How to Identify Australian Snakes

Keep a safe distance from the snake you're trying to identify. If it attempts to make any movement toward you, walk backwards away from the area, guarding any potential approach with a forked snake stick, if possible.

Try to take a color photograph of the snake, particularly its head.

Navigate online to a catalog of Australian snakes, such as the snake index listed in the Resources section.

Click on the snake names along the left pane that are indigenous to the Australian outback or Bush region. Further down the pane, you can find addendum sheets for these other regions: Perth Region, the deep Southwest, Goldfields, Gascoyne, Pilbara and Kimberley.

Compare your snake with these lists of snakes. Though your identification may be as simple -- and shocking -- as matching your photo with the profile for the extremely poisonous death adder or tiger snake, you may have difficulty pinpointing the exact species. Many brown snakes, for instance, are generally considered mildly to highly venomous, but you may have observed a juvenile species of a snake that grows to show different coloring.

Study the profiles of all the snakes that have been observed in your region to verify your identification.