The Green Tree Python, Morelia viridis, (previously Chondropython viridis) hails from the rainforests of New Guinea and the extreme Northeast of Australia (Cape York) including many of the outlying Islands, where they occur from sea level to 6000 ft.

They can generally be found amongst the epiphytic plants on trees in tropical rainforest, monsoon forest, and in dense shrubs, bushes, vines or bamboo thickets. In such surroundings they completely blend with their environment, their coloration effecting near invisibility. As babies when they hatch from the egg they are normally a bright lemon yellow colour with brown or red blotches and stripes, or sometimes orange to red with white or yellow blotches and stripes.

The tip of their prehensile tail is generally black in colour and is used by juveniles as a caudal lure, to do this they sit in their usual position of draped concentric coils on a horizontal branch with their head looking down, from the middle of their coils they lower the tip of their tail, and whilst keeping their head and body totally motionless the tail tip starts wriggling ' like a worm in distress', this helps them to attract small lizards and frogs who believe they have seen their next meal. Instead much to their surprise they become the next meal! Occasionally I have seen adults use this technique, but generally it is a tactic used by juveniles.

This juvenile coloration generally turns to the vivid green of the adults in their first or second year of life. This change of colour can occur over a period as short as a week or may take many months to complete. Adults can be very variable in colour, from light yellow green through to bright emerald green, with blue or white scales forming various patterns of stripes, spots or bands across their backs. Some specimens can even remain largely yellow as adults.

As their name suggests Green Tree Pythons live a mostly arboreal life, rarely coming to the ground, prey is caught mostly by ambush and eaten whilst hanging from a branch. As adults they tend to reach a size of about 3 to 4 ft but can reach sizes of up to 7 ft. Their diet consists mainly of other reptiles, rodents and occasionally birds.

Usually Green Tree Pythons will become sexually mature in their 3rd or 4th year, females laying anywhere between 6 and 30 eggs which she will then coil around and incubate as all pythons do. The eggs will normally hatch anywhere between 45 and 65 days from which time they have to fend for themselves.