Trivia question for Sep-26-2011

Olivia picked another colorful snake for her trivia again, let’s see how you do with this one.  Bright reds, blacks and yellows make these snakes one of the most colorful snake species.

These snakes vary widely in their behavior, but most are very elusive, fossorial snakes which spend the vast majority of their time buried beneath the ground or in the leaf litter of a rainforest floor, only coming to the surface while raining or during breeding season. Some species are almost entirely aquatic and spend most of their lives in slow-moving bodies of water that have dense vegetation.

These snakes use a pair of small fangs fixed in the front of their top jaw to deliver their venom. They feed on smaller snakes, lizards, frogs, and nestling birds and rodents etc. The venom takes time to fully take effect.

So here are Olivia’s questions:  Tell us what kind of snake this is and tell us what is peculiar about how they eat their prey?  Also, in Augusta Georgia, their is one of these snakes on display, tell us what was so special about the snake which caused it to be placed in the museum?

Good Luck 😉

Answer:

Congratulations goes out to Bradley Walker from Orange County CA for being the first to identify the snake we featured. the snake is the highly venomous Coral Snake. The coral snakes are a large group of elapid snakes that can be subdivided into two distinct groups, Old World coral snakes and New World coral snakes. There are 11 species of Old World coral snake in one genus (Calliophis), and over 65 recognized species of New World coral snakes in three genera.

These snakes eat their food differently than most other snakes.  Coral snakes prefer to eat their prey tail first; when they mistakenly eat it head first, they sometimes ‘spit out’ the prey by reversing the direction of jaw-walking and start all over.  The first fatality of the American Civil War was caused not from a bullet, but by a bite from an eastern coral snake; the alleged culprit is still preserved in a museum in Augusta GA.  Here is more on these colorful snakes: Coral Snake

Thanks for playing along 😉