by Greg Mayer
Late this past summer, I caught a brown snake (Storeria dekayi) at the Root River Environmental Center in Racine, Wisconsin, so that the REC (as it’s known) could put it on display in a terrarium for visitors to see. Although I did not realize it, it was a pregnant female, and she gave birth to a litter of babies within a week. On September 27, the REC staff and I liberated the mother and her offspring behind the building, just a few yards from where the female had been captured. Can you spot the babies? And, how many of them are there?
Brown snakes feed on earthworms and slugs, and there was an abundant supply at the REC. Here’s a video the staff made of one of the babies feeding on a garden slug.
This is where we released them; the mother was caught about 10 feet to the right of the picture. (The grass and weeds around the spot I caught her had been trimmed, so we released them in denser cover.)
For the snake counting, we can distinguish an easier headcount (i.e., count them only if you can see their heads), from the total count. Answers, of a sort, in a couple of days.
Kinda in the middle, with one heading off at center top right.
I think I’m counting about 8-9. Wouldn’t be surprised to be way wrong about that though, in some cases it’s hard to see where one ends and the other begins.
There’s another one hiding behind the nightjar.
There’s a whole mess of them-squirrelling off top right.
This snake gave birth live apparently? Once in my garden I found a little nest of snake eggs-like gelatin capsules only opaque white. While I was holding several one hatched in my hand! Enchanting. There are only two snakes up here-little grass green critters and what is locally called simply a garden brown snake. I suspect the eggs were from the common brown snake!
What a fantastic experience!
9 or 10
Looked it up. There are 5 snakes here of which three lay eggs and two give birth live.
I sssee 4 sssnakesss. But I will keep sssseeking.
5 sssnakesss. sssneeky rasscal.
But a question. Are these aka ‘ring necked snakes’? Or are they related? Besides being snakes.
Ain’t all snakes neckid?
No, ring-necked snakes are genus Diadophis, while these are Storeria. They’re both small oviparous mid-latitude colubrids and quyite similar in terms of their ecologies.
The sister species of the brown snake, the red-bellied snake (Storeria occipitomaculata), has a coral-red belly, and I’ve mistaken them (at first blush) for ring-necked snakes.
7 heads, 10 total?
Easy to spot, harder to count. I think there are 12 of them, though I may be counting some bits of snake twice. I’m not going to get coloured felt pen on my screen trying to make sure.
When I say ‘easy to spot’, the human eye seems to be sensitised to spotting linear things. They stand out from the background.
cr
I now think there’s at least 10, including one very cunningly disguised one heading up to the left from the central cluster.
There are 8 snake heads (at least). Their heads are far harder to spot (being non-linear) than their bodies, but by the same token, far easier to distinguish from one another than their bodies are.
cr
I think I see ten, but I wouldn’t like to put money on it.
At the moment I’ve got a head count of 11, including a well hidden one where I can only see 1 eye and a bit of the mouth. I’ve also got 12 tails (but then I always was an odd beastie).
I had to drag this into The GIMP and colour things in as I kept counting things twice twice.
I thought of doing that, also of printing it out and taking to it with highlighter, but I was too lazy.
cr
Sometimes putting off washing the dishes can be a great motivator.
🙂
Maybe you can post it when the official answer is finally revealed.
cr
To the left?
Up to the left. Blow pic up to screen size. Identify the central cluster on top of a green leaf. Arcing diagonally down past that on the left is a light brown twig, the largest in the vicinity. And heading up in the 11 o’clock direction, crossing under that twig and about an inch long, is the snake to which I refer.
Blimey, I’ve just found another. Take the topmost right-hand snake, which is heading to the right across a large pale bit of wood. Well, a couple of inches further down and heading roughly parallel to it, and partly underneath a pale fawn twig, is another.
cr
OK, I’d already found both of those. It just didn’t strike me that the one heading left was very difficult to see, so I thought you’d seen another one, or perhaps meant the most obscure one on the right and just typed left by mistake. (No offense! 😀 ) My main problem is telling which body section goes with which snake in the center scrum!
You’re very good at describing where to look in such a busy background!
Spot the snake (or snake-like object) is a fun game for cats too.
http://33.media.tumblr.com/d993a5fd8e4d309fbe4ba1f2b198e8a3/tumblr_nrr9rituyy1s02vreo1_250.gif
Is that cat actually jumping? Fastest reaction I ever saw. It looks like an invisible string has just hoicked its back legs up into the air.
cr
Great post, Greg. I count 9 babies in the photo but probably missed some. It’s nice that the snake was put on public display briefly for visitors to learn about.
I used to keep a small breeding collection of a few subspecies of North American milk snakes (Lampropeltis triangulum). They laid egg clutches, normally between 4-8 eggs. Beautiful little snakes.
I would go with 10 but could be off. Think you have to be there.
Add me to the 9 or 10 camp…This is quite the challenge!
I LOVE Brown Snakes, but hardly ever see them.