Nature: Humans malign, persecute, crowd out snakes

A juvenile northern copperhead/Jim McCormac

Columbus Dispatch

September 30, 2018

NATURE
Jim McCormac

Venomous snakes strike way over their weight in regard to reputation. They can pack a punch, but the odds of encountering one in Ohio is very low.

Three venomous serpent species occur here. The massasauga rattlesnake and timber rattlesnake are listed as endangered by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. The former is an imperiled denizen of wet prairies and has declined tremendously. Timber rattlesnakes are rare inhabitants of remote tracts of southern Ohio forest. They formerly ranged much more widely, including the Lake Erie islands.

People and venomous snakes do not coexist well. If human encroachment into their turf becomes too dense, the snakes always lose. If habitat destruction doesn’t vanquish them, persecution will.

I recently got a lesson in snake/people conflict, and it wasn’t the first time. While returning from a nocturnal forest foray in southern Ohio on Sept. 15, I encountered a northern copperhead, our third venomous snake species.

A copperhead could win a reptilian beauty pageant. The coloration and patterning is exquisite. After shooting imagery of the handsome young snake, I transported it to the safety of a distant woods

The snake was in the vicinity of a lodge where I was staying. A few employees were in the lobby when I entered, and curious as to their reaction, I mentioned the copperhead. Sure enough, one instantly blurted out, “Just killed two of them last week!”

Years ago, I was road-cruising in the same region late on a steamy summer night. Encountering a large copperhead on the road, I stopped for photos and to move it off the pavement. Suddenly a man materialized from the gloom. It turned out I had stopped near his shack, and once he saw the snake, he began an anti-snake rant. As Shakespeare’s Falstaff said, caution is preferable to rash bravery. I said my goodbyes, and that snake probably didn’t fare as well as the protagonist of this column.

Copperheads have the widest distribution of Ohio’s venomous snakes, but the range encompasses only a dozen or so southeastern counties. It once occurred throughout southern and eastern Ohio, but it has been eliminated from most areas. Although the bite would be painful, deaths are nearly unheard of

My sinuous friend was docile, as copperheads usually are, and posed beautifully. It was a juvenile, with a greenish-yellow tail tip. The latter feature is retained for the snake’s first three years or so. Apparently the young snakes use the bright tail tip as a lure. By holding it out, wormlike, they attract insects and then snap them up. Adults are efficient mousers, with rodents a dietary staple.

The possible reasons why people fear snakes are interesting. Some of it is undoubtedly innate. Scores of generations of our ancestors learned the hard way that bites can be dangerous. Caution is now hardwired into our DNA.

Snakes have long been the recipients of bad press — consider the snake as the evil tempter in the Garden of Eden

Unflattering portrayals, along with adults reacting badly to snakes in front of kids, have discolored their reputation.

Snakes have been here far longer than we, and they deserve space and freedom from persecution. The only way to pragmatically conserve them is to protect large swaths of habitat free from excessive human inhabitation.

Naturalist Jim McCormac writes a column for The Dispatch on the first, third and fifth Sundays of the month. He also writes about nature at www.jimmccormac.blogspot.com.

Copperhead, on a dark Kentucky backroad

A full moon brightens the inky darkness of a backwoods Kentucky night. I spent a few days over the weekend past exploring the Red River Gorge area, and did a lot of nocturnal exploring. The Harvest Moon sure seemed to bring the critters out; the nighttime woods were crawling - literally - with animals.

My primary quarry was caterpillars, and they did not disappoint. This is a Waved Sphinx caterpillar, Ceratomia undulosa. It, and one of its brethren, were feeding on a white ash. To seriously seek caterpillars requires going out after dark. Most cats secrete themselves quite well during the day, waiting until the cover of darkness to emerge and feed. Many of their predators - wasps, tachinid flies, birds - pack it in after dusk, allowing caterpillars a greater likelihood of remaining uneaten or unparasitized as they slowly eat through the foliage.

The ash that produced the Waved Sphinx was a "super tree", and also harbored this gorgeous Fawn Sphinx, Sphinx kalmiae. Caterpillar-seekers lust for such trees, which may have an abnormally high nitrogen content, or some other positive factor that induces moths to lay their eggs on them in great numbers. One can look at tree after tree of the same species, and see very little. Then - BINGO! A super-tree, full of caterpillars.

While roaming around at night, it's impossible not to notice all of the other members of the night shift. A hidden army emerges, both prey and predator. Caterpillars would most definitely constitute the prey. This beast - absolutely a predator, and a rather high-end one. It is a fishing spider in the genus Dolomedes, possibly D. tenebrosus. They have a tendency to rest motionless and head down on tree trunks, rather near the ground. I would not want to be the lesser beast that attempts to climb the trunk, unaware of this palm-sized spider.

