Snake Identifier

Snake Encyclopedia

Search and identify 1,000+ snakes from around the world — with venomous status, family, range, size, habitat, and how to tell look-alikes apart.

Sharp-Tailed Snake

Sharp-Tailed Snake

A small, secretive Pacific coast colubrid named for the sharp, spine-like tip of its tail, and a specialized predator of slugs.

Common Wolf Snake

Common Wolf Snake

A slender, nocturnal Asian colubrid often confused with venomous kraits due to similar banding, but harmless to humans.

Texas Blind Snake

Texas Blind Snake

A tiny, worm-like burrowing snake of Texas and northern Mexico, occasionally found in the nests of ants and termites that it feeds on.

Kirtland's Snake

Kirtland's Snake

A small, secretive wetland snake with a reddish belly marked by bold black spots, now rare across much of its midwestern range.

Smooth Green Snake

Smooth Green Snake

A small, docile, grass-green colubrid of meadows and grasslands, distinguished from its relative by smooth, unkeeled scales.

Baird's Rat Snake

Baird's Rat Snake

A handsomely patterned orange-and-gray rat snake of the arid Trans-Pecos region, with faint striping along its length.

Lake Taal Sea Snake

A remarkable freshwater sea snake found only in Lake Taal, a volcanic crater lake in the Philippines with no connection to the ocean.

Spotted Whip Snake

Spotted Whip Snake

A fast, alert colubrid with a row of dark spots or blotches along its back, common in arid and semi-arid habitats across Central and Southwest Asia.

Brown Water Snake

Brown Water Snake

A large, heavy-bodied water snake often seen basking on branches over southeastern rivers, patterned with square dark blotches.

Ornamental Snake

Ornamental Snake

A small, patterned nocturnal elapid restricted to the Brigalow Belt of central Queensland, listed as vulnerable due to habitat loss.

Jerdon's Sea Snake

A small, lesser-known sea snake found in the coastal waters of South and Southeast Asia, distinguished by its small size and relatively uniform coloration.

Water Coral Snake

Water Coral Snake

An unusually aquatic coral snake of the Amazon Basin, bearing classic red-black-yellow banding and a potent neurotoxic venom, but rarely encountered due to its semi-aquatic habits.

West Coast Garter Snake

West Coast Garter Snake

A common streamside garter snake of the Pacific coast, often seen basking near rivers and creeks in California and Oregon.

Brown-banded Water Snake

Brown-banded Water Snake

A common, semi-aquatic South American snake with brown banding, well adapted to life in rivers, ponds, and marshes.

Tricolored Coral Snake

A coral snake whose common name directly reflects its bold red-black-yellow banded pattern.

Blunt-headed Tree Snake

Blunt-headed Tree Snake

An extremely slender, big-eyed nocturnal tree snake with a distinctive blunt, wide head and thread-like neck.

Tropical Hognose Snake

Tropical Hognose Snake

A stout, upturned-snouted colubrid known for its dramatic bluffing displays when threatened.

Ornate Shieldtail Snake

A small, glossy burrowing snake from the Western Ghats of India with a distinctive hardened, shield-like tail tip.

Yellow-Bellied Sea Snake

Yellow-Bellied Sea Snake

The most widely distributed snake species in the world, a fully pelagic sea snake found drifting across open tropical oceans.

Kerala Shieldtail Snake

Kerala Shieldtail Snake

A regionally restricted burrowing snake from the state of Kerala in southern India, known for its reddish-marked underside.

Checkered Garter Snake

Checkered Garter Snake

A striped garter snake with a bold checkerboard pattern of dark blotches between the stripes, found across the arid Southwest.

Tamaulipan Coral Snake

A coral snake endemic to the state of Tamaulipas in northeastern Mexico, displaying the classic tricolor warning pattern.

Stripe-bellied Sand Snake

Stripe-bellied Sand Snake

A fast, alert diurnal sand snake widespread across savanna Africa, distinguished by dark stripes running along its yellowish underside.

Great Basin Gopher Snake

Great Basin Gopher Snake

A high-desert gopher snake subspecies adapted to the cold winters and arid summers of the Great Basin, valued as an effective rodent predator.