NATURAL HISTORY
This small colubrid snake lives in SE Asia and occurs in Myanmar, Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. They average only about 3’ in length and occasionally a larger female may appear at about 4’. They are thin and very light weight. While they are mostly known from the beautiful yellow, green and gold base pattern with bright red dots down their dorsale, they do not all look like this. Babies and young animals will hatch our with lots of red but some will lose the red over time. In my experience, the females are the most prone to lose the red coloration but I have seen large adult females with massive amounts of red color. They are mostly arboreal and have incredibly keen eyesight. They are mostly sight hunters and will actively chase down whatever they perceive as consumable. They eat a lot of lizard prey but will also consume amphibians, fledgling birds from nests, small mammals, etc. In the wild, mammals are going to be limited to babies mostly but shrews and tiny creatures are on the menu. Do they fly? Yes and no….they are able to flatten out their bodies and their ventral side becomes convex when doing so. They are very confident in their ability to glide and will launch from height with 100% confidence. They flatten out, start moving in an “S” motion in mid-air and it will not only slow their decent but can also create forward movement….the higher they start their decent from, the more forward movement they will get. Flattening out their bodies also gives them a huge advantage when climbing vertical surfaces by gaining traction and lodging themselves into slightly textured tree bark or other similar situations. These are rear-fanged and almost every nip will turn into a chew. It is the chewing motion that allows the toxins in the saliva to get under the skin. I always try to remove or stop the chew immediately and have never had any reactions to any bite from these. These are diurnal snakes and are active during the day time. At night, Chrysopelea are generally spotted off the ground coiled up in the trees asleep.
CAPTIVE CARE/DIET
I saw my first Paradise Flying Snake in Malaysia at the facility in 2008 and shortly thereafter I had imported my first ones. Because they are slight in build, they can dehydrate quickly so I recommend frequent and direct misting…especially new arrivals after shipping. Offer tall cages, well planted or decorated with small branches and leaves and lighting for day time hours. Live geckos or other appropriately sized lizards are readily accepted. Larger animals may also take baby quail and fuzzy to hopper size mice. New animals usually are keen to movement so live food works best but in time they usually will take f/t prey offered off of tweezers with some shaking movement. Baby to small snakes seem to not tolerate a heavy diet of rodents so either stick to lizards or vary the diet. Larger animals seem to adjust ok to a more rodent heavy diet but it is also somewhat hit and miss. Personally I would recomment lizards to comprise the majority of the diet and misc others making up the rest. 1-2 times feeding per week is optimal and they do best with smaller but frequent meals and they have high metabolisms so they process food quite fast. These are not really a good snake for handling as they are fast and high energy….nervous individuals will stress easily so they do best left alone. They can be housed in groups but feeding will get a bit sketchy.
BREEDING
I first bred these in 2013 with established wildcaught adults. I reduced food in the winter time to once per week instead of twice and made sure the food items were smaller. As I always talk about feeling for follicles, I do this on a regular basis about once every two weeks. If I feel follicles, I increase meals maybe three small evenly spaced meals per week and start pairing without delay. If no follicles, I continue with the reduced food cycle for about 6-7 weeks and then bring feeding back to normal and start pairing. Established adults usually started breeding quite readily and follicular and egg development would come quickly. Copulation to egg laying was only about 5 weeks so remove water bowls, provide some form of a next box and be ready. Clutches averaged about 8 or so and when incubated at 80-81f, eggs took 90 days to hatch. Babies are small but robust.
ESTABLISHING BABIES
Be ready with feeders because these are not something you can just go grab day-old pinks for. I actually raised and hatched house geckos for these and they were consumed readily with zero issue. I did get babies shortly thereafter to take f/t baby geckos and also lizard tails voluntarily from tweezer with some movement to stimulate feeding. I still endorse misting to aid in hydration even with babies.