Meet the Animals
Sky
Island pit viper · Trimeresurus insularis
Electric teal with attitude. Sky is a female teal Komodo Island pit viper, born in early 2023 and about 3.5 feet long. She's feisty and defensive, but sweet deep down.
Life in the trees
A patient night hunter
Her species is a tree dweller, active mostly at night. It coils on a branch and waits motionless for prey to come within striking range. Sky dines on large mice.
Built-in night vision
Heat-sensing pits
See the small openings between her eyes and nostrils? Those are heat-sensing pits, the feature that gives pit vipers their name. They let her detect the body heat of warm-blooded prey, even in total darkness.
Rare color
Teal from Komodo
Across most of its island range this species is green. The blue-teal form is rare and found mainly on Komodo Island, and like every color form Sky has a red tail.
Dinner time
Large mice on the menu
Here's Sky at mealtime. Gilly believes large mice are her meal of choice. Like all snakes, she swallows her prey whole.
Field notes
About island pit vipers
- Sky's species, Trimeresurus insularis, lives on eastern Java and Indonesia's Lesser Sunda Islands.
- Unlike many snakes, these pit vipers don't lay eggs. Mothers give birth to live young, sometimes more than a dozen at a time.
- They're mostly active at night and hunt by ambush from the trees.
- Every pit viper has a pair of heat-sensing pits on its face, one between each eye and nostril.
- Green is the usual color. Blue-teal snakes like Sky are a rare Komodo specialty, and all of them share a red tail.
Cared for by
Braxton “Gilly” Gilbert
Sky is cared for daily by Gilly at Jefe and Friends (Gilly's Exotics LLC). Questions? Email gillysexotics@gmail.com.