Chronos - Your information is mostly incorrect. As Labdad has illustrated, the tri-colored kingsnakes have red bands which generally do not touch the yellow bands. Coral snakes in the US have red bands which do touch the yellow bands. Coral snakes are found in the southwest and the southeast. There are venomous snakes in the US which are neither pit vipers nor coral snakes, an example being the lyre snake. Copperheads and cottonmouths are not generally more dangerous than rattlesnakes; the danger from pit vipers is most often a function of the size of the snake, and copperheads are usually small. Eastern and western diamondback rattlers often grow to a length of six feet. While only about .2 per cent of snake bites in the US results in death, I’d be curious to see the source of a 95% survival rate with no treatment. Coral snakes are actually very easy to distinguish from the tri-colored kingsnakes without the red-yellow-black mnemonic: coral snakes have wide black bands while the kingsnakes have very narrow ones. Rattlesnakes will bite without rattling. And last but not least, Long Time First Time gave the correct answer in two minutes yesterday.
I stand corrected. Still, “leave them all alone” isn’t bad advice, if you’re not sure.
You are exactly right.
And for those who live near venomous snakes, or any snakes at all, I think it is a good idea to get to know the dangerous ones by sight. In most places in the US, it’s not hard to do, IMO.
I learned it as “red to black–venom lack.”
The San Diego zoo once had a California mountain king snake with two heads. It didn’t last too long. Maybe they couldn’t agree on which one got to eat.
Just a word of warning for the intrepid Latin American traveler - this rubric ONLY works in the United States. In Central and South America with their 50-odd species of highly varied coral snakes ( and many, many coral snake mimics ), it breaks down completely.
You call that a snake? 