Aurora House Snakes
Lamprophis aurora
If there is a more charming snake than the diminutive Aurora House snake, I don’t know what it is, and I’ve worked with a lot of snake species over the last fifty years! These shy, gentle snakes are not well-known in the hobby, certainly not as commonly kept and bred as other species of African House Snakes. But they are well-worth the effort to track down and add to a collection, or to simply keep as an unusual pet.
Adult male Aurora House Snake
Aurora House Snake with damp moss and cork bark hide.
About This Project
I really like little snakes, and House Snakes are among my favorites. I first saw live Aurora snakes in 1995 at the Mid-Atlantic Reptile Show (MARS) and fell in love with them. A couple of years after that I began to work exclusively with Green Tree Pythons (Morelia viridis), and moved away from colubrid snakes. Since rekindling my early affection for colubrids I’ve kept my eye out for Auroras. To my great delight I was able to obtain a young adult male in 2025 at Colubridfest, an all-colubrid symposium and show held in Fort Wayne, Indiana that year.
These beautiful snakes are quite spectacular as hatchlings, having each scale tipped in yellow and giving a very speckled appearance. The orange dorsal stripe is evident and is retained into adulthood, even as the speckled appearance gives way to a solid moss-green adult. I’ll be on the lookout for more of these and hope to establish a little breeding group. But even having one in the collection is a joy!