After spending a few hours hiking through the jungles of Bako National Park, we noticed a handful of people gathered around a tree. They’d spotted this stunning Sabah Pit Viper relaxing at eye level on a low-hanging branch. However, despite its beautiful appearance, this is a snake that you don’t want to get too close to.

Australia has its fair share of dangerous snakes, but interestingly, we don’t have any vipers. Our venomous snakes are all members of the Elapid family – meaning they generally have neurotoxic venom that targets the nervous system and can lead to paralysis. Vipers on the other hand have hemotoxic venom, affecting the victim’s cardiovascular system and blood pressure.

Either way, if you’ve managed to get yourself bitten by either an elapid or a viper, you’d best be on your way to the hospital quick-smart.

Having had some lunch, I came back to the tree a few hours later to see if the snake was still there. After five minutes of staring at a tree that I was sure must be empty, someone walked up and pointed out the viper, barely a metre away from me, in exactly the same spot that it had been earlier in the day.

The remarkable camouflage of this creature made me wonder just how many of these potentially deadly snakes we had obliviously walked past as we trekked through the rainforest.

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Sabah pit viper (Trimeresurus sabahi), Bako National Park, Borneo