Egyptian cobra

Uraeus

The uraeus (Naja haje ) belongs to the family Elapidae and is called ( in English Egyptian cobra, Cobra égyptien in French ) and Egyptian cobra.

According to legend, the Egyptian queen Cleopatra committed suicide by letting himself be bitten by a uraeus.

Features

Uraei usually reach lengths of 1.5 to 2 meters, can reach 2.4 meters but quite. The head is large and tapering to the front. The ground color varies from yellow-brown, brown and black. Uraei are mostly monochrome, more rarely spotted or with alternating gray-brown and dark brown transverse bands. The belly is always monochrome yellow brown, gray or gray-blue.

Dissemination and lifestyle

The uraeus is common with their subspecies over the entire continent of Africa to the Arabian Peninsula and back to Palestine. Preferably, they live in semi-deserts, deserts, steppes, and in fields, along roads and in human settlements. Uraei are bottom dwellers and hide during the day under rocks, in bushes, in hollow logs, burrows or under huts and tin.

The animals are relatively sedentary. They are fast and very aggressive. When threatened, they face up to a height of 60 centimeters wide and the neck shield to the typical threatening posture of the rights of cobras. The venom is a very potent neurotoxin. When prey are small mammals, birds, eggs, reptiles and amphibians.

During the mating the male wraps around the female and performs the barbed hemipenis into the cloaca of the female, and lay there a seed packet from which fertilizes the female egg cells. Like all poison snakes ( Elapidae ) also specifies the uraeus eggs, clutch size ranging from 8 to 20. These eggs are laid in a hollow log, in a hole or under a rock. At hatching, the hatchlings measure 24 to 34 cm.

Subspecies

  • Well haje haje (Linnaeus, 1758) - from southern Morocco to Egypt, south to Tanzania, west to Senegal
  • Well haje anchietae Bocage 1879 - in southern Angola, Südkongo, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe
  • Well haje arabica ( Scortecci 1932) - in Saudi Arabia
  • Well haje legionis Valve Dere 1989 - in Morocco

The subspecies Naja haje annulifera is considered as a separate species since 1995, see Banded cobra (Naja annulifera ).

Swell

  • L. Trutnau: poisonous snakes Verlag Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart ( 1998) ISBN 3-8001-7371-9
  • Ulrich Gruber: The snakes of Europe and around the Mediterranean, Kosmos Verlag GmbH, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-440-05753-4
Squamata Genus
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