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1. But to accurately identify the majority of Australia's snakes requires checking finer details of body features - the number of scales around the middle of the body or along the belly and tail, or the configuration of the scales on the head, or the nature of the individual scales - characteristics that can only be observed if the snake is in hand.

2. Where up-close examination of a snake is not feasible, this guide asks for some basic information (approximate size, dominant colour(s), location, etc) and presents the user with a series of photographs of species likely to be encountered at the location where the observation was made, and that can roughly match the few characters observed.

3. To a specialist familiar with them, subtle differences in body form (i.e. slender or heavy build, narrow neck, broad head) will often allow the recognition of a snake species at a glance, or the colour or pattern alone may be quite distinctive and diagnostic.

4. The user is then invited to work through the gallery of potential species to find the one (or more) that most closely resembles the snake observed.

5. Australia boasts a rich snake fauna of about 180 species of land snakes, with a further 36 species of venomous sea snakes in its surrounding oceans.

6. The 47 worm-like blind snakes (Family Typhlopidae), with their unformed eyes and nearly always a distinctive blunt spiny tip to their tails, are also instantly recognisable as a group, but immensely difficult to identify to species without the aid of a microscope.

7. Today an increasing number of species - of snakes and other animals - are being identified on genetic grounds by comparing the DNA of specimens from a range of localities.

8. But whenever you end up with two or more "possibles" at the end of an identification session, then do as suggested in the absence of a specimen - work through the gallery of remaining "possibles" to find the one that most closely resembles the snake in hand.

9. Some groups of snakes, such as the seven (7) different kinds of death adders that occur throughout continental Australia, share a distinctive shape and form of tail, and are instantly recognisable.

10. Consequently the ease and accuracy of identifying an Australian snake depends on being able to closely examine the finer details of its physical characteristics.

11. Information about other features of these species (their habits and habitats) can then be used in an attempt to eliminate as many species as possible from the list of 'possibles'.