About Protobothrops elegans (Gray, 1849)
This species, Protobothrops elegans (Gray, 1849), has the following scalation traits: 25 (sometimes 23) rows of dorsal scales at midbody, 179–192 ventral scales in males, 182–196 ventral scales in females, 63–90 subcaudal scales, and 8 (sometimes 7 or 9) supralabial scales. Between 1965 and 2011, 2447 snakebites from this species were reported, including one fatality. Geographically, this species occurs in the southern Ryukyu Islands of Japan, specifically the Yaeyama Islands. Its type locality is not known. Boulenger listed the type locality as "---- ?", while Gray's original 1849 description gave "West Coast of [North?] America." Stejneger proposed a restriction of the type locality to "Ishigaki-Shima [Ryukyu Islands, Japan]" in 1907.
