The dog-faced water snake, also known as also known as the New Guinea bockadam, South Asian bockadam, bockadam snake, is a mildly venomous, semi-aquatic snake known for its broad head and snout, resembling a dog’s face. It is greyish-brown with darker stripes with a white belly, a black line from eye to neck with eyes on top for spotting prey in brackish mangrove & estuarine waters. These Homalopsid (mud snakes) snakes are predatory specialists, eating fish and crustaceans, by ambush hunting and chasing them under water, on the tide line, and going after them by entering the various holes on the mudflats.

It is very common over all the coastal areas of Seberang Perai, its does “follow the tide” but sometimes get stranded on a receding tide. One of the rather odd observation probably first observed in the Teluk Air Tawar – Kuala Muda IBA is that waterbirds and shorebirds here practise interspecific kleptoparasitism (stealing food from other species) on the dogfaced watersnake, stealing their prey of mudskippers, shrimps, and other small animals and organism that got flush out of the coastal mudflats borrows by the snake.