What Snake is This?

[Texas Star]

finesse_r, Spread natter? Do you mean spreading adder, or correctly, a Hog-nosed snake, that spreads a hood like a cobra? If so, they are harmless, they don't bite, but they will strike. The funny thing is that they strike with their mouth closed. It's all a big bluff, it's how they scare away predators. If you continue to bother them, they play dead and roll over on their back. You can turn them over and they will roll back over on their back again. We used to play with them when we were kids.

Hog-nosed snake is correct. "Spreading adder" is misleading, as "adder" is a British term for what we call vipers. There are none in the USA, naturally. We do have pit vipers, a snake that uses facial pits to sense presence of prey even in darkness. These include rattlesnakes (many species and sub-species), water moccasins, and copperheads.

Offhand, I can't think of any true vipers in the Americas. They're Old World species.

Why did pit vipers evolve here? Good question. As for rattlesnakes developing rattles to warn off large herbivores, why didn't that happen in Africa, where equally large or larger animals in herds roam the savannahs?

There is an African snake called a Puff Adder (Bitis arietans), but it is absolutely not our "spreading adder." It is quite dangerous and probably accounts for most African human deaths from snakebite.

This hog-nosed pseudo adder has a hood to spread. That 's normally a feature of elapid snakes like cobras, not of vipers. The only elapid snake here is the Coral snake, present in two genera. Small, but if it bites, very dangerous. They remind me of New World kraits. (Real kraits are Asian.)The spreading adder does remind me a little of the Cape Coral snake in South Africa, although the latter is a dangerous elapid. It doesn't look at all like our colorful coral snakes.

Oh: some sources say that Cleopatra committed suicide via an adder. I think that was a mistranslation. She almost surely used an Egyptian cobra, Naja haje, which was often used to execute Egyptian nobles who were condemned. Bite by cobra is less painful and much quicker than from most adders/vipers. This species ranges throughout most of sub-Saharan Africa; it is not limited to Egypt.

 

[BigBill]

I hate snakes. The black water snakes scare me when I'm fishing.

 

[Roadtrash]

Come on fellas, snakes are our friends. I never kill any of them just take my stick that I use for hiking and move them out of my way.

 

[TLflag]

Snakes

I keep telling my wife, would you like to watch the snake, or what he has been eating. I think the snake is more interesting.

 

[model70hunter]

Ring neck. Small little fellows.

When my bro was about 5 he brought a double handful of these home in his shorts zipper pocket.

IT was laundry day, mom told us to hand over our shorts.

Mom dumped my pockets on the floor. She then dumped lil bro's pockets.

I never knew that a full grown woman can scream in excess of 120 DB for the entire time both her feet are off the floor. She was airborne for a while, I think she almost made it to the ceiling.

I also did not know that a full grown womans arm can swing a flyswatter fast enough to mimic a chopper blade. You can hear it, you see a slight shadow of the path and one can hear the whop whop sound as it contacts the rear.

For you softies, no snakes were hurt in the above incident. My brother did walk with a slight limp for a day or so.

 

[vigil617]

What kind of snake is it, you ask?

It's the kind that won't be bragging to his buddies about what happened to him last night.

 

[gregintenn]

You guys must have some monster spiders to catch a snake in their web.

That was the first thing to cross my mind as well. I'd be more concerned about the spider than the snake!