33 thoughts on “Cat and snake play nicely together”

  1. Anyone care to ID the reptile?

    Ah, that’d be Roger, I fear. Poor guy. Kept telling him not to go cat-baiting after a night at the pub, but would he listen?

    I bet he even handed his beer to one of his buddies before that stunt — probably the one behind the camera. “Hey! Watch this! And hold me beer.” Famous last words.

    b&

    1. I always wondered why cats twitch their tails. Must be a distraction. It may only work if the opponent is short in stature and a bit beer soaked.

      1. Funny you should mention that. There is/was such a thing as the “critical radius” hypothesis. It posited that some prey animals have a critical radius; until a predator crosses it, they try to avoid notice by freezing, but once the former breach the danger zone the prey flee.

        Supposedly, captivating the prey’s attention with a twitching tail allows the lethal end of the cat to penetrate the critical radius…

        (In response to which a fellow student asked, “then why don’t we see longer cats?”)

  3. A total stab in the dark here and I have no idea what the official genus/species name is, but that snake resembles a small, black snake that is referred to colloquially in South Florida as a black racer snake. Adventures in amateur herpetology.

    3. Black racer was my first guess, too, even allowing for the less-than-excellent video. More specifically it looks like a Southern black racer, coluber constrictor priapus.

  5. The snake appears to be a youngish specimen of either a Black Rat Snake, Pantherophis alleganiensis (Elaphe obsoleta in the older literature) or a Black Racer, Coluber constrictor. The photo quality is poor but I can see some blotching on the dorsum, which is a juvenile characteristic of both taxa.

    It would appear that the snake hasn’t figured out what is happening, and the cat has a sense of humor…

    1. Are there no animal-cruelty laws, where people post these videos from?

      1. You have to put the http : / / at the front of your url or WordPress will treat it as a local link and expand it as if it were.

  9. Black over the back and sides and a white chin suggests black racer, Coluber constrictor, which, despite the specific epithet, does not constrict its prey. If the location of the video is known, that would help with ID.

  10. I concur with others on it being a Southern Black Racer. This is typical behavior of this particular snake, it will attack anything that gets in range including humans (more to intimidate larger species like us). These, btw, do not make good pets…even the ones raised in captivity will bite you every time you try to pick them up. Best to leave them be. They do eat a lot of rodents though, so they’re not all bad.

    If that cat comes across a venomous snake, it’s a goner. A cat should leap out of the way and then attack. This cat wouldn’t last long.

      1. While the black racer and the whip snakes are in the same family (Colubridae), as are corns, they are much different snakes. Whips are pretty gentle reptiles (like corns) but the black racer is not a whip.

        1. Many authors have subsumed Masticophis into Coluber, so that, for example, the North American whipsnake is now Coluber flagellum. The two genera cannot be differentiated by vertebral morphology, and the genetics seems to say the same thing. I am old-school enough to still like Masticophis, but I think I am becoming a minority.

          Also, the whipsnakes I grew up with were as mean as any snake around. One bit me in 15 places by the time I got it in a bag! I assume that, when I go after one, that it will vigorously defend itself and I will bleed!

          1. Ah. I remembered that the North American Coluber and Masticophis had been merged, but had forgotten which name the genus ends up with.

          2. In any case… my experience has been that both Coluber constrictor and the various species formerly in Masticophis are friendly critters not deserving their reputations. However, my sample size is not particularly large.

    2. That’s a myth. Like the mongoose, cats are pretty good at dispatching snakes, even venemous ones. Sometimes the snake wins of course. Roadrunners are also great at killing snakes and it’s interesting to see how they go about it. I wished my chickens would act more like the roadrunner.

  12. When I was a kid a friend of mine and I caught a North American racer in southern Minnesota, and I can testify to the extremely aggressive nature of racers. And strong too. We had to keep it outside after the first time it escaped from its aquarium inside my friend’s house and scared the hell out of their housekeeper.

    So we kept it outside in the aquarium with several very heavy bound medical journals on the cover to hold it down. Despite that the snake pushed the cover off and got away.

  13. It looks like the snake is making of a threat display than actually trying to strike the cat’s tail. I never really thought of the advantage of a big fluffy tail – the snake could strike at the hair all day, poisonous or not, and do no harm to the cat.

    I’ve got a cat that seems to take particular joy in attacking snakes – she’s even brought one in the house, still alive.

  14. Agreed with others on this being a racer. It’s been a long time since I lived in Elaphe country, but the head-high posture really does suggest Coluber, and I don’t recall Elaphe (I know that the genus has been split about three or four ways, but I haven’t kept current) carrying themselves in quite that way.

  16. My experience of cats with black racers is that they jump up and leg it. Either that cat is particularly chill or it has not experienced snakes before. Black racers are handsome but bitey.

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