Question about snakes

[Berzerker]

Our old and nearly senile cat just found a small snake on our porch. After separating the pets away from the snake, we tried to identify it before letting it go in a nearby field. It was too hard to match the pattern up with photos but something did catch my eye...or should I say my ear...

The little snake was rattling its tail!

But it had no rattles being less than a foot in length and I presume quite young. So I was hearing the tail swish back and forth really fast and took on a much greater respect

So, are there non-rattlers that rattle their tails?

Seems to me only snakes with the defense mechanism of rattles would react to a threat by rattling its tail, not snakes that never have rattles.

[Winston]

I've never seen a snake in my entire life. Except when visiting the zoo. We only have two kinds, one poisonous and one that's not. Both are rare, and they're never found anywhere near residential areas. I like it this way.

[Verto]

Kill it before it turns into this:

[Mrs. Tuberski]

Well i dontknow much about snakes but if the tail looked liked a sort of honey comb and made noise it is most likely a rattle snake that is very poisionness

[Nostromo]

That's one fat snake

[Mrs. Tuberski]

litle rhyme we learend bout the coral snake red on yellow kills a fellow
red on black is a friend of jack

[Zkribbler]

It's probably harmless.

Many animals mimic their more dangerous cousins to ward off danger. My best guess is that it was merely doing an imitation of a rattlesnake.

If you have a younger sibling, test my theory out on the useless little twerp.

[Agathon]

@ Verto.

[Sava]

[Verto]

Good thing I'm a Parseltongue

[alva]

We only have two kinds, one poisonous and one that's not.

What else is out there???

[Winston]

Species, then.

Learn how to read English.

[Mr. Harley]

Actually, Berz, except for a Coral Snake, all poisonous snakes in the continental US are pit vipers. They have that traditional "Heart shaped" head. Even if they are too young to have developed rattles, they will have that very distinct skull shape.



The little ones have less venom, however, at the younger stage they have a tendency to favor neurotoxins. The old info on neuro versus haemotoxins and snakes turns out to be incorrect, at least as of a decade ago I haven't researched it since. At that point they discovered that Copperheads/Rattlesnakes tend to alter the mix depending on age and prey.

The reason I know what I do is because I milked a young adult copperhead into my right index finger fifteen years ago (it was hiding under a concrete block topper I was moving from a collapsed inground pool) - I made a sandwich of it's head, my finger, and the concrete topper. I got very very very sick, and stopped clotting for three days. I have some weird scars from that. I also discovered that 100 mg of injected demoral doesn't make you hurt less, you just don't care that you finger is as big as a bratwurst and hurts like sh*t. It also made me lose one out of four days - I cannot understand why anybody would take that crap as a junkie.

[CerberusIV]

It should be OK. I was watching a TV programme about snakes a couple of nights ago and they mentioned a snake that looks like a rattlesnake, without the rattle, but isn't poisonous and actually mimics the sound of a rattler with its voice.

Hopefully it was one of those.

[chequita guevara]

If it was not a baby rattler, and it might have been, then it was probably a hognose snake. They rattle their tails against leaves and such in the forest to make other animals think they are a rattlesnake and are then given a wide birth. It's been about thirty years since I studied snakes though.

edit: nope, I'm wrong. What you saw was probably a Fox Snake. They are the ones that imitate rattlesnakes. Hognoses imitate cobras.