How Do You Know Whether Its a Rattlesnake?
This is non a scientific primal to identifying snakes constitute in California. It is meant to be used as a bones tool for not-experts who want to identify a serpent primarily by appearance and location.
Look Here First: Normally Encountered California Snakes (This list is based largely on emails that have been sent to me over the years asking me to help place diverse species of snakes.) There is an fantabulous take a chance you lot'll find your snake here, and you can skip the residue of this section.
For a brief overview of pictures of all of California'due south snakes, bank check our California Snakes Photograph Index.
Go along in mind that many species of snakes are like in appearance, and may be hard to tell apart.
Whatever species of ophidian can vary in advent, and our galleries practice not prove all possible variations of all species, so your snake might not lucifer our pictures exactly. Snakes of the same species don't ever have the verbal aforementioned color and pattern, though they do look like, so you need to also consider the body shape, the size, and the behavior of the ophidian. At that place can even be several color and pattern variations within one litter, and then y'all can't always utilise but those characteristics to identify them. The camera can sometimes change the color, too, depending on the light and the color of the groundwork.
Snakes tin also expect much different in motion than they do in still photos (where they are usually coiled up to fit in the moving-picture show.) When snakes move, the pattern and colors often alloy together making them difficult to observe accurately.
Frequently we but meet a part of a snake, which may not be enough information to identify it. In these cases, noting the location, habitat, and behavior may be helpful.
There is ever the slight chance that a snake yous find may not exist a native species or a known established alien species, it might be a feral pet, which is not depicted in this identification department. If you cannot discover a snake here, yous can besides wait at our page of Escaped Pets which lists some common pet herps which take been reported to me as found in the wild in California.
Maybe your snake is non a snake. See our list of animals sometimes mistaken for snakes below.
Important Observations To Make
In that location are several observations yous can make that volition help you to place a California ophidian.
Color and Pattern
Note the color and pattern - whether there are bands, stripes, blotches, spots, or the snake is apparently in color.
Recall that the appearance of well-nigh snakes will alter when they are moving, especially if they are moving quickly.The pattern will blur and your impression of the animal will non exist accurate plenty to identify it by appearance lonely.
Geographical Location
Many snakes occur only in certain parts of the state. Cheque our California Snakes Range maps page to observe out what snakes occur in your general area.
Habitat
Note where the snake occurs - desert, forest, mountains, marsh, in h2o, grassland, etc. Many snakes accept a preferred type of habitat within their range.
Size, Shape, and Texture
Look at the body and head - is the body slim and round or heavy and thick, and is there an obvious neck setting off the head from the body. Note if the scales are minor and smooth and shiny, or large and irksome.
Behavior
Notation how the snake moves, and how fast it moves, if information technology is climbing, hissing, making a rattling sound, and whether it is active during the day or at night.
General Categories
To brand them easier to identify, California snakes have been separated into the following general categories based on overall advent. (There is some overlap betwixt categories with some species, and some individuals have characteristics of more i category - some may take stripes and blotches, or no design and 1 band, etc.)
When y'all determine to which category the snake yous want to identify belongs, click on the link to expect at snakes in that category.
| Striped | Horizontal stripes lengthwise on the trunk. (Sometimes with blotches betwixt the stripes.) |  |  |  |
| Patternless | Unmarked. (Sometimes large scales look like a pattern.) |  |  |  |
| Banded | Bands circumvolve the body or end on the sides. (Sometimes the bands expect similar wedges.) |  |  |  |
| Patterned | Blotched, spotted, or saddled with night and light markings - without stripes or bands. |  |  |  |
| Rattlesnakes | Patterned, with spots and saddles. Big scales. Well-nigh ever with a rattle at the end of the tail. Rattles found at the finish of the tail. (Rarely, missing) Newborns frequently accept i noiseless rattle segment that is bright yellow. |  |  |  |
 |  |  |
Animals and objects that are sometimes mistaken for snakes
I have received email asking me to identify the post-obit animals and objects which were thought to be snakes.
