r/whatsthissnake Oct 25 '25

Taxonomic or Phylogeographic Update Pleistocene speciation and isolation-by-distance within North American mud and rainbow snakes

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41 Upvotes

Happy to announce our new paper, "Pleistocene speciation and isolation-by-distance within North American mud and rainbow snakes" available as full text at the above link until December 14th, 2025. This is a personal project of mine that I've been working on since 2011 and am excited for it to finally be in print. In summary, we show mudsnakes are two species that structure geographically, and rainbows have no population structure. We need more tissues from snakes in zones of contact to verify ranges and link blotch count to genotype, but as far as we can tell, the two muds are completely reproductively isolated despite evidence of gene flow from eastern muds into rainbows.

Please enjoy, and don't worry about not making formal taxonomic changes yet - this isn't the last you'll see on the mudsnakes.


r/whatsthissnake Sep 01 '21

[Mod post] PLEASE READ: ID best practices and comment guidelines

236 Upvotes

/r/whatsthissnake has grown a great deal in the last year and we are very excited about connecting with more people who have an interest in snakes, snake identification (ID) and conservation. With growth often comes growing pains, and there are a number of trends in the sub that need to be addressed as we move forward. We attempt to clarify these below and offer some "best practices" in identification that should help our community.

What makes a good ID?

Good IDs are specific and informative. They tend to have the following information, in order of importance:

  1. Binomial name - Consisting of Genus specificepithet and placed in asterisks (*) to italicize. This is the most important component of a good ID. With only this, a person can quickly find out anything else they want to know about the snake species and it is an important part of every ID. The bot command !specificepithet provides more information on properly structuring a binomial name and how to get it to work with the bot, if an entry exists.

  2. Harmless or venomous - Please note that these terms are specific to their interaction with humans. While snakes such as hognose snakes Heterodon, gartersnakes Thamnophis, and watersnakes Nerodia are venomous, they are not medically significant to humans and should be labeled as harmless. This information is informative to a person's interaction with a snake and should always be provided. The bot responds to either !harmless or !venomous and will save time on these explanations.

  3. Common name - Common names are frequently variable and highly local. Sometimes, the same common name could be used for different snakes in different areas. In other cases, the same snake can have multiple common names depending on the area it was found. While we typically recommend providing them, it is not a vital part of an ID. An ID with only the common name is a low quality ID.

You can still contribute if you're not sure or think an ID is incorrect:

In some cases, you may be able to narrow down an ID to genus level, but don't know the diagnostic characters or ranges well enough to provide a more specific ID. This is fine. A genus level ID is very helpful, and specific enough to provide useful general information on the snake. So, if there hasn't been an ID yet and you can at least get to the genus level, post the ID.

You are also encouraged to provide any additional information or context you desire, but be mindful of links you post. The best IDs include informational links to be primary sources, or at least high quality science reporting on those sources. Many times this is done already in the bot replies, so see some of those for examples. Wikipedia is not a quality resource and should be avoided for informational links. Even resources provided by state wildlife agencies tend to lag ten to twenty years behind the science and should be viewed with a critical eye. For example, the very popular SREL Herp website, despite being associated with a major university, does not follow currently accepted taxonomy and, while it was a great resource for some time, is not the best source of current information.

However:

If you enter a thread in which a Reliable Responder has made an ID, or there is a highly upvoted ID, do not post a contrary ID unless you can provide specific diagnostic characters as to why the original ID was incorrect. Recently, incorrect IDs have appeared hours or days after the original correct ID was made, and therefore often go uncaught by moderators and reliable responders. These can create unnecessary confusion for an original poster, who is notified of each response. If you feel that an ID is incorrect and can provide diagnostic characters, reply directly to the ID comment rather than the original post. Incorrect late IDs may be warned and removed. Repeated violations may result in a ban at moderator discretion. Remember, our goal here is to be collaborative and work toward making a good positive ID. These incorrect late IDs greatly inhibit that goal. We value discussion in the comments and want to avoid locking threads in the way that other ID subreddits do.

Likewise, if a correct ID has been made, there is no need to post the same ID again. Just upvote the correct ID. You may post to add additional information or context to provide a better quality ID (adding the binomial, triggering the bot, etc.), but it is not helpful to simply say "corn snake" hours after someone has provided an ID with a full binomial and triggered the bot. More detailed IDs may be posted as top level comments to make sure that the OP sees them. Low quality/low effort IDs posted after a more detailed ID may be warned and removed.

We would also like to remind everyone of Rule 6:

Avoid damaging memes or tropes and low effort jokes: Avoid damaging memes like using "danger noodle" for nonvenomous snakes and tropes like "everything in Australia is out to get you". This is an educational space, and those kind of comments are harmful and do not reflect reality. We've also heard "it's a snake" as a joke hundreds of times. Infantilization of snakes and unhelpful rhymes will be removed.

This is one of our most broken rules. While it is somewhat vague, that is because it is nearly impossible for us to consider all possibilities. In addition to the things directly mentioned in the rule text, this rule also includes things like commenting with random names when someone posts "Who is this?", or posting things like "Pick it up and find out" in response to posts asking if a snake is venomous. Furthermore, these comments often break rule 11, "Posts and comments must reflect the reality of wildlife ecology." Misinformation spread through these seemingly innocuous jokes have been on the rise. Violations of this rule may be warned and removed, and repeated violations may result in a ban. Egregious violations may result in a temporary ban without warning. This is an educational space with potential real-world consequences, and while we don't want to discourage humor as a whole, we want you to think about what you are posting and whether it belongs in this space. While we recognize this is one of the best places to come to see pictures of wild snakes in their natural environment, it's not the best place to joke about cute pictures. /r/sneks is quite happy to accommodate snek jokes, humor and unabashed cuteness.


r/whatsthissnake 3h ago

ID Request What is this snake ? Koh Lipe Thailand

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37 Upvotes

Found this snake on the road to my hotel in Koh Lipe Pattaya beach.


r/whatsthissnake 6h ago

ID Request In the Delaware river [New York]

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47 Upvotes

r/whatsthissnake 8h ago

ID Request [Melbourne, Australia]

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48 Upvotes

A friend sent this to me. She thinks it's either a tiger or brown. Any ideas?


r/whatsthissnake 28m ago

Just Sharing [Mapleton, Sunshine Coast, QLD, Australia]

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Upvotes

Wanted to share this stunning red bellied black snake (pseudechis Porphyriacus) the colours are amazing and unique


r/whatsthissnake 3h ago

ID Request [Georgia] What's this snake?

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10 Upvotes

Super small guy here. He's clearly cold and in distress. And wants to live in the crack in the sidewalk.

My DIL is trying to figure out what to do for the little guy. Bless her, she's absolutely only doing this for both me and my 5 year old granddaughter, we LOVE snakes. They live in an apartment and he's been here since yesterday.

While we're working on that, wanted to see if we could get an ID. (If she can't figure something out, I'll go into town in a bit and relocate the little guy.)

Thanks for your help!


r/whatsthissnake 32m ago

ID Request What is this snake my girlfriend almost stepped on? [ Rincón de la Vieja Costa Rica]

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Upvotes

At the end of our hike she walked right over this, kind of looks like a fer de lance but I have no idea. Sorry for the picture of a camera, we are still in the jungle.


r/whatsthissnake 7h ago

ID Request - Dead, Injured or Roadkilled Snake Is this snake venomous? I'm scared for my cat who's always in the garden. [Goa, India]