Beautiful but deadly, an ornately marked assassin bug works the leaves. Note its proboscis. A quick stab with that, and it's curtains for whoever is on the receiving end. Assassin bugs often take young caterpillars.

Some of the predators are cute, such as this American Toad. Toads galore were out on this particular night - I must have seen over 100. This warty little guy was snapping up various small bugs that bumbled into his sphere.

This was the crown jewel of predators on this night, though. I was slowly navigating my car down a seldom-used gravel lane high on a ridgetop when a pair of snakes created a mad shuffle on the verge. I stopped and leapt from the vehicle for a better look, and was delighted to see a beautiful pair of Northern Copperheads, Agkistrodon contortrix! Both animals are together in this shot, and I believe that's the male on the right.

We move in closer for a good look at the coppery head of the male, complete with cat eyes. A handsomer snake would be hard to find. It is venomous, of course, and copperheads should be treated with utmost respect. I was safely out of their zone of discomfort, and neither snake threatened me. I've come across many copperheads, and have never had one act aggressively. But, I've always seen them before I was too close for an incident to occur. Most bites probably occur when someone reaches into a hiding spot sight unseen, and surprises the snake. The effects of a bite are unpleasant, but rarely if ever cause death.

Anyway, it appeared that I had stumbled into an amorous couple. The snake pictured above seemed to be the aggressor, and it looked like it was pursuing the other. When I rudely came on the scene, it was the one that held its ground, while the other copperhead slithered into a nearby cavity at the base of a tree. Northern Copperheads apparently mate in both spring and fall, and fall-mating females can delay gestation for several months.

If Senor Copperhead was successful in his pursuit of the girl, this will be the result. I photographed this yearling copperhead last year in southern Ohio. Copperheads are live-bearers, and the newly minted snakelets are carbon copies of the adults. Except for the rather bright greenish-yellow tail tip, which can be seen in the far left of the photo. Young copperheads eat amphibians, lizards, and insects, and supposedly use their colorful tail tip as a lure to attract prey.

All in all, an excellent night in the dark woods.

Epic battle between kingsnake and copperhead!

A while back, I wrote about Black Kingsnakes, Lampropeltis getula, and shared some images of one of these fabulous beasts. You can see that post RIGHT HERE. Kingsnakes are not a widespread animal in Ohio, occurring only in perhaps a half-dozen of our southernmost counties. The snake that was the subject of the aforementioned post was one that John Howard had caught that morning in his Adams County garden; later that same day I went on to find another elsewhere in the county.

 

A noteworthy quality of the Black Kingsnake is its tameness and gentle nature, at least towards humans. When first captured, a kingsnake might be a bit feisty, but they normally soon settle down and are quite easily and safely handled. I have been around enough kingsnakes to know firsthand of their docile nature; a behavior that seems quite surprising when one learns what true tough guys these reptiles really are.

 

Last Saturday, botanists Andrew Gibson and Michael Whittemore were exploring Shawnee State Forest when they stumbled across a true battle of the reptilian titans. Andrew (check his great blog HERE) was kind enough to send along some of his characteristically excellent photos, documenting an ophidian fight to the death. 

 

Photo: Andrew Gibson

Can you imagine stumbling across this scene?! It would either be the stuff of which long-lasting nightmares are made, or, if you're like me and many of my friends, a dream come true! Black Kingsnakes are well known for going after, killing, and consuming other snakes, notably venomous snakes. While this bit of interesting herpetological knowledge is well known, it is one thing to read about such behavior in a book, and quite another to actually experience it firsthand!

While cruising one of Shawnee Forest's little traveled back lanes, Andrew and Michael came across this scene, stopped, and obtained what is certainly among the best photo-documentation there is of a Black Kingsnake plying its trade. I don't think that I need point out which of the serpents is the kingsnake; the other is the most common of Ohio's three venomous snakes, the Northern Copperhead, Agkistrodon contortrix (I've written about them HERE, should you be interested).

The kingsnake has engaged the copperhead, and is working to subdue its venomous relative. You'd think an animal with the fortitude to pursue such fare would be a raging, barely containable maniac of an animal, but as I pointed out when in our hands kingsnakes are about as soft and snuggly as a snake can be. That demeanor changes bigtime when on the hunt, obviously.

Photo: Andrew Gibson

At this point in the struggle, the agile kingsnake has gained the upper hand and has the copperhead in a death grip. The copperhead, of course, would have attempted to defend itself with all of its might, but kingsnakes are impervious to the bites of chemically protected snakes such as this, and the copperhead's bites left it unfazed.

Photo: Andrew Gibson

By now, the copperhead is doomed. The crushing death-grip that the kingsnake has on the throat of the copperhead probably brings about its demise fairly quickly, as does the kingsnake's tightly coiled body, which crushes the life from the unlucky victim. Death by constriction, essentially.

Congratulations to Andrew and Michael for a great find, and to Andrew for the excellent photo-documentation, and for allowing me to share his images with you.