Ethnoherpetology in Australia: a concise overview

Ethnoherpetology is the study of the relationships between humans and both reptiles and amphibians — in particular, the ways these animals are understood, classified, utilized, represented, and managed within cultural systems. In Australia, ethnoherpetology is inseparable from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ecological knowledge, oral traditions, subsistence practices, spirituality, and land management. Australian Indigenous mobs developed highly detailed understandings of snakes, lizards, turtles, crocodiles, and frogs over tens of thousands of years, embedding this knowledge within kinship systems, ceremonial law, seasonal calendars, medicine, and cosmology. Modern Australian herpetology increasingly recognizes that Indigenous ecological knowledge contributes substantially to zoology, conservation biology, and environmental management.