The city of Bangkok is a wonderful place to find reptiles and amphibians, or “herps”. Minuscule narrowmouth frogs and blind snakes hide in the gardens while magnificent monitors and pythons roam the canals. If we make it a priority, these amazing animals will thrive alongside us in the city for the foreseeable future.
This website helps you identify the herps you find and learn more about their contribution to our ecosystem.
Use the pictures above or menu keys on the right to identify reptiles and amphibians in Bangkok. Click on the species group you’re interested in and you’ll see photos categorized by appearance.
Outside of Bangkok
Find something in another region of Thailand? I’m now building species pages for EVERY reptile and amphibian species in the country. Check out the following lists to see what species are present here and how to distinguish them from each other.
Conservation Worth Supporting
Here at Bangkok Herps we support conservation groups that further the interests of people and wildlife together. Some fantastic organizations working to do that are the Creative Conservation Alliance, Surviving Together, Health in Harmony, Batu Puteh Community Ecotourism Co-operative, and Lilok Farm. Check out their websites, support their initiatives, and let us know who else is promoting similar goals. These communities and the wild spaces around them will only prosper if we prioritize their future.
Latest “Herping Adventures” posts:
If you want to read stories about how to find these interesting animals, check out the Herping Adventures page.
- Our paper has been published!As you know we’re involved with projects in several countries. After nine years of hard work and trial, our paper… Read more: Our paper has been published!
- Keelbacks of ThailandKeelbacks are one of the most common and diverse snake groups in Thailand. Named for the ridges (keels) on their… Read more: Keelbacks of Thailand
- Asian Water Snakes of ThailandMany people will never see an Asian Water Snake due to their secretive lives in the muddy water of ponds,… Read more: Asian Water Snakes of Thailand
- Slug Snakes of ThailandThe Slug Snakes, also known as “Slug-eating Snakes”, are a family of small, secretive snakes found in moist regions of… Read more: Slug Snakes of Thailand
- Wart Snakes and Odd-scaled Snakes of ThailandToday I’m highlighting some of the strangest snakes you’ll find within our borders. Wart Snakes and Odd-scaled Snakes are two… Read more: Wart Snakes and Odd-scaled Snakes of Thailand
- Pythons, Sunbeam Snakes, and Pipe Snakes of ThailandEveryone is familiar with Thailand’s pythons. The Reticulated Python is a Thai legend, an enormous and beautiful snake that finds… Read more: Pythons, Sunbeam Snakes, and Pipe Snakes of Thailand
Take your time to explore the site. Happy herping!
All text information on this blog is © 2019 Jonathan Hakim, under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. The photos retain their individual copyright by photographer. Please ask for permission before using any photos from this site.
Reptiles and Amphibians of Thailand 
Dear Jon,
My name is Tom Greenhalgh and I am a researcher at the BBC Natural History Unit in Bristol, UK. I am currently working on a three part natural history series about Thailand and we would like to include the water monitors in Lumphini Park in our show if possible. I thought you might be able to help advise us please. I’ll summarise a few of my questions below if that is okay:
– Are there any particularly good spots for seeing these monitors in the park?
– Is feeding (e.g. on fish from the lake or scraps from people) commonly observed? If so, how often (daily)?
– is there are particularly good time of day for observing the monitors?
Also, I have been reading your blog and listening to a podcast interview about reticulated pythons in Bangkok’s waterways and canals. Are there any good spots where we are likely to see a large specimen? We really like the idea of featuring the fire department being out on a snake call to catch a large retic python and release it somewhere safe. How likely do you think it is to be able to achieve this? how much time do you think we will need? Our main worry is that the pythons are difficult to find and are seen at random throughout the city, making them very hard to film.
Thank you very much for taking the time to read this message. I would really appreciate any help and look forward to hearing from you.
Many thanks and best wishes,
Tom
Dear sir or miss I am asking permition to use your photo in my ICT project.
Reece wood.
