Snake Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ snakes from around the world — with venomous status, family, range, size, habitat, and how to tell look-alikes apart.
Elegant Coral Snake
A tricolor coral snake of humid montane and lowland forests in eastern Mexico.
King Rat Snake
A large, powerfully built East Asian rat snake with strongly keeled scales, known for its yellowish crossbanding and its role as a natural predator of venomous snakes.
Eastern Rat Snake
A large, glossy black constrictor common across the eastern U.S., often seen climbing trees or barn rafters in search of rodents and birds.
MacDowell's Sea Snake
A rarely documented sea snake from the Bay of Bengal region, named in honor of a herpetologist who studied elapid snakes.
Dwarf File Snake
A small African file snake with rough, keeled scales, named for its diminutive size relative to its larger relatives.
Mertens' Coral Snake
A South American coral snake honoring herpetologist Robert Mertens, found in the dry western forests of Ecuador and Peru.
Dwarf Pipe Snake
A tiny, rarely seen fossorial snake from Southeast Asia representing one of the most poorly known snake families in the world.
Bogert's Coral Snake
A rare, range-restricted Mexican coral snake named for herpetologist Charles Bogert, found only along the Oaxacan Pacific coast.
Bogert's Garter Snake
A montane garter snake from the highlands of Oaxaca, named after herpetologist Charles Bogert.
Cope's Garter Snake
A highland garter snake from the Valley of Mexico, named after the prolific 19th-century naturalist Edward Drinker Cope.
Carib Coral Snake
A coral snake of Trinidad and northern Venezuela, marked with bold tricolor rings along its slender body.
Conant's Garter Snake
A garter snake from the highlands of southern Mexico named in honor of herpetologist Roger Conant.
Mexican Yellowbelly Brown Snake
A small, secretive brown snake from southern Mexico distinguished by its pale yellowish underside.
Common Purple-glossed Snake
A glossy, burrowing African snake with an iridescent purplish sheen, feeding largely on other snakes and reptiles beneath the soil surface.
Schlegel's Beaked Blind Snake
One of the largest blind snakes in the world, notable for its hardened, beak-like snout used to dig through hard African soils.
White-Bellied Mangrove Snake
A stocky, mildly aquatic mangrove-dwelling snake specialized in feeding on soft-shelled crabs.
Cross-marked Sand Snake
A small, slender southern African sand snake named for the distinctive cross- or arrow-shaped marking on its head and neck.
Western Shovel-Nosed Snake
A small, banded desert specialist with a flattened, shovel-shaped snout adapted for burrowing through loose sand.
West Coast Garter Snake
A common streamside garter snake of the Pacific coast, often seen basking near rivers and creeks in California and Oregon.
Northern Small-Eyed Snake
A small, secretive nocturnal elapid of tropical northern Australia with a pale head and glossy dark body.
San Diego Gopher Snake
A large southern California gopher snake subspecies frequently seen in coastal sage scrub and chaparral habitats.
Mexican Blackbelly Garter Snake
A semi-aquatic garter snake from the Mexican Plateau notable for its dark, often solid black underside.
Aesculapian False Coral Snake
A mildly venomous South American colubrid that mimics true coral snakes with bold red, black, and white banding.
Yellow-Bellied Sea Snake
The most widely distributed snake species in the world, a fully pelagic sea snake found drifting across open tropical oceans.