Posted by Janet Harriett on Mar.03, 2010

Photo Credit: Gary Stolz/ US Fish and Wildlife Service

In March, Wildlife Wednesday takes a look at snakes.

If you’ve seen one wild snake, chances are it’s a garter snake, the most common reptile in North America, Their prevalence is largely because they aren’t picky about what they eat or where they live. As a rule, if a garter snake can catch and swallow it, a garter snake will eat it. They live in fields, roadsides, yards, vacant lots and ditches as far north as Alaska. If there’s a place to bask in the sun to absorb solar heat, a garter snake probably lives there.

Garter snakes are easily identified by the stripes running the length of their body, separated by areas with blotchy or patched markings that can be brown, black, red, orange, yellow or blue. Subspecies vary in size but rarely get to be even three feet long. As relatively small, thin snakes without specialized dietary needs, garter snakes are often kept as pets. In captivity, they can live as long as 10 years, though a six year lifespan is more common in the wild.

As cold-blooded animals, garter snakes usually hibernate in the winter, in a mass of snakes called a hibernaculum. Southerly garter snakes may remain active throughout winter. Snakes usually return to the same hibernaculum den each winter. The hibernaculum also provides a ready source of mates in the spring. Males often rouse from hibernation a few weeks before females.

Garter snakes are ovoviviparous, meaning that the young develop in eggs, but the eggs are incubated inside the female snake’s body rather than being laid prior to hatching like a chicken. The developing snakes don’t have a placental connection to the mother like mammals do, and get nutrition through the yolk, with the mother’s body providing only respiration. Female garter snakes give birth to litters of 3-80 live young which are independent at birth.

Though garter snakes were long considered to be non-venomous, more recent study has shown that they do produce a very mild toxin. However, the quantity they produce and the general inefficiency of delivery means that garter snakes are still harmless to humans. In principle, garter snake venom could cause swelling and itching, but no documented cases of garter snake poisoning are on record. And, as my grandmother used to say when I’d run into the house after seeing one of the snakes slithering around the yard, “They’re more afraid of you than you are of them.”

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Posted under Living, Nature and Environment.