The Papuan White Snake (Micropechis ikaheka) is known to be very dangerous. There is no antidote for the poison that comes from the Papuan white snake.

Papuan white snake (Micropechis ikaheka) commonly known as the Papua -eyed snake or Ikaheka snake, is a highly venomous elapid, the only species in the genus Micropechis. The holotype was collected at Doré on the Vogelkop of West Papua Indonesia, and described in 1829, by the naturalist on board the French Navy vessel La Coquille, ship’s surgeon René Primevère Lesson, in a volume of the three-year circumnavigation (1922-1925) by Louis Isidore Duperrey, captain of La Coquille. Lesson’s holotype is housed in the collection of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle. The Papuan white snake (Micropechis ikaheka) is endemic to West Papua Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

Papuan white snake (Micropechis ikaheka) can be divided into three separate groups based on the color of the scales, i.e. Black, Brown and Yellow. Papuan white snake is common and has a relatively wide distribution in New Guinea, but each group has a specific and limited area of distribution. According to the most generally accepted classification, the yellow population is the subspecies of M.i. ikaheka with the distribution throughout the Vogelkop region, including Salawati Island in north-western Papua.

The brown group with dorsal banding pattern inhabits Yapen Island in northern Papua, and most of the New Guinea mainland: northern, southern and central region to Papua New Guinea. Surprisingly, an intermediate color appears between both groups (sub-species) in southwest Vogelkop, Tanah Merah, lowland forest of Bintuni, plus a black group from Batanta and Waegeo Island. The intermediate individual might indicate the Bintuni as the hybrid zone of M.i. ikaheka from the Vogelkop region with M.i. fasciatus from the other regions. Yellow group is distributed starting from Manokwari, Sorong, up to the islands of Salawati, Batanta and Waigeo.

Scales of various shapes and sizes cover the skin of Micropechis ikaheka. The number, arrangement, size and shape of the scales vary greatly from one species to the other, but they are genetically fixed.