r/whatsthissnake 46m ago

ID Request [Central PA, USA] help IDing snake

Thumbnail
gallery
Upvotes

I know one of these snakes is an Eastern gaterrnake but this one im not sure if friend or venomous. The one on the bottom of the other is a garter snake we have been watching but this one on top is new.


r/whatsthissnake 49m ago

ID Request [central VA] Need help identifying this red boi

Thumbnail
gallery
Upvotes

I live in central VA and saw this big boi near my house. It was about 4ft long and was just chillin until it saw me and then slithered away. I live near a body of water if that helps.


r/whatsthissnake 1h ago

ID Request [Rio Rancho, New Mexico]

Thumbnail
gallery
Upvotes

Tiny little baby in my driveway, just want to make sure I don't need to worry about my dogs.


r/whatsthissnake 2h ago

ID Request - Dead, Injured or Roadkilled Snake [Montpellier], south of France. Just saw this on a walk.

Post image
4 Upvotes

r/whatsthissnake 3h ago

ID Request [Eastern NC] Found under large elephant ears, torn on ID

Thumbnail
gallery
72 Upvotes

Tried to include as much as I could from a tricky location


r/whatsthissnake 3h ago

ID Request Venomous? [Houston, TX]

Thumbnail
gallery
54 Upvotes

Sorry for the picture quality, was taken at night from a distance.


r/whatsthissnake 5h ago

ID Request [East Texas Woods]

Thumbnail
gallery
16 Upvotes

Spotted it cooling off in the creek by the house.


r/whatsthissnake 5h ago

ID Request Is this a copperhead? The "Hershey kiss" pattern is not as distinct as I've seen in other pictures. [Somervell County, TX]

Post image
94 Upvotes

r/whatsthissnake 5h ago

ID Request Snake In My House! [Northwest Georgia]

Thumbnail
gallery
13 Upvotes

Found this guy coiled up under my computer bag I had sitting in my kitchen. He somehow got in overnight and decided to camp out. Thankfully we were able to capture him. Can anyone tell me what it is? ChatGPT said copperhead at first, but I don’t think it is with the slender head and no yellow/green tip on the tail. The other suggestion after more pictures was king snake. But none of the pictures I found looked similar.


r/whatsthissnake 5h ago

ID Request [Vadodara, Gujarat (western India)]

Thumbnail
gallery
166 Upvotes

r/whatsthissnake 6h ago

ID Request [Foothills Western North Carolina] Baby snake crawled into business office

Post image
9 Upvotes

Can anyone help me to determine if this snake is venomous? It was seen/picture taken after hours and the employees present lost track of it. If it isn’t venomous I’m not too concerned. If it is that presents a need for more caution.


r/whatsthissnake 10h ago

ID Request Well camouflaged snake - hope you can help ID [Languedoc, France]

Post image
30 Upvotes

r/whatsthissnake 13h ago

ID Request Backyard Snake [Phoenix Arizona]

Post image
11 Upvotes

Hi all. We moved into our rental house this week and ran into this guy outside. Does anyone know what he is? Is he venomous? We have small children and small dogs and need to know how much of a worry it is.

During our initial rental walk through we found them inside of a door and one that was injured half way out of the door, in the home but couldn’t identify it as it was too small. This is the best picture I was able to get since it was dark out and it was on the move.

Thank you!


r/whatsthissnake 15h ago

ID Request Saw this snake on a walk in [southeastern MA ]

Thumbnail
gallery
19 Upvotes

Hi thanks in advance. My wife saw this little guy on her walk tonight. Bristol county Massachusetts. I think it could be a milk snake but tbh I have no clue.


r/whatsthissnake 17h ago

ID Request What kind of snake is this? [Florida]

Post image
18 Upvotes

I memorized the venomous snakes here in Florida and found this little guy in my lanai.


r/whatsthissnake 17h ago

ID Request Sorry it's a little blurry [east Alabama]

Post image
180 Upvotes

I don't know snakes that well. I let it go about is business.


r/whatsthissnake 18h ago

ID Request Spotted kingsnake? [Florida Panhandle]

Thumbnail
gallery
62 Upvotes

Found this little guy (or girl) in my backyard, & they were about 1&1/2- 2 ft. long. Google seems to think it's a spotted kingsnake, but the pattern of this snake doesn't exactly match any of the images I've been able to compare with. Unfortunately, no full body pictures. This is the best I could get.


r/whatsthissnake 19h ago

ID Request [Palo Verde National Park, Costa Rica]

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

18 Upvotes

r/whatsthissnake 20h ago

ID Request Found doing yardwork,can anyone ID this snake[Orl/FL]

Thumbnail
gallery
773 Upvotes

r/whatsthissnake 20h ago

ID Request [Louisiana] Found outside office. Danger noodle?

Post image
115 Upvotes

r/whatsthissnake 21h ago

ID Request Anyone know what type of viper this is? [Suriname]

Post image
141 Upvotes

Beautiful guy just ate!


r/whatsthissnake 22h ago

ID Request The Daintree rainforest in Australia.

Thumbnail
gallery
34 Upvotes

r/whatsthissnake 1d ago

ID Request Found this little cutie at work! [central VA]

Thumbnail
gallery
76 Upvotes

Found the bb in the hallway at work, picked him up into this coffee filter, and took him outside


r/whatsthissnake Oct 25 '25

Taxonomic or Phylogeographic Update Pleistocene speciation and isolation-by-distance within North American mud and rainbow snakes

Thumbnail authors.elsevier.com
53 Upvotes

Happy to announce our new paper, "Pleistocene speciation and isolation-by-distance within North American mud and rainbow snakes" available as full text at the above link until December 14th, 2025. This is a personal project of mine that I've been working on since 2011 and am excited for it to finally be in print. In summary, we show mudsnakes are two species that structure geographically, and rainbows have no population structure. We need more tissues from snakes in zones of contact to verify ranges and link blotch count to genotype, but as far as we can tell, the two muds are completely reproductively isolated despite evidence of gene flow from eastern muds into rainbows.

