Rainbow Serpent by various animal, insect, and plant species. The Carpet snake is considered a form that the Rainbow Serpent can take by the Walmadjari people. Furthermore, four snakes may have served as inspiration for the Rainbow Serpent. These include the Scrub or Amethystine python, the Taipan, and the File snake, each of which possesses a characteristic that was associated with the Rainbow Serpent, however the most likely inspiration for the Rainbow Serpent is speculated to be the Water python ("Liasis fuscus") In Queensland, a fossil of a snake was found, and they believe that it came from the prehistoric family of
Snake worship Laocoön and his two sons, Antiphantes and Thymbraeus. Another tradition states that Apollo sent the serpents for an unrelated offense, and only unlucky timing caused the Trojans to misinterpret them as punishment for striking the Horse. Olympias, the mother of Alexander the Great and a princess of the primitive land of Epirus, had the reputation of a snake-handler, and it was in serpent form that Zeus was said to have fathered Alexander upon her; tame snakes were still to be found at Macedonian Pella in the 2nd century AD (Lucian, "Alexander the false prophet") and at Ostia a bas-relief shows