Snake Identifier

Snake Encyclopedia

Search and identify 1,000+ snakes from around the world — with family, range, size, habitat, and how to tell similar species apart.

Mexican Black-Headed Snake

Mexican Black-Headed Snake

A tiny, secretive snake with a glossy tan body and a distinct black cap over the head and neck.

MacDowell's Sea Snake

A rarely documented sea snake from the Bay of Bengal region, named in honor of a herpetologist who studied elapid snakes.

Central American Indigo Snake

Central American Indigo Snake

A large, powerful colubrid related to the eastern indigo snake, with a glossy dark tail and lighter forebody.

Crowned Leaf-Nosed Snake

Crowned Leaf-Nosed Snake

A small, sand-colored desert colubrid with an upturned, shovel-like snout adapted for burrowing through loose desert sand.

Puff-Faced Water Snake

Puff-Faced Water Snake

A bold, patterned Southeast Asian water snake with a distinctive puffed facial appearance, common in ponds and waterways.

Many-spotted Cat Snake

Many-spotted Cat Snake

A slender, densely spotted nocturnal tree snake found across Southeast Asian forests and gardens.

Twin-Spotted Wolf Snake

Twin-Spotted Wolf Snake

A small nocturnal colubrid with paired dark spots and enlarged front teeth.

Afro-Asian Sand Snake

Afro-Asian Sand Snake

A slim, fast-moving diurnal sand snake distributed across arid regions of Africa and Asia.

Southern Shovel-Nosed Snake

Southern Shovel-Nosed Snake

A small burrowing elapid from southern and western Australia with a distinctive banded pattern and a shovel-shaped snout for digging through sand.

Small-Headed Sea Snake

Small-Headed Sea Snake

A slender sea snake with a strikingly tiny head and narrow forebody widening toward the rear, found in shallow coastal waters across the Indo-Pacific.

Hook-Nosed Sea Snake

Hook-Nosed Sea Snake

A sea snake found in murky coastal and estuarine waters across the Indo-Pacific, notable for its distinctive hooked snout.

Northern Cat-eyed Snake

Northern Cat-eyed Snake

A nocturnal colubrid named for its vertical, cat-like pupils.

Mexican Wandering Garter Snake

Mexican Wandering Garter Snake

A wide-ranging highland garter snake of western Mexico, adaptable to a variety of montane stream and forest habitats.

Japanese Four-lined Rat Snake

Japanese Four-lined Rat Snake

A common Japanese rat snake marked with four dark longitudinal stripes running the length of its body, frequently seen in fields and gardens.

Big Bend Patch-Nosed Snake

Big Bend Patch-Nosed Snake

A desert colubrid with an enlarged, upturned rostral scale used for digging, marked by a bold pale vertebral stripe.

Trans-Pecos Black-Headed Snake

Trans-Pecos Black-Headed Snake

One of the largest black-headed snakes, a slender tan species with a bold black hood found in West Texas canyon country.

Ijima's Turtle-Headed Sea Snake

Ijima's Turtle-Headed Sea Snake

An egg-eating sea snake from the Ryukyu Islands with a blunt, turtle-like head.

Black Swampsnake

Black Swampsnake

A small, glossy black wetland snake with a bright red-orange belly, found in dense marsh vegetation of the southeastern coastal plain.

Mimic False Coral

Mimic False Coral

A striking red, black, and cream banded colubrid of South America that mimics coral snakes.

Scarlet Kingsnake

Scarlet Kingsnake

A small, vividly banded red, black, and yellow kingsnake of the southeastern US that resembles the coral snake.

San Luis Potosi Kingsnake

San Luis Potosi Kingsnake

A boldly banded Mexican highland kingsnake with striking red, black, and cream tricolor rings.

Dekay's Brownsnake

Dekay's Brownsnake

A tiny, secretive brown snake commonly found in gardens and vacant lots across much of eastern North America.

Road Guarder

Road Guarder

A striped ground snake often seen basking on roads and open paths in dry tropical habitats.

Hooded Malpolon

Hooded Malpolon

A large, fast snake of the western Mediterranean known for its hood-like display, closely related to the Eastern Montpellier snake.