Free The Beasts that Hide from Man by Karl P.N. Shuker

snakes. They are extremely toxic. They occur in Australia, New Guinea and islands west as far as Ceram (=Seram), according to Harold Cogger. As they occur in the East Indies, could not a species also be found in East Asia too?…
Clearly, it is a matter of weighing one thing against another, but my guess would be a new species or genus of death adder. If this idea is of use I would be very happy to make a present of it to you, to acknowledge or not—as would be best for your publication. No doubt the animal’s food would be chiefly small rodents and, perhaps, other reptiles. It is not clear why some snakes (e.g. true coral snakes) are so much more venomous than would appear necessary.
     
    Prof. Cloudsley-Thompson’s idea that the death worm may in reality be a hitherto-unknown species of death adder is quite fascinating, and is the first identity that offers a factual explanation for the nomads’ reports of this cryptid’s venom-spraying talent.

     
    The elapids are a taxonomie family of snakes housing such familiar if fatal species as the cobras, mambas, kraits, and also the death adder. As outlined above, this unusual snake has acquired via convergent (parallel) evolution a remarkably viper-like (i.e. adderlike) appearance, thus occupying the ecological niche left vacant in Australia by the true vipers—as there is no viper species native to this vast island continent. In other words, the death adder is an elapid impersonating a viper. But what would happen if a death adder also evolved the venom-spitting ability exhibited by certain of its fellow elapids, i.e. the spitting cobras?
    As indicated by Cloudsley-Thompson, the result could be a specialized snake able to spray deadly fast-acting, skin-absorbing venom at any would-be attacker from a not inconsiderable distance—thereby corresponding with the descriptions given by the Gobi nomads in relation to the death worm, even including those ostensibly bizarre claims that the worm can kill from a distance, without making direct contact with its victim. In addition, if absorbed through the eyes, the venom could work its lethal effect without needing to be corrosive—although the nomads’ testimony certainly suggests that the venom is acidic.
    One important matter needing to be discussed here, however, is the precise shape of the death worm’s anterior and posterior body regions. Some reports seem to imply that the ends of its body are blunt or truncated. In marked contrast, however, is the eyewitness report quoted earlier in this chapter, in which she claimed that the death worm was “bound into points at both ends.” This suggests that it was not blunt but pointed at each end (as depicted in Philippa Foster’s picture)—and, if so, this description does accord well with the narrow-necked, spine-tailed morphology of the death adder.
    One notable problem with a serpent identity for the death worm, at least on first reflection, is Ivan Mackerle’s assertion that it moves in a worm-like manner by contracting and expanding its body. Snakes, conversely, typically move via horizontal undulations, but as I noted when discussing the amphisbaenids, some snakes can perform concertina (rectilinear) locomotion. Moreover, in a separate section of his letter to me of October 1996, Prof. Cloudsley-Thompson also offered this as an explanation for the apparent locomotory contradiction between death worm and snake:
    [Having suggested a species of death adder as a possible identity] this leaves the problem of expansion and contraction of the body. Could this not be explained in terms of rectilinear movement? (Angus Bellairs called it “concertina” movement, which does suggest contraction and expansion of the body.) In every case of this, waves of muscular contraction pass posteriorly over the muscular under surface of the body while the animal is in motion. Apparently many snakes can move in this way although it is most noticeable in boas and vipers. Rectilinear locomotion is