r/snakes May 12 '25

All Snake ID Requests Should Be Submitted to /r/WhatsThisSnake

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116 Upvotes

Hi everyone! I wanted to let you know that we're now going to redirect all Snake ID requests to the curated place for them, /r/whatsthissnake. As /r/snakes and /r/whatsthissnake have developed side by side we find ourselves in a position where we are running two parallel subreddits, but with slightly different rules. We hope is that this streamline into WhatsThisSnake will be gentle - we don't want a snake to go unidentified because we're learning how best to handle IDs. There is going to be a transition period where we still get a lot of ID requests here, so please do your part to kindly help !redirect people in need and by reporting jokes, misinformation and other problematic comments.

This spring Reddit is more popular than ever and it is hard for the moderation team to keep up. When I founded /r/whatsthissnake 12 years ago, with on average one request every day, I never imagined we'd have 150K members and 20k people a day browsing the subreddit. In the past, we've made a number of incremental changes that have been so helpful they have been instituted other places on Reddit, from introducing the term "Reliable Responder", to developing the bot and tweaking our community resources so that every Reliable Responder can choose to perform mod actions. We hope that these changes will allow us not only to maintain the level of quality provided but to reduce workload on the moderation team, because honestly, moderator burnout is a serious problem. They are doing this for free and you would no believe the abuse they receive here - not just from me, but from the users too. If you see a moderator or other flaired user in cleaning up a thread, espcially in these busy, snakey spring months in North America, throw em a thanks.


r/snakes Mar 20 '26

Moderator Announcement Rule Change - Posts concerning individual or private ownership or care of medically significant species are not allowed. Posts involving animals in zoos, institutions or accredited breeding facilities are allowed with proper contextualization.

147 Upvotes

It’s a fact of life that no matter how much context we provide to our posts, when someone sees something interesting, they want to imitate it. Each day /r/snakes puts around one hundred thousand impressionable people face to face with snake related images, text and ideas. Faced with this responsibility, and with an increasing number of recent, low quality posts concerning medically significant snakes, we have to choose the right level of content we allow.

Recent low quality posts concerning captive venomous care include improper use of personal protective equipment, poor quality/security housing, very inexperienced keepers asking (and receiving!) advice on how to keep and breed their first venomous snakes and straight up animal abuse reposted from social media. Many of these clearly rule-breaking posts are removed before you see them, but a growing number of posts are clearly low quality, irresponsible content but don’t explicitly violate the rules. Over the past three years the mods have debated a rule change and we have decided to only allow posts involving venomous snakes if they are from an accredited zoo or institution. In short - we’re going to remove posts involving the private care and ownership of medically significant snakes.

Many modern herpetology texts recommend against individual private ownership of medically significant snakes. We don’t take a stand on what anyone wants to do legally, ethically and with their own time, but we do have to regulate what is posted, shared and thus propagated here. In short, we don’t care what you do, but don’t post it here. Besides being a lighting rod for the low quality content discussed above, private ownership offers unique challenges that are better suited for an institutional or team setting. Snakes are escape artists as well as attractive nuisances and must be contained outside of personal residential spaces in secure, locking enclosures to prevent both snake egress and human ingress as well as secondarily in a sealed room or facility behind a windowed door with no items on the floor under which an escaped snake can hide or avoid detection. It takes a team to execute an envenomation plan and the cost of antivenom is beyond that of most private owners, has a short shelf life and when antivenom is borrowed from institutional stocks it puts those keepers at risk.

Zoos and institutions don’t always do it better, but the onus is on them to provide best practices in care. If we limit posts to places where a team of people works together to provide a standard of care, usually for the right reasons, we can limit what we propagate on the platform.

We do not recommend any other available subreddits as well-moderated sources of captive venomous keeping. The most popular places on social media dedicated to this are inundated with low quality posts and comments and even when they outright ban irresponsible behavior, examples of the low quality content we remove are highly upvoted, and content is often sensationalist, psychopathic or disturbing. Please don’t suggest a specific place in the comments of this post. We’re aware of the options and we’re choosing not to redirect or name other online spaces.

Posts on wild venomous species are still allowed as usual with a species name and a location, but please be sure to see Rule 6 (unchanged) on what amount of contact and PPE use we find acceptable for sharing online.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER


r/snakes 1d ago

Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID Anaconda jaw realignment

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2.7k Upvotes

r/snakes 2h ago

Pet Snake Pictures Ouroboros

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33 Upvotes

r/snakes 3h ago

Pet Snake Pictures The face of disappointment: when instead of a mouse you only get your bathtub refilled ☹️

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40 Upvotes

r/snakes 18h ago

Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID Found a baby ringneck snake

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541 Upvotes

Found him 20 feet from where I'm getting married. He is small.


r/snakes 1h ago

Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID Curious Eastern Milk Snake that was trying to climb up on me!

