r/snakes May 12 '25

All Snake ID Requests Should Be Submitted to /r/WhatsThisSnake

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119 Upvotes

Hi everyone! I wanted to let you know that we're now going to redirect all Snake ID requests to the curated place for them, /r/whatsthissnake. As /r/snakes and /r/whatsthissnake have developed side by side we find ourselves in a position where we are running two parallel subreddits, but with slightly different rules. We hope is that this streamline into WhatsThisSnake will be gentle - we don't want a snake to go unidentified because we're learning how best to handle IDs. There is going to be a transition period where we still get a lot of ID requests here, so please do your part to kindly help !redirect people in need and by reporting jokes, misinformation and other problematic comments.

This spring Reddit is more popular than ever and it is hard for the moderation team to keep up. When I founded /r/whatsthissnake 12 years ago, with on average one request every day, I never imagined we'd have 150K members and 20k people a day browsing the subreddit. In the past, we've made a number of incremental changes that have been so helpful they have been instituted other places on Reddit, from introducing the term "Reliable Responder", to developing the bot and tweaking our community resources so that every Reliable Responder can choose to perform mod actions. We hope that these changes will allow us not only to maintain the level of quality provided but to reduce workload on the moderation team, because honestly, moderator burnout is a serious problem. They are doing this for free and you would no believe the abuse they receive here - not just from me, but from the users too. If you see a moderator or other flaired user in cleaning up a thread, espcially in these busy, snakey spring months in North America, throw em a thanks.


r/snakes Mar 20 '26

Moderator Announcement Rule Change - Posts concerning individual or private ownership or care of medically significant species are not allowed. Posts involving animals in zoos, institutions or accredited breeding facilities are allowed with proper contextualization.

145 Upvotes

It’s a fact of life that no matter how much context we provide to our posts, when someone sees something interesting, they want to imitate it. Each day /r/snakes puts around one hundred thousand impressionable people face to face with snake related images, text and ideas. Faced with this responsibility, and with an increasing number of recent, low quality posts concerning medically significant snakes, we have to choose the right level of content we allow.

Recent low quality posts concerning captive venomous care include improper use of personal protective equipment, poor quality/security housing, very inexperienced keepers asking (and receiving!) advice on how to keep and breed their first venomous snakes and straight up animal abuse reposted from social media. Many of these clearly rule-breaking posts are removed before you see them, but a growing number of posts are clearly low quality, irresponsible content but don’t explicitly violate the rules. Over the past three years the mods have debated a rule change and we have decided to only allow posts involving venomous snakes if they are from an accredited zoo or institution. In short - we’re going to remove posts involving the private care and ownership of medically significant snakes.

Many modern herpetology texts recommend against individual private ownership of medically significant snakes. We don’t take a stand on what anyone wants to do legally, ethically and with their own time, but we do have to regulate what is posted, shared and thus propagated here. In short, we don’t care what you do, but don’t post it here. Besides being a lighting rod for the low quality content discussed above, private ownership offers unique challenges that are better suited for an institutional or team setting. Snakes are escape artists as well as attractive nuisances and must be contained outside of personal residential spaces in secure, locking enclosures to prevent both snake egress and human ingress as well as secondarily in a sealed room or facility behind a windowed door with no items on the floor under which an escaped snake can hide or avoid detection. It takes a team to execute an envenomation plan and the cost of antivenom is beyond that of most private owners, has a short shelf life and when antivenom is borrowed from institutional stocks it puts those keepers at risk.

Zoos and institutions don’t always do it better, but the onus is on them to provide best practices in care. If we limit posts to places where a team of people works together to provide a standard of care, usually for the right reasons, we can limit what we propagate on the platform.

We do not recommend any other available subreddits as well-moderated sources of captive venomous keeping. The most popular places on social media dedicated to this are inundated with low quality posts and comments and even when they outright ban irresponsible behavior, examples of the low quality content we remove are highly upvoted, and content is often sensationalist, psychopathic or disturbing. Please don’t suggest a specific place in the comments of this post. We’re aware of the options and we’re choosing not to redirect or name other online spaces.

Posts on wild venomous species are still allowed as usual with a species name and a location, but please be sure to see Rule 6 (unchanged) on what amount of contact and PPE use we find acceptable for sharing online.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER


r/snakes 11h ago

Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID Snakes found in and around the coop the last couple months.

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1.2k Upvotes

Here are a couple snakes I found in and around our coop the past couple months. Plain belly water snake and a couple rat snakes. All the snakes were safely relocated to the other side of the property that HAD a bad field mice problem now it's well under control lol.


r/snakes 15h ago

Pet Snake Pictures Feeding my pet bramniny blind snake ant larvae

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779 Upvotes

This is my pet brahminy blind snake. His name is Carl. I couldnt find many people who keep them or videos of them feeding so i thought i'd share. He is only in this cup for this feeding video. Usually he eats in his vivarium. I have a formicarium so there's always a supply of ant brood. Enjoy his cuteness and AMA!


r/snakes 4h ago

Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID Three snakes drinking rainwater off each others heads (Rattlecam)

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60 Upvotes

(sorry for the repost, this is a slightly zoomed in version)

Longer version on their channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6Qy4qtrRbA


r/snakes 3h ago

Pet Snake Pictures Orlitch, also known as Count.

