Need an ID

dframel · 05-07-13, 07:04 PM

This is the underbelly of a dark gray, 12 inch snake in my front bed. With children, I was a little concerned with the banding and color combination. Venomous? Neighborhood cat may have gotten to it since the head was missing. Houston.

smy_749 · 05-07-13, 07:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dframel

This is the underbelly of a dark gray, 12 inch snake in my front bed. With children, I was a little concerned with the banding and color combination. Venomous? Neighborhood cat may have gotten to it since the head was missing. Houston.

Have any other pics? I'm sure someone will be able to identify it (I cannot) , but it may help to reassure them if you have any others. What color was the body? (not the underbelly)

smy_749 · 05-07-13, 07:30 PM

Now its clear to me, after checking what you have in texas. Its a mud snake, dont worry about it.

dframel · 05-07-13, 07:54 PM

Thank you. In following up on your ID, it does in fact match the description of a young mud snake.

poison123 · 05-07-13, 07:57 PM

The patterns don't seem right for a md snake.

milk man · 05-07-13, 08:05 PM

It could be a broad-banded water snake (non-venomous). Its hard to tell from the pic.

StudentoReptile · 05-08-13, 06:45 AM

Not a mudsnake. It "looks" like some type of banded water snake (Nerodia sp).

Here in lies the horrible disadvantages of trying to ID an animal (herps especially) by general appearance alone. Pattern and coloration is very subjective; What is a "triangular head" to some may not appear that way to others. What if you came across a very dark, almost patternless cottonmouth?

There are proper ways to ID herps, and unfortunately the ways demand close inspection (scale counts, presence of pits, iris shape, etc.).

smy_749 · 05-08-13, 07:08 AM

I still think it looks like a mud snake :-P You said it yourself, the pattern can vary and it seems alot more vibrantly colored of a belly than your average banded water snake...Plus he saw it in person and said it matched the description, maybe the picture is just bad.

also about the patterning, it looks to be the tail end as he said the head was missing, and the tail pattern is a bit diff (broken up) occassionally no?

StudentoReptile · 05-08-13, 07:12 AM

I'm curious...how does it match the description of a mudsnake? For example, does it have keeled scales or smooth scales?

smy_749 · 05-08-13, 08:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by StudentoReptile

I'm curious...how does it match the description of a mudsnake? For example, does it have keeled scales or smooth scales?

When I touched my computer monitor, it was smooth on the picture. So I'm assuming it has smooth scales.

Sarcasm aside, the belly resembles, IMO more of a mudsnake than it does of a banded water snake. The OP said he googled mud snake and confirmed thats what he saw...So I'm just going on that.

Look at the tail of this: http://www.ca.uky.edu/forestryextens...snake-full.jpg

And tell me a banded water snake matches better than that...

StudentoReptile · 05-08-13, 08:44 AM

Google is the devil when it comes to Identifying snakes. For example, I just googled "mud snake" and went through the image search; I saw pictures of hognose snakes, scarlet kingsnakes, and indigo snakes in addition to pictures of mud snakes. Whose to say the OP was looking at the correct image?

Some mud snakes are axanthic and have no red. There are 7-8 different types of water snakes in the southeast, and most are a lot more common than any member of Farancia.

Personally, I've seen enough mud snakes and enough water snakes to disagree with you, but since neither of us have the snake in front of us to examine firsthand, there's no sense in arguing about it further.

All we have is a photo of a dead, headless snake where only we can see the ventral side. Besides that, all we have is the general location: Houston, TX. Given the data thus far, I still say it is a member of Nerodia, and not Farancia, simply based on the former is much more commonly encountered by humans and have more diverse habitats, whereas mud snakes are more secretive, and more specialized habitats.

StudentoReptile · 05-08-13, 08:45 AM

...but hey, believe what you want.

I'm going by science, not Google.

smy_749 · 05-08-13, 08:53 AM

Google is ok, if you know what your looking for already. But I guess the OP doesn't so good point. The picture is pretty bad too ....but I'm sticking with my choice because we wont' ever know if I was wrong or not anyways

If the OP comes back, take a detailed picture for us. The winner gets to keep the dead headless snake as a trophy.

StudentoReptile · 05-08-13, 09:13 AM

I prefer live ones.

And no, Google is NOT okay, even you "know" what you're looking before. I can even insert the full taxonomic name in the search field, and get varied results. By putting in a particular name (Ex: mud snake), you are skewing the results in your favor because every image that comes up will be tagged as mud snake. So any image you look at (if you are not intelligent), if you find an image that matches the appearance of your snake in question, you will automatically assume that identity is correct. Often it is not.

That is why it better to refer to an accurate field guide than to rely on what you "think" you know what the animal is, and let Google "rationalize" your judgment.

smy_749 · 05-08-13, 09:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by StudentoReptile

I prefer live ones.

And no, Google is NOT okay, even you "know" what you're looking before. I can even insert the full taxonomic name in the search field, and get varied results. By putting in a particular name (Ex: mud snake), you are skewing the results in your favor because every image that comes up will be tagged as mud snake. So any image you look at (if you are not intelligent), if you find an image that matches the appearance of your snake in question, you will automatically assume that identity is correct. Often it is not.

That is why it better to refer to an accurate field guide than to rely on what you "think" you know what the animal is, and let Google "rationalize" your judgment.

You can insert the full taxonomic name, and get varied results. That is why I said if you know what you are looking for. If you know what you are looking for, you will be able to seperate the results into relevant and not relevant ones. I'm not intentionally skewing results :P

Also, science is also not based on grainy bad quality pictures of headless snakes. In my opinion and I think are my disclaimers for when I'm wrong.

If you have a better idea of what it could be and have an accurate picture not from google, then post it and see if he thinks its a better match.

Also, we don't have mudsnakes where I'm from :-P so no I'm not speaking from experience, I'm just doing guess work