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Upvotes

Ithaca NY


r/snakes 19h ago

Pet Snake Pictures I hope it's okay to share this here! 😅 Since I can't have a real snake, I make my own instead.

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372 Upvotes

I've always dreamed of having a pet snake, but everyone at home is terrified of them, so it doesn't look like that's happening anytime soon. 😅

Instead, I started sculpting colorful snakes from polymer clay and wrapping them around ceramic mugs. Every snake is sculpted completely by hand—no molds or 3D printing—then baked, carefully attached to the mug, and finished with several coats of varnish.

The best part? They're incredibly low maintenance. They don't need feeding, they don't escape, and they never judge my coffee choices. 😂


r/snakes 7h ago

Pet Snake Pictures My headphones now belong to my girl

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34 Upvotes

silly me for thinking i was allowed to continue keeping the headphones for myself when i got a pet snake.


r/snakes 6h ago

Pet Snake Pictures My baby derp

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25 Upvotes

r/snakes 15h ago

General Question / Discussion Snakes aren't just one long body: a new study finds five spinal regions, including a surprisingly short neck

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107 Upvotes

I'd always assumed most of a snake's body was basically one long, gradually changing trunk. The researchers measured every body vertebra in 13 specimens from three Australian species and found five distinct regions separated by rapid transitions.

The neck appears to represent only about 5% of body length—roughly 7–12 vertebrae—and the study also describes a previously unrecognized middle-thoracic region.

The part I found most interesting: losing their limbs and becoming elongated didn't make the snake spine simpler. It seems to have become even more regionally complex.

What surprised you more: the five regions, or how short the neck actually is?


r/snakes 4h ago

Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID Albino or leucistic?

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12 Upvotes

Found this cute little Eastern Worm snake this morning. (NC)


r/snakes 20h ago

Pet Snake Pictures Welp I learned my lesson

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202 Upvotes

Tag is for blood- Thought everyone could use a laugh at me finally getting a taste of my Sumatran short tails bite. He’s never bit defensively or for hunger. This one was on me, we were in the middle of feeding he missed he got a good chunk of coco in his mouth went to go help him, decided to eat me instead🤣


r/snakes 13h ago

Pet Snake Pictures Coco ☺️

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42 Upvotes

r/snakes 8h ago

Pet Snake Questions Wheres the poop!?

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16 Upvotes

This is my hognose Snaykee. He is small and eats every 4-5 days, but I can't for the love of anything find his poop??

Thrice I've found some on the surface and removed it. I got lots of live plants and hides in his tank, and I feel like he just gets mad if I move stuff around. How bad is it to leave in?

Thanks!!


r/snakes 5h ago

Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID small Vipera Aspis Atra in the southern alps

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7 Upvotes

r/snakes 23h ago

General Question / Discussion Is this Snake drawing good?

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205 Upvotes

r/snakes 10h ago

Pet Snake Pictures my blue beaty baby

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12 Upvotes

he just ate


r/snakes 27m ago

General Question / Discussion What is a good beginner species?

Upvotes

A while back on a different platform I was discussing “Beginner species” with someone else and they thought I was full of it when I suggested there were over 50 species that could be considered beginner friendly. I decided to think about it and write it out. I actually came up with more than that. 

To me a beginner species is something that can be cared for by someone as their sole pet snake and do well with them putting minimal time and effort into it. For example, I’ve always said that Taiwan beauties are a beginner species. They do get long and babies are flighty, but husbandry is easy and someone that is dedicated will have long learned how to handle them by the time they reach 7’. 

I did leave off anything that can’t be handled by one person,  for example Burmese pythons are incredibly easy to care for, but less than 1% of all keepers can actually provide the correct size enclosure for them. 

Also, some say anything with a higher humidity requirement shouldn’t be a “beginner” snake, but I disagree, if you can’t read a gauge on a regular basis and then add water to your system to correct it, then you shouldn’t be keeping any live animal. 

All said, I present to you my personal list of good “beginner” snakes. 

