Les Jones

Science > Friday Snake Blogging

I got home from the furniture store Saturday and my wife told me our dog Shorty had caught a snake. Shorty had dropped it and it seemed to be dead. When we went to where the dog had left the snake it was gone. Shorty found the snake again and caught it. As soon as she dropped the snake it appeared to be dead again, and I took that picture. When we returned later the snake was gone again, having successfully played possum twice. (The fact that the snake coiled itself up and buried its head should have been a clue.)

The snake Shorty caught was almost certainly a black rat snake. LATER: I was wrong. It's almost certainly a king snake.

Playing possum is a pretty common strategy among non-venomous snakes. I saw the same behvaior at the Southwestern Research Station in Arizona in shovelnose snakes, which would keel over when you got near them in the field. Hognose snakes do the same, according to my book.

Venomous snakes are more likely to show aggressive defensive behavior. At the Schaefer Ranch in New Mexico we ran across lots of rattlesnakes. The ranch owner encouraged us to kill them, but we only killed the ones we found in our permanent camp and study sites.

In two summers I killed three rattlers using a shovel to sever the heads. The odd thing is that the jaws and fangs still open and close after the head is removed from the body. We'd cover the head with a rock so we wouldn't stumble across it later. Shortly after returning from my first trip out west I saw a Western where an actress shot a big rattlesnake with her Winchester and immediately hoisted the reptile into the air. Don't believe it. That snake would have bitten anyone foolish enough to do that. Snakes don't die that easily.