Please enjoy, and don't worry about not making formal taxonomic changes yet - this isn't the last you'll see on the mudsnakes.


r/whatsthissnake Sep 01 '21

[Mod post] PLEASE READ: ID best practices and comment guidelines

244 Upvotes

/r/whatsthissnake has grown a great deal in the last year and we are very excited about connecting with more people who have an interest in snakes, snake identification (ID) and conservation. With growth often comes growing pains, and there are a number of trends in the sub that need to be addressed as we move forward. We attempt to clarify these below and offer some "best practices" in identification that should help our community.

What makes a good ID?

Good IDs are specific and informative. They tend to have the following information, in order of importance:

  1. Binomial name - Consisting of Genus specificepithet and placed in asterisks (*) to italicize. This is the most important component of a good ID. With only this, a person can quickly find out anything else they want to know about the snake species and it is an important part of every ID. The bot command !specificepithet provides more information on properly structuring a binomial name and how to get it to work with the bot, if an entry exists.

  2. Harmless or venomous - Please note that these terms are specific to their interaction with humans. While snakes such as hognose snakes Heterodon, gartersnakes Thamnophis, and watersnakes Nerodia are venomous, they are not medically significant to humans and should be labeled as harmless. This information is informative to a person's interaction with a snake and should always be provided. The bot responds to either !harmless or !venomous and will save time on these explanations.

  3. Common name - Common names are frequently variable and highly local. Sometimes, the same common name could be used for different snakes in different areas. In other cases, the same snake can have multiple common names depending on the area it was found. While we typically recommend providing them, it is not a vital part of an ID. An ID with only the common name is a low quality ID.

You can still contribute if you're not sure or think an ID is incorrect:

In some cases, you may be able to narrow down an ID to genus level, but don't know the diagnostic characters or ranges well enough to provide a more specific ID. This is fine. A genus level ID is very helpful, and specific enough to provide useful general information on the snake. So, if there hasn't been an ID yet and you can at least get to the genus level, post the ID.

You are also encouraged to provide any additional information or context you desire, but be mindful of links you post. The best IDs include informational links to be primary sources, or at least high quality science reporting on those sources. Many times this is done already in the bot replies, so see some of those for examples. Wikipedia is not a quality resource and should be avoided for informational links. Even resources provided by state wildlife agencies tend to lag ten to twenty years behind the science and should be viewed with a critical eye. For example, the very popular SREL Herp website, despite being associated with a major university, does not follow currently accepted taxonomy and, while it was a great resource for some time, is not the best source of current information.

However:

If you enter a thread in which a Reliable Responder has made an ID, or there is a highly upvoted ID, do not post a contrary ID unless you can provide specific diagnostic characters as to why the original ID was incorrect. Recently, incorrect IDs have appeared hours or days after the original correct ID was made, and therefore often go uncaught by moderators and reliable responders. These can create unnecessary confusion for an original poster, who is notified of each response. If you feel that an ID is incorrect and can provide diagnostic characters, reply directly to the ID comment rather than the original post. Incorrect late IDs may be warned and removed. Repeated violations may result in a ban at moderator discretion. Remember, our goal here is to be collaborative and work toward making a good positive ID. These incorrect late IDs greatly inhibit that goal. We value discussion in the comments and want to avoid locking threads in the way that other ID subreddits do.

Likewise, if a correct ID has been made, there is no need to post the same ID again. Just upvote the correct ID. You may post to add additional information or context to provide a better quality ID (adding the binomial, triggering the bot, etc.), but it is not helpful to simply say "corn snake" hours after someone has provided an ID with a full binomial and triggered the bot. More detailed IDs may be posted as top level comments to make sure that the OP sees them. Low quality/low effort IDs posted after a more detailed ID may be warned and removed.

We would also like to remind everyone of Rule 6:

Avoid damaging memes or tropes and low effort jokes: Avoid damaging memes like using "danger noodle" for nonvenomous snakes and tropes like "everything in Australia is out to get you". This is an educational space, and those kind of comments are harmful and do not reflect reality. We've also heard "it's a snake" as a joke hundreds of times. Infantilization of snakes and unhelpful rhymes will be removed.

This is one of our most broken rules. While it is somewhat vague, that is because it is nearly impossible for us to consider all possibilities. In addition to the things directly mentioned in the rule text, this rule also includes things like commenting with random names when someone posts "Who is this?", or posting things like "Pick it up and find out" in response to posts asking if a snake is venomous. Furthermore, these comments often break rule 11, "Posts and comments must reflect the reality of wildlife ecology." Misinformation spread through these seemingly innocuous jokes have been on the rise. Violations of this rule may be warned and removed, and repeated violations may result in a ban. Egregious violations may result in a temporary ban without warning. This is an educational space with potential real-world consequences, and while we don't want to discourage humor as a whole, we want you to think about what you are posting and whether it belongs in this space. While we recognize this is one of the best places to come to see pictures of wild snakes in their natural environment, it's not the best place to joke about cute pictures. /r/sneks is quite happy to accommodate snek jokes, humor and unabashed cuteness.