How to Identify the Aru Green Tree Python (Identification Guide)

Key identifying features

The Aru green tree python is a locality form of Morelia viridis from the Aru Islands southwest of New Guinea. It shares the universal green tree python traits: a laterally flattened body, strongly prehensile tail, and the habit of resting coiled over a branch with the head tucked into the center loop.

Coloration & pattern

Aru specimens are widely regarded among keepers as having some of the most vivid and heavily marked coloration of any locality, frequently showing dense scattered blue and/or yellow flecking across a bright green dorsal background. This flecking can be extensive enough to give a stippled or speckled appearance rather than a solid green back. The belly is pale yellow to white. As with all green tree pythons, hatchlings emerge in a bright yellow or red juvenile phase and transform to green over their first one to two years of life.

Head, eyes & scales

The head is large, triangular, and clearly set off from the neck, with heat-sensing pits visible along the lip line. Eyes are large with vertical pupils. Fine, smooth scales give the skin a glossy sheen that highlights the blue and yellow flecking characteristic of this locality.

Size & body shape

Adults generally reach 4 to 6 feet, with a slender, laterally compressed body typical of the species and a strongly prehensile tail used for gripping branches. Females tend to grow larger and bulkier than males.

Range & habitat where you'll see it

This locality form is native to the Aru Islands, a group of islands in the Arafura Sea near southwestern New Guinea. It occupies lowland rainforest and inhabits the forest canopy and understory vegetation rather than the ground.

How to tell it apart from look-alikes

The dense blue and yellow flecking often seen in Aru individuals is one of the more visually striking locality patterns within Morelia viridis, but pattern intensity varies between individuals and cannot be used alone to confirm origin without verified locality data. Green tree pythons as a species are distinguished from the unrelated emerald tree boa by range, head scale pattern, and heat-pit placement, and from Australian carpet pythons by their uniform green adult coloration versus the carpet python's blotched pattern.