. R., Arun, V., & Deepthi, P. N. 2025. Catalogue of Indian Herpetological Specimens in the Thiruvananthapuram Natural History Museum, Kerala, India. Hamadryad 41 (1/2): - get paper here
  • Ganesh, S. R., S. R. Chadramouli, R. Sreekar and P. Gowri Shankar 2013. Reptiles of the central Western Ghats, India — A reappraisal and revised checklist, with emphasis on the Agumbe Plateau. Russ. J. Herpetol. 20 (3): 181-189 - get paper here
  • Ganesh, S. R.; M. Arumugam 2016. Species Richness of Montane Herpetofauna of Southern Eastern Ghats, India: A Historical Resume and a Descriptive Checklist. Russ. J. Herpetol. 23 (1): 7-24 - get paper here
  • Ganesh, S. R.; Subramanian Bhupathy, Patrick David, N. Sathishkumar, G. Srinivas 2014. Snake Fauna of High Wavy Mountains, Western Ghats, India: Species Richness, Status, and Distribution Pattern. Russ. J. Herpetol. 21 (1): 53-64
  • Ganesh, S.R. et al. 2020. Redescription of Lycodon travancoricus (Beddome, 1870) (Reptilia: Colubridae), an Indian endemic snake, with a review of its geographic range. TAPROBANICA 9 (1): 50-58 - get paper here
  • Ganesh, S.R.; A. Kalaimani, P. Karthik, N. Baskaran, R. Nagarajan & S.R.Chandramouli 2018. Herpetofauna of Southern Eastern Ghats, India – II From Western Ghats to Coromandel Coast. Asian Journal of Conservation Biology, July 2018. Vol. 7 No. 1, pp. 28-45 - get paper here
  • Ganesh, S.R.; S. Bhupathy, P. Karthik, G. Babu Rao & S. Babu 2020. Catalogue of herpetological specimens from peninsular India at the Sálim Ali Centre for Ornithology & Natural History (SACON), India. JoTT 12 (9): 16123–16135 - get paper here
  • Ganesh, Sumaithangi Rajagopalan & Gernot Vogel 2018. Taxonomic reassessment of the Common Indian Wolf Snakes Lycodon aulicus (Linnaeus, 1758) complex (Squamata: Serpentes: Colubridae). Bonn zoological Bulletin 67 (1): 25–36 - get paper here
  • Inger, Robert F.;Shaffer, H. Bradley;Koshy, Mammen;Bakde, Ramesh 1984. A report on a collection of amphibians and reptiles from the Ponmudi, Kerala, South India. J. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc. 81 (3): 551-570 - get paper here
  • Janssen HY, Pham CT, Ngo HT, Le MD, Nguyen TQ, Ziegler T 2019. A new species of Lycodon Boie, 1826 (Serpentes, Colubridae) from northern Vietnam. ZooKeys 875: 1-29 - get paper here
  • Jigar, Solanki; Khare Rounak and Andhale Atmaram Vitthal 2022. CHECKLIST OF SNAKES FOUND IN MAVAL TALUKA, PUNE, MAHARASHTRA, INDIA. CIBTech Journal of Zoology 11: 182-192 - get paper here
  • Lanza,B. 1999. A new species of Lycodon from the Philippines, with a key to the genus (Reptilia: Serpentes: Colubridae). Tropical Zoology 12: 89-104 - get paper here
  • Mukherjee, Debanik and S. Bhupathy 2007. A new species of wolf snake (Serpentes: Colubridae: Lycodon) from Anaikatti Hills, Western Ghats, Tamil Nadu, India. Russ. J. Herpetol. 14 (1):21-26. - get paper here
  • Murthy, T.S.N. 1990. Illustrated guide to the snakes of the Western Ghats, India. Zoological Survey of India Occasional Paper (114): 1-76 - get paper here
  • Murthy, T.S.N. 2010. The reptile fauna of India. B.R. Publishing, New Delhi, 332 pp.
  • Palot, M.J. 2015. A checklist of reptiles of Kerala, India. Journal of Threatened Taxa 7(13): 8010–8022 - get paper here
  • Parmar, B., Vaghela, P., Patel, R., & Patel, M. 2025. Additional record of Travancore Wolf Snake from Gujarat Western Ghats, India. ZOO'S PRINT 40 (2): 05-07
  • Patel H, Vyas R, Vaghashiya P 2019. On the distribution of Ahaetulla laudankia Deepak, Narayanan, Sarkar, Dutta & Mohapatra, 2019 and Lycodon travancoricus (Beddome, 1870) (Squamata, Colubridae) from Gujarat, India. Check List 15(6): 1045-1050 - get paper here
  • Patel, Harshil; and Raju Vyas 2019. Reptiles of Gujarat, India: Updated Checklist, Distribution, and Conservation Status. Herpetology Notes 12: 765-777 - get paper here
  • Sclater,W.L. 1891. Notes on a collection of snakes in the Indian Museum, with descriptions of several new species. J. Asiat. Soc. Bengal LX: 230-250 - get paper here
  • Sharma, R. C. 2004. Handbook Indian Snakes. AKHIL BOOKS, New Delhi, 292 pp.
  • Sharma, Vivek and Maitry Jani. 2015. Geographic Distribution: Lycodon travancoricus (Travancore wolf snake). Herpetological Review 46 (4): 574 - get paper here
  • Smith, M.A. 1943. The Fauna of British India, Ceylon and Burma, Including the Whole of the Indo-Chinese Sub-Region. Reptilia and Amphibia. 3 (Serpentes). Taylor and Francis, London. 583 pp.
  • Srinivasulu C., Das I. 2008. The Herpetofauna of Nallamala Hills, Eastern Ghats, India: an annotated checklist, with remarks on nomenclature, taxonomy, habitat use, adaptive types and biogeography. Asiatic Herpetological Research 11: 110–131 - get paper here
  • Wall, F. 1905. Notes on Snakes collected in Cannanore from 5th November 1903 to 5th August 1904. J. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc. 16: 292 - get paper here
  • Wall,F. 1919. Notes on a collection of Snakes made in the Nilgiri Hills and the adjacent Wynaad. J. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc. 26: 552-584 - get paper here
  • Wallach, Van; Kenneth L. Williams , Jeff Boundy 2014. Snakes of the World: A Catalogue of Living and Extinct Species. [type catalogue] Taylor and Francis, CRC Press, 1237 pp.
  • Whitaker, Romulus and Ashok Captain 2004. Snakes of India. Draco Books, 500 pp., reprinted 2007 - get paper here
 
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