Eastern Mud Snake

Farancia abacura abacura

Venom Status:

Non Venomous

 

Characteristics:

This is primarily an aquatic snake but it may also burrow into loose soils. It may emerge and be surface active on warm humid, or especially, on rainy nights. Adult at 4 to 6 feet long, it is shiny black above with triangular red bars (points on top) along each side. Belly with alternating red and black bars. Scales are smooth and in 19 rows; anal plate usually divided. Colors dull and the entire snake becomes bluish when ready to shed its skin. Tail tipped with a sharpened spinelike scale. This is a rear-fanged species that seldom if ever bites, even if handled carelessly, when restrained. Between a dozen and 104 eggs have been documented in a clutch produced by this prolific snake.

 

Unique Features:

If picked up, a mud snake is quite apt to writhe and press its tailtip spine into your hand or arm. This action is entirely harmless. Mud snakes are specialized feeders. Although hatchlings may eat tadpoles, frogs, and an occasional fish, for beginner’s meals, throughout the rest of their life they eat eel-like aquatic salamanders (mud eels) of two genera, Amphiuma and Siren. Country tales regarding the mud and related rainbow snakes abound. Among the most persistent are those that allude to the tailtip spine being venomous, that these snakes are the fabled “hoop snakes'' that after taking their tail in their mouth roll down hills either in pursuit of a human that it will sting to death with the tailtip spine or for some reason will stop its roll by imbedding the spine in an unwary tree. The tree will supposedly immediately wilt and die. These snakes don’t bite and the tailtip spine is entirely without any harmful qualities.

 

Habitat and Diet:

Muddy swamp and marsh edges, flooded wetlands, pond edges and other such habitats are utilized by mud snakes.Mud snakes are specialized feeders. Although hatchlings may eat tadpoles, frogs, and an occasional fish, for beginner’s meals, throughout the rest of their life they eat eel-like aquatic salamanders (mud eels) of two genera, Amphiuma and Siren.

 

Geographic Range:

FL, GA, SC, AL, NC, VA,