Acquisition
I will be honest. This was a species that I had never looked at twice, despite having encountered them in the wild several times during my travels across North Africa.
This changed in 2011, during which year I placed an order on a fairly large import of snakes from Egypt by Dan Fryer and, seeing a rare species I desperately wanted to keep on the exporter’s list, Coluber sinai (the old name for Platyceps sinai, a type of tiny, very colourful but little known Sinai whip snake), I placed an order for five specimens on the off chance that some would come through.
As it happened, the day the consignment arrived and we opened up the crates, there was indeed a cloth bag labelled ‘Coluber sinai’ for me, however as I lifted it, I felt the heavy weight of a ball of large snakes inside and, knowing the whip snakes I was after only grow to about 50cm, I wondered what was inside. When I opened the bag I was disappointed to see, not the stunning black, white and coral pink of Platyceps sinai, but the familiar browns and beiges of five bad-tempered and hissy diadem snakes glowering balefully back up at me.
Of course confronted with this wonderful group, I immediately fell in love.
Even through the disappointment of not receiving any Platyceps sinai (which was always a long shot as they are hard to find), I was struck by how beautiful these big, grumpy brown snakes were - in their own way - and was suddenly pleased at the prospect of a ‘consolation prize’ as it were.
This actually turned out to be a very fortuitous turn of events, as my new group of diadem snakes proved to be extremely hardy snakes; easily acclimated, aggressive feeders and willing breeders. My 2.3 group was later augmented by a third male courtesy of David Willis in 2013 and an unsexed pair of captive bred babies gifted to me by Lorenzo de Roo in 2017.
In 2024, the situation has not changed much and most Diadem snakes available for sale will be wild caught. As imports of wild reptiles have declined, so has availability of this species but a trickle of specimens does enter the pet hobby each year, mostly from Egypt. There are also captive bred specimens very rarely available, but Clifford’s diadem snake is less common as captive bred than the more attractive and sought after Royal diadem snake (Spalerosophis atriceps), which is more often available as captive bred.