What kind of snake is a seven-step snake?

Agkistrodon acutus, also known as Agkistrodon acutus, etc., belongs to the family Agkistrodon acutus. Venomous snakes are quite famous in Asia, especially in Taiwan and South China. They are widely distributed in China, with the largest reserves in the mountains of Wuyi Mountain and Southern Anhui, and only in northern Vietnam outside China.

The total length of the seven-step snake is 120-150 cm, the large one can reach more than 200 cm, the head is triangular and can be clearly distinguished from the neck, there are long tube teeth, the snout end is formed by the nasal scales and the tip of the kiss scales to form an upward warping process, the nostrils and eyes have an oval buccal fossa, it, the dorsal scales have a strong edge of 21mm 23 rows, the ventral scales 157cm 171, the inferior tail scales 52cm 60, about 20 in the front segment are defined as single-row or miscellaneous individual pairs, and the tail in the posterior segment is double-row. The end of the scale has a high degree of keratinization, forming a pointed hard object, called "Buddha fingernail".

The seven-step snake has a brown-black back, a khaki on the head side, a distinct dichroism, a brown or slightly green back, and a gray-white large square patch of 17-19 and 3-5 on its back. This spot is formed by the closure of the large triangular spots on the left and right sides in the middle of the back, and occasionally staggered, with dark edges, milky white on the ventral side, small black spots arranged irregularly in the throat and large black spots in the middle and both sides of the abdomen.

The seven-step snake mainly lives in the evergreen and deciduous mixed forest at an altitude of 400 to 700 meters above sea level. It likes to move around the ditch of the mountain dock in summer. The requirement for the habitat condition is that it is cool and ventilated, there are trees and water, it can also climb trees in tea gardens, farmland and firewood piles, and it can also enter people's houses. In winter, it often overwinters in natural holes formed by tree roots or in old rat holes.

The annual activity cycle of the seven-step snake is about 9 months from the Waking of Insects to heavy snow. The main factors affecting the activity are temperature, humidity and food. The activity is the most frequent when the air temperature is 20-30 ℃. When the air temperature is as high as 35-38 ℃, the activity is concentrated in more directions to the waterside. At night, pine handle lighting is more sensitive and has an attack reaction to torches, and there is almost no obvious trend of temperature when using flashlights.

One of the well-known names of seven-step snakes is "hundred-step snake", which means that as long as human beings have been bitten by Agkistrodon acutus, they are bound to be poisoned within 100 steps, to show that the bite of Agkistrodon acutus is extremely poisonous. In some places, Agkistrodon acutus is called "five-step snake", further exaggerating the power of its toxin. In fact, the venom of the seven-step snake is not highly toxic, but it does not prevent the snake from being more dangerous in fact (this snake is more toxic than the cobra, and almost all the people bitten by the snake died in Shibi Township, Chenxi, Hunan Province. and those bitten by cobras can basically be saved). According to the survey data, dangerous incidents and even deaths caused by the bite of Agkistrodon acutus are indeed more common, at least in the Chinese mainland area.