baby snake survival

[marisa]

I don't know much about wild snakes aside from what I see on TV, and the little I learned growing up in California around wild kings....maybe someone can enlighten me

How the heck do baby snakes make it in the wild? Let's just say corns....out of say 20 eggs how many would survive? Less than half I'd think....but how do those little ones that do make it..make it? What does a snake that small find and eat in the wild? I know lizards are a fav but from all my almost new born snake babies I have had they seem totally unable, even in the wild, to find food on their own. I can't imagine how they do it. Anyone have good links or books or thoughts?

Marisa

[tightsqueeze]

i would think little bugs and insects for the first part of there life....?????just a guess!

[J_Riley]

Black racers are insectivorious as neonates and juveniles. They actually actively forage for crickets and grasshoppers. They raise up the first third of their body and bend over tall grasses to see if anything jumps off, then they chase it down. As they get older, they change from crickets to fence lizards and eventually anything they can find that they can overpower.

"typical" rodent eaters will stay underground a lot, maybe go a month or more before they stumble onto a nest of mice. And not pet trade mice, but species like oldfield mice or deer mice, which vary in size from smaller than a petstore mouse to larger.

I have no hard, fast figures, but Ecological principles say that the larger the clutch size, the high the mortality rate.

And for every hatchling snake, there are hatchling lizards, baby mice, nestling birds etc.

[Lisa]

Fortunetly for the snakes, they don't have to eat as often as a mammal.