Here are a couple species of snakes for this edition of #creaturefeature
Look at all these baby corn snakes. They look like some sort of snake spaghetti.
These little guys are being raised at a wildlife rehab facility as an educational hobby to show the different color morphs of the snakes. Here you can see a couple colors of the same species of snake.
Their Latin name is Pantherophis guttatus and at this young size they eat insects but as they grow older they feed primarily on rodents. They call them corn snakes because they hide around corn cribs after a harvest to get any mice that would raid the corn.
These snakes make a great pet and are easily to take care of and handle. Here is my nephew getting the snake pile treatment.
They grow quite large and sometimes they get confused with copperhead snakes, but if you study the color patterns of a copperhead vs. a corn snake the difference is quite easy to tell. Corn snakes have a much different and more solid red pattern than any copperhead species. The closest lookalike to this snake would be a red racer which is also nonvenomous.
Here is a fancy snake bracelet. They are all the fashion right now and my fiance needed one.
But eventually the Garmin watch won out and the poor Honduran milk snake had to be placed back on the shelf lol.
Their Latin name is Lampropeltis triangulum hondurensis and they actually have a few different color morphs. This particular color is one of the more red looking of the milk snakes. Others have larger black and yellow stripes. They are quite similar to the corn snakes in being easily kept and handled and they eat rodents. The main difference in their diet is that they also eat other snakes including venomous snakes, this makes them more similar to a king snake that primarily feeds on other snakes.
Here is a California king snake with a Latin name of Lampropeltis californiae. These are another one with lots of different color morphs. Some are just black and white others have thicker bands and some can even be solid in color. These guys like to eat other snakes hence their name king snake. They are also nonvenomous but do resemble the venomous coral snake. But it is easy to differentiate between a coral and king snake if you know what you are looking for.
There is a common phrase "red and yellow kills a fellow, red and black friend of Jack". If you look at their stripes and a yellow stripe is right next to a red stripe it could possibly be a coral snake. But if the red is next to a black stripe and doesn't touch a yellow stripe then its a king snake. Also an easier way to differentiate the coral snake is that corals are much much smaller than king snakes. Coral snakes also have black noses compared to kings that tend to have yellow noses. Coral snakes really aren't a threat even though they have neurotoxic venom, their mouths are much too small to easily bite a human and they are quite shy and fast racing away before you can even see them. There hasn't been a coral snake bite death in over 40 years, they only way you could get one to bite you is if you manage to catch one and let it bite you between your fingers where its mouth can reach. Even if you get bitten the venom is treatable with antivenom.
Here is my pet albino king snake. No stripes at all just the albino red eyes and solid white. These are probably the easiest of pet snakes to keep as they will eat just frozen mice. Mine even likes to eat cooked chicken and turkey lol. They also don't require any special lighting for calcium absorption like most reptiles because they are albino.
That's all for this #creaturefeature thanks for looking :-)
