Identifying Poisonous Snakes

Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2011 11:25:37 -0400 (EDT)
From: Robert Morris
Subject: Identifying Poisonous Snakes

A few weeks ago, someone was asking whether the baby snakes they had found were poisonous and I thought I would share a little tidbit that I use.

We were always taught to look at the head shapes to determine venomous snakes.  Triangle shaped heads usually point to venomous snakes, while a ‘U’ shaped head points to a non-venomous snake.

I find this hard to determine on some snakes , so I look at the eyes.  Snakes, which are non- poisonous, possess a round pupil in the center of the eye.  All poisonous snakes possess a vertical elliptical cat-like shaped pupil.  Of course, you may not want to get that close to determine the eye-shape.

Hope this helps.

Robert