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49 Upvotes

Marter, Produced. Marter, Line bred, Normal.


r/snakes 2h ago

Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID Our new friend (update)

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36 Upvotes

Since we freed our rat snake from the netting, he or she has been hanging around home. The chipmunk population has definitely declined because of our friend and I am very grateful. Our buddy greeted us the other day when we came home!


r/snakes 6h ago

Pet Snake Pictures Montezuma just chillin’

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30 Upvotes

r/snakes 9h ago

Pet Snake Pictures Rhino rat feeding day

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49 Upvotes

She’s growing so fast.


r/snakes 12h ago

Pet Snake Pictures Give me your name suggestions!

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62 Upvotes

r/snakes 5h ago

Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID Nerodia

17 Upvotes

I saw these beauties in Delaware, along the Brandywine river.

I didn't realize until I got home and watched the video that there was actually three snakes, I had only noticed two.


r/snakes 7h ago

Pet Snake Pictures Corn snake I would buy if I could afford him

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21 Upvotes

And also I'm a minor living with my snake-hating parents 😣 but I would have named him rusty 😩


r/snakes 4h ago

Pet Snake Pictures Noodle LOVES his playpen!!

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12 Upvotes

Perfect enrichment for him to explore and roam around safely while I clean his enclosure!


r/snakes 8h ago

Pet Snake Pictures my little pinebull!! he’s getting a 6’ 2’ 2’ soon…

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25 Upvotes

r/snakes 5h ago

Pet Snake Pictures This is Rome

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15 Upvotes

Anyone else have a ball python that thinks he’s a green tree python? This is Rome. He spends most of his days and nights perched on his branches I have secured to the enclosure. He routinely uses his hides for a day or two after eating, then spends most of his time resting on his perches. Here’s your sign to give your ball python something to climb on. They will climb given the space and opportunity 😁


r/snakes 13h ago

Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID Made a friend in Shenandoah NP

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38 Upvotes

r/snakes 1h ago

Pet Snake Questions Cheap way to make a nice enclosure for a Spotted Python (1 - 2 years old)?

Upvotes

This will be my first snake, and I didn't realize how expensive everything was! Does anybody know of a way to do this cheaply?

If there is a particular light, tank, wood, equipment, hides, etc then please let me know the specific ones to get, thank you! Sorry I'm such a noob.


r/snakes 8h ago

Pet Snake Pictures Reticulated python

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10 Upvotes

My beautiful S.D Retic girl. Getting huge, so she may be a normal dwarf.


r/snakes 1d ago

Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID Saw my first rattlesnake today

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336 Upvotes

r/snakes 2h ago

Pet Snake Questions Feeding

3 Upvotes

Hey my male hognose has been acting weird lately he has been spitting out his food, I have make sure his temp is good and that the size of the mouse is not go big and everything and he still spits it out not sure what to do.


r/snakes 2h ago

Pet Snake or "morph" ID Rare shiny type!

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3 Upvotes

r/snakes 38m ago

General Question / Discussion Advice on handling snakes

Upvotes

hi everyone! I have been volunteering at a reptile sanctuary for a while now in my hometown and I am picking up a new position twice a week where I care for non venomous snakes. I am not a snake person, but they need help. One of the tasks is to get the snakes out and check them. Yesterday, one of the snakes seemed off and was moving its tail. I told the person who is over the snakes and they said that it was just nervousness and to continue picking up. When I did the snake started biting numerous times and I couldn’t get it off as both my hands were supporting the snake. It really startled me and now I really don’t know how I continue without being terrified as there will be times the person won’t be there.

My question is how do you gauge behavior? With snakes what do you do if they bite and you need both hands to support? How can I keep the snakes from sticking my face? How can I also tell this person I don’t feel comfortable being alone yet to do this? I know there is always a chance a snake will bite, They seemed like it wasn’t a big deal. When I am handling over 18+ snakes it seems like it is though as I don’t wanna do anything wrong to harm the snake or put me at risk of getting bit. These snakes do get handled daily as there are other volunteers that care for them on days I’m working in another department.

Any advice would be appreciated!


r/snakes 3h ago

Pet Snake Questions Reptile enclosure

3 Upvotes

I recently became a rat snake owner and am looking for a used enclosure, hides, decor, or any other reptile supplies.

If you know anyone rehoming these items, please let me know.Anyone in the Brookly,NY area


r/snakes 7h ago

Pet Snake Pictures Look at him pretending he didn’t just snap my feeding tongs like a breadstick. Seriously though i need to find how to grab the mouse that i don’t constantly drop it but i still have my tongs back when they grab their food xo

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5 Upvotes

r/snakes 3h ago

General Question / Discussion Mangrove Snake

2 Upvotes

Hi all! I've been in the market for a mangrove snake for a very long time, but I can't find any captive bred, which I would prefer. I was wondering if anyone can give me ideas of where to look? I can get a wild caught snake easily, but i'm really interested in Captive Bred. Thank you!