 | The Legless Lizard is a lizard with no legs, and it looks very much similar a snake.Different a snake, it has eyelids. |
 | The Horsehair Worm or Gordian Worm (Nematomorpha or Gordiacea) is a long very slender worm that is unremarkably found in h2o. They are sometimes mistaken for a very sparse ophidian. There are no snakes as sparse as these worms except for small blind snakes or thread snakes and they only ocur in the southern part of the state and are not normally found in water. |
 | Western Skinks, especially brilliant-blue tailed juveniles, frequently await like snakes when their legs are not seen as they are moving speedily through grass or leaf litter. Sometimes the bluish tail is all that is noticed, and it is mistaken for a small-scale shiny blueish ophidian. The tail is easily broken off and when information technology breaks, it wriggles for several minutes, over again, looking very much like a lilliputian blue serpent. |
 © Allison Rowe | Land Planarian, genus Bipalium Land planarians are worm-similar creatures with a flattened head that eat earthworms along with slugs, insect larvae and other land planarians. Native to tropical and subtropical regions, they have spread around the world in potted plants. They motility and feed generally at night. They thrive in high heat and humidity, but they are enduring common cold temperatures and spreading through much of the U.South. because they can reproduce by themselves. |
 | Slender Salamander - This long, thin, pocket-size salamander is often mistaken for a worm or a ophidian when its tiny legs are not seen considering they wait like part of the background the salamander is standing on. The tail is also easily cleaved off. When the detached tail wriggles on the ground for several minutes it can be mistaken for a tiny snake. |
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| Alligator lizards sometimes constrict their legs forth the sides of their torso when they movement or when they remain still. Sometimes people retrieve they are looking at a ophidian when they don't run across the legs sticking out. | |
 | Toy Snakes and other Fakes I have received requests to identify pictures of modest unusually colored snakes that the lensman thought was either dead or not moving. In each case information technology was a safety or plastic toy snake. The toy snake shown to the left, was found beside a hiking trail, where information technology might have been left equally a applied joke. The person who sent the picture to me for identification was agape to get too close to the snake, so she was as well far to meet that it was not a real snake. From a distance some of these toys could fool almost anybody. (In West Texas, some practical-joke-loving snake hunters make their own simulated snakes and put them in places that snake hunters search at night with spotlights to fool them. Other herpers put out rubber snakes on roads or line upward rocks to await likes snakes to make other nighttime drivers stop.) |
Encounters with dangerous snakes
Always exist cautious of a serpent if you don't know for certain that it is harmless.
Some snakes bear unsafe venom which can be harmful and even fatal to humans.
(Near of u.s. call these snakes poisonous, which is actually a misnomer, since they do not inflict damage when they are consumed. It is more accurate to call them venomous.)
The merely dangerously venomous native snakes found in California are the seasnake, which occurs in the ocean off southern California and is rarely encountered, and the rattlesnakes, which occur throughout the state and have a rattle on the end of the tail. Still, be enlightened that sometimes the rattle may be missing or broken off. The bite of non-dangerously venomous snakes, such every bit the Lyre Snake, may also cause a minor reaction in some people. Non-venomous snakes tin also cause a minor injury with their bite, especially if information technology draws claret and the wound is never disinfected.
Snakes do not aggressively assault humans. They attack just in self-defense or when feeding. If you observe a venomous snake, your best option is to leave it solitary. For your own condolement and safety, and the well-existence of the snake, try to avoid being bitten by any snake, including those that are non-venomous. If you want to have a dangerous ophidian removed from your property, contact someone in your surface area with experience in snake removal and re-location. At that place is no reasonable demand to kill any snake that is encountered, which ofttimes occurs due to our instinctive and emotional fearfulness of snakes. Snakes are a natural and necessary part of whatever healthy environment. They play an of import part in the nutrient chain, and can be peculiarly benign to humans when they consume and command rodent populations.
Ophidian Removal
If you call up you take a dangerous snake on you property, instead of trying to kill it, risking your own safety, and needlessly destroying an innocent wild animal, a ameliorate option is to have a professional come and catch and remove the snake. Some of them are free, but many of them accuse a fee.
You can find information virtually venomous snake removal and relocation along with a skilful listing of some of the venomous snake relocators in California at anapsid.org.
Source: http://www.californiaherps.com/identification/snakesid/snakes.id.html
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