Oh goodness, I’m already so in love with the herps in my area (Southeastern US). This is giving me a whole different world of reptiles to fall in love with! Thanks for the info and page 🙂
Hello! Your blog is very informative! I really enjoyed reading it. I will be in Bangkok for work but I have a single night to look around for frogs. Would you have any site/area/place to recommend with a high probability to see a few species?
Hi there
Fabulous blog. Yesterday in Penang we saw a baby water monitor that was so tame we pet him. We’re moving to Chiang Mai and will use the blog to see if we can find and identify. any cool creatures. Cheers
Thank you! Good luck in Chiang Mai. And be careful with even the little monitors – I have a nasty scar on my knuckle from when one took a bite out of me in Manila a few months ago. Was extremely careful with the clean-up and disinfecting, otherwise it could have been even worse.
At our hotel in Bangkok on the river we discovered a baby water monitor. It was stealing scraps under the tables at breakfast and hunting for earth worms on the edges of the lawn and in the bedding. At least thats what we think it was hunting. It was so small non of the other dinners noticed it. They are particularly lovely as babies and very intelligent with a good sense of smell. It only ever appeared at breakfast and dinner. I think the waiters new it was there as every time it saw one it vanished behind a post or ducked into the heliconias. I know they can swim pretty well but reckon it hitched a ride to the hotel on an island of floating pig weed as the river was full of it, more than I’ve ever seen. No more than a hatchling. Yes quite right never molest the wildlife, I get so tired of seeing idjiots on TV grabbing every snake they encounter. It’s just not the way for the viewer or the idjiot to observe snakes in the wild, making very poor natural history television. When I see a snake my reflex is to immediately retreat a few steps, this allows it to feel less threatened and mostly they will then advance happily. Then I watch it and mostly I always see it doing something interesting weather its hunting or going for a drink, laying eggs basking etc etc that’s what we want to see not some idiot strangling it. Only one time I hurried along a large fat puff-adder that had decided to lie in the sun on a hikers trail on the weekend, believe me I used a very long stick, it was no more than a twig in diameter but it worked, it huffed and puffed growing twice the size then left with a few gentle prods.
Beautiful observation!
Hi! I’m an adjunct professor at ChulalongkornUniversity, faculty of architecture, and I’m preparing a design studio, starting next semester, related to the urban wildlife in bangkok (looking at the city with a non anthropocentric perspective). It would be great if I could contact you to ask for some information, and maybe organizing a meeting with students. Could it be possible? Thanks in advance!
Thank you very much for your interest! I’ll be in touch.
Your blog looks really interesting, especially as it’s just helped me to identify a lizard. Do you have an option to submit photos?
Yes, I’ll use photos from anyone, although I don’t have a huge amount of time to update the site recently and there are only a couple species that I really need photos for. What species are you speaking of?
Ah, I see. I enjoy nature photography, although I’m no professional, so you’d be welcome to any of my photos. To be honest, they’d probably be more common species of lizards, and the odd dragonfly and damselfly. The problem is, I don’t know what the dragonfly and damselfly photos are of (except Common Clubtail).
You do take beautiful photos! Several of them would certainly be a great addition to my site. I’m on a speaking circuit right now and thus a bit too limited on time to add them, but I’ll keep it in mind and tell you when I have a bit of time to add a few.
Hey Matt, I finally got around to adding a couple of your pictures. The colors are vibrant. You can see on the Golden Tree Snake page (https://bangkokherps.com/2011/05/01/golden-tree-snake/) and the Indo-Chinese Forest Lizard page (https://bangkokherps.com/2011/09/20/indo-chinese-forest-lizard/) as well as the front page. Thank you!
Thanks!
I missed your message before. Glad you could use a couple of my photos.
Every now and then i find a snake or other herp i cannot identify. I now have a picture of snake to id. Who should i email it to? Give me address please. I live in Salaya, and work in Khao Yai N P a lot. Tkanks!
You can feel free to email it to me, I’ve sent you my email. But nowadays an even more effective method is to post it to iNaturalist.org. When you post it there you get a community of many people, some of them with more expertise than myself, who will identify whatever you have photographed.