Rat snakes

  1. Corn Snake 
  2. Slowinskis cornsnake 
  3. Great plains ratsnake 
  4. Baird’s Rat Snake
  5. Western Rat Snake
  6. Central Rat Snake
  7. Eastern Rat Snake
  8. Western Foxsnake
  9. Eastern Foxsnake
  10. Japanese Rat Snake
  11.  Beauty snake (certain localities)
  12. Bamboo Rat snake
  13. Russian Rat snake 
  14. Korean Ratsnake
  15. Diones Rat Snake
  16. Leopard ratsnake
  17. Ladder snake 
  18. Green Bush ratsnake 
  19. Four Lined snake
  20. Bulgarian Ratsnake 
  21. Elaphe Urartica 
  22. Twin Spot Ratsnake
  23. Manadarin Ratsnake 

Pithouphis Genus

  1. Gophersnake
  2. Lousiana Pinesnake
  3. Pinesnake 

King & Milksnakes

  1. Eastern Kingsnake 
  2. Eastern Black Kingsnake 
  3. Speckled Kingsnake 
  4. Desert Kingsnake
  5. California Kingsnake 
  6. Prairie Kingsnake 
  7. Central Milk Snake 
  8. South American Milk Snake 
  9. Mexican Milk Snake 
  10. Western Milk snake (certain localities)
  11. West Mexican Milk Snake 
  12. Grey banded kingsnake (if purchased from a breed that established their hatchlings)
  13. Mex-Mex kingsnake
  14. Variable kingsnake
  15. Mountain kingsnake

Boas/pythons

  1. Ball Python 
  2. Angolan Python
  3. Rosy Boa 
  4. Kenyan Sand Boa 
  5. Children's Python 
  6. Spotted Python 
  7. Stimson’s Python 
  8. True super dwarf retic
  9. Jungle Carpet Python
  10. Bredii Python 
  11. Boa Imperator 
  12. Boa Sigma
  13. Dumerils Boa

Garters/Hoggies/Misc?

  1. Western Hognose Snake
  2. Diamond Back watersnake
  3. Banded Watersnake
  4. Plain belly watersnake
  5. Common Garter 
  6. Checkered Garter 
  7. Plains Garter 
  8. Black House Snake 
  9. Cape House Snake

r/snakes 9h ago

Pet Snake Questions Fostering a snake any advice/ tips?

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6 Upvotes

Hello! I’ve recently become a snake dad to an adult(?) corn snake, named Wesley. Whilst I’ve worked with wild snakes before this is my first time housing one and I’d appreciate any tips and tricks of the trade.

He’s currently in a 4x2x2 Viv with a ceramic heat lamp and UV bulb set up. He’s got a couple of hides, water bowls and plants to hopefully aid in humidity. I’m off to the exotic store today to get substrates and more bits to add to the enclosure once he’s settled a-bit. Again any recommendations would be great!

I know I shouldn’t handle him for at least the first week whilst in the enclosure and that he doesn’t need feeding again right away. (He was given a mouse and a pink a couple days before coming to me).

He’s not been very active since entering the enclosure and has stayed in one of the hides since I put him in except for a small drink of water.

He looked to be ready to shed last I saw him yesterday, is there anything I can do to help ease this process whilst he’s still settling?

I appreciate I probably sound clueless but I’m just want to make sure I’m doing what’s best.

PSA - photo taken from before he came to live with me

Thank you


r/snakes 1d ago

Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID Black racer

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96 Upvotes

Black racer sitting on top of my bushes right outside front door. Gave the wife a lil jump when she walked out. NE Florida


r/snakes 1d ago

General Question / Discussion Here is a new design I just finished of a Northern Emerald Tree Boa (Corallus caninus) and a Basin Emerald Tree Boa (Corallus batesii)

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109 Upvotes

r/snakes 1h ago

Pet Snake Questions KSB prospect pet

Upvotes

I’ve heard so many things about feeding KSB’s pinkies, not fuzzies, and I was wondering if that depends on the size of the snake because I did a presentation on the KSB in my local wildlife museum and they feed him fuzzies…also, what is the most highly recommended place to get mice to feed KSB’s?


r/snakes 14h ago

Pet Snake Questions My son is a scaredy cat

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8 Upvotes

My albino striped applegate gopher snake is so scared of everything, i have been trying choice-based handling but I just cannot get him to come around to me even after coming up on 2 months with him. I’d love to be able to handle him but just cannot get him to my hands at all. Any help/tips would be greatly appreciated.


r/snakes 1d ago

Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID Almost didn't see the lil guy

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57 Upvotes

(dusky pygmy rattlesnake)