Meet the Woma python
The woma is a desert python with a sandy orange to red-brown body banded in darker brown. Unlike most pythons it has a narrow head and lacks the obvious heat-sensing pits along its lips.
It often hunts by pushing into burrows. In such tight spaces it cannot coil properly, so it presses a loop of its body against the prey to pin it to the burrow wall. It has also been seen using its tail tip as a lure, like a death adder.
William Macleay described it in 1882 and named it after zoologist Edward Pierson Ramsay. The woma has declined in parts of southern Australia, likely because of land clearing, grazing, changed fire and fox and cat predation.
A 2007 trial reintroduction of captive-bred womas at Arid Recovery near Roxby Downs, South Australia, showed how hard recovery can be: all nine released snakes were killed within four months, mostly by native mulga snakes.
Where it lives
Arid and semi-arid central and western Australia, across WA, the NT, SA, south-west Queensland and far north-west NSW; once widespread in south-western WA but now rare there.