Meet the Children's python
The Children's python is one of the world's smaller pythons, a neat brown snake with darker blotches and a dark stripe through the eye. Juveniles are strongly patterned, and some adults fade to a plainer reddish-brown.
It lives in a huge range of country, from Kimberley gorges and monsoon forest to spinifex deserts. In northern caves it has a remarkable trick: it hangs from the cave roof or waits near roost entrances to snatch microbats as they fly past at dusk.
John Edward Gray described the species in 1842 and named it after his mentor John George Children, a curator at the British Museum. The genus name Antaresia refers to Antares, the bright star in the constellation Scorpius.
For decades scientists recognised a separate inland species, Stimson's python. A 2021 genomic study by Esquerré and colleagues found the two interbreed across a broad network of populations with no species-level split, so Stimson's python is now treated as part of Antaresia childreni.
Where it lives
Widespread across northern and inland Australia, from the Kimberley and Top End across the deserts and into Queensland, now including the former Stimson's python range.