Snake Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ snakes from around the world — with family, range, size, habitat, and how to tell similar species apart.
Velvety Green Night Adder
A smooth-scaled, bright green night adder found in East and Central African grasslands, distinguished from bush vipers by its rounded head and smooth scalation.
Common Glossy Racer
A widespread, smooth-scaled racer with a glossy sheen, found across a broad swath of Neotropical habitats.
Persian Horned Viper
A desert viper of the Middle East with prominent hornlike scales above the eyes, occupying rocky and sandy terrain.
Speckled Shield Cobra
A cobra of Central Asian deserts and semi-arid regions, distinguished by its plain, faintly speckled scales.
Cape File Snake
A distinctive African colubrid with unusually rough, file-like body scales and a specialized diet that includes other snakes.
Yellow-tailed Cribo
A large, powerful South American colubrid related to indigo snakes, known for its glossy scales and impressive length.
Rough Earthsnake
A tiny, drab, keeled-scaled snake commonly hidden beneath leaf litter and garden debris across the Southeast.
False Horned Viper
A desert viper of the Middle East that mimics true horned vipers with supraocular scale projections, but belongs to a distinct genus.
Silver Boa
An extremely rare, silvery-scaled boa described only in 2016, found solely on a single tiny island in the Bahamas.
Sunbeam Snake
A glossy, iridescent burrowing snake of Southeast Asia named for the rainbow sheen its smooth scales produce in sunlight.
Peters' Thread Snake
A tiny, worm-like burrowing snake from Africa with smooth, glossy scales.
Bengal Sand Boa
A stout, burrowing South Asian boa with rough, patterned scales and a blunt tail.
Smooth Earth Snake
A small, plain, burrowing colubrid of the eastern and central United States, closely resembling the Rough Earth Snake but with smooth scales.
Brazilian Rainbow Boa
A vividly patterned constrictor famous for the iridescent sheen of its scales, which produces a rainbow-like shimmer in direct sunlight.
Anomalous Sea Snake
A sea snake named for its unusual combination of scale and morphological traits, found in coastal waters of the northern Indian Ocean.
Smooth Earthsnake
A small, plain-colored, smooth-scaled snake found under forest debris across a broad swath of the eastern U.S.
Lataste's Viper
A small viper of the Iberian Peninsula and northwestern Africa, recognized by a small upturned snout scale.
Diamond Python
A cool-climate subspecies of carpet python from southeastern Australia, marked with diamond-shaped clusters of pale scales on a black background.
Java File Snake
A fully aquatic file snake covered in rough, granular scales, found in the rivers and estuaries of Java and the surrounding Southeast Asian region.
Desert Horned Viper
An iconic desert viper of the Sahara and Arabian Peninsula, easily recognized by the small hornlike scales often present above its eyes.
Elephant Trunk Snake
A wholly aquatic snake with loose, baggy, wrinkled skin covered in tiny rough scales, giving it a texture reminiscent of an elephant's trunk.
Horned Adder
A small desert adder with a prominent single horn-like scale above each eye, well camouflaged against sandy soils.
Speckled Brown Snake
A medium-sized brown snake species from the interior of Queensland, named for the fine speckled pattern often present on its scales.
Black File Snake
A small, dark, heavily keeled fossorial snake from East Asian forests, named for the rasp-like texture of its scales.