I’m stumped. Are these Northern Ribbon Snakes or Eastern Garter Snakes?
They don’t have the black stripey markings on the mouth scales (of the garter) and they appear to have the thin tale (of the ribbon). But, every picture I’ve ever seen of the ribbon has more black stripes. These are almost completely yellow from the sides down to the belly (is it even called a belly on a snake?). There’s a faint dotted black line down the sides but that’s it.
So, which is it?
I saw these today, at the State Park. My nephew and I were hiking and we heard a loud rustling sound. When we looked off the trail, we saw a huge wad of entangled snakes. It was so cool, but almost creepy. Neither of us knows much about snakes. I’m probably the only person in America who has never actually seen a garter in person (until today - possibly). So, not knowing anything about snakes, we didn’t get too close. Luckily the zoom on my sister’s camera is fantastic. I got these pictures from about 15’ away.
Anyway, my nephew has a packet of pictures from all the things we’ve done over his spring vacation, which he plans on bringing to school on Monday. He insists on knowing for sure what kind of snake this is before he goes back.
why?
I’m confused on this whole garter snake thing. All the sites I found acted like there was a difference between the two, while still being related.
Quite right - that wad o’ snakes you chanced across was almost certainly a “snake orgy.” Garter snakes in the east mate in the spring and sometimes a few males will cluster around a receptive female.
I’d be willing to bet Eastern Garter snake based on the heavier seeming body, the less defined side stripe ( vs. ribbon snakes ) and the darkish blotches down the side. Here’s an illustration showing the blotching:
The difference is they are two different species in the same genus. I’m wayyyy out of date on my snake systematics, but I believe the two are considered fairly close, even within the genus ( which might be paraphyletic anyway, depending on how the relationship with the water snakes in Nerodia is shaking out ).
So, all ribbon snakes are garter snakes but not all garter snakes are ribbon snakes.
These are not ribbon snakes because they do not have white on the bottom of their mouths.
So, the only thing that I don’t get is that the Eastern Garter is supposed to have black stripey things on their mouth scales and they’re supposed to have blotches between the yellow stripes.
My snakes have completely yellow mouth scales and the black stripes are solid - no blotchies.
So, is it possible it’s a different subspecies? Or are Easterns so totally generic that any garter snake in New England or New York is considered an Eastern?
eww. Snake orgy. There’s just something really gross sounding about that.
Have I ever told you that you are one of my favorite posters here?
A few weeks ago, my sister and I were talking about words that sound cool or stupid. Almost simultaneously we both said our favorite word was…moist. It sounds so dirty, and wet, and juicy, and cake like. It can be used in so many situations, depending on the perversity of each person’s mind. Mine is pretty perverse. So is my sister’s.
I thought she was going to piss her self from laughing when I told her about your moist thread.
Correct - “garter snake” is the general name applied to snakes in the genus Thamnophis, but “ribbon snake” refers to just a couple of specific, unusually slender species.
Eh, well, yeah - kinda, sorta. It’s more a consensus gestalt of several characters because you can always get oddball indivdual variations. Saying that, Inigo and I could be wrong - better to have the animal in hand for ID’s. Especially when dealing with rather similar looking critters like this.
A.) Local variation - never go for a single character. The mouths do look pretty yellow, though perhaps in this population the stripes are very faint and your camera didn’t catch them from 15’ away. I’m not sure how iron-clad of a character that is anyway.
B.) The back stripes are frequently solid - this varies enormously in garter snakes. You can’t use that as a reliable character at all.
C.) But the dark blotches in the wide yellow side ARE present, just as in the illustration I linked to above.
Thamnophis sirtalis generally is more colloquially known as the “Common Garter Snake” and is probably just about the most widespread species of snake in North America. In my area we have the very colorful San Francisco Garter Snake ( Thamnophis sirtalis tetrataenia ) as well as the only slightly less vivid ( but much more common ) California Red-Sided Garter Snake ( Thamnophis sirtalis infernalis ).
Out your way you have the extremely variable Eastern Garter Snake ( Thamnophis sirtalis sirtalis ). And yeah, they haven’t divvied them up as much out in your neck of the woods.
Cool. This all is making so much more sense now. I’m glad I didn’t tell my nephew anything about what it was. He’s at that age where he’ll obsess over it for weeks. I’ll tell him that the smartest people in the world say it’s a regular old garter snake.
But, it was still pretty friggen cool to see. Just like he said today, it was a hiking adventure.
It’s not an orgy. A few days ago, I watched a show about sex among various animals – basically, how the male gets the female (and the mechanics). (I don’t recall what channel – Animal Planet maybe.) One of the animals was the garter snake. The location was out west in a desert (sorry, details elude me). A bunch of male snakes swarmed around, then when a female showed up, all the males surrounded her and swarmed around and on top of her. They weren’t having sex; they were HOPING to have sex – i.e., trying to get her to accept one of them. After she selected the one she wanted, the others left. I love reptiles and snakes in particular. Here in northeast Florida we have garters, corn snakes, pine snakes, black racers, cotton mouth, and Eastern Diamondback rattlers. We saw a rattler on the edge of our front yard about a year ago. Snakes won’t bother you unless you threaten or corner them. If there’s a way out, they’ll take it. I’ve read that cottonmouths can be aggressive, however.
I would hope that most folks would realize that multiple males trying to mate with a female ( as I described ) wouldn’t exactly qualify ( hence the use of quotation marks ). The actual term used is breeding ball.
Garter snakes in the east mate in the spring and sometimes a few males will cluster around a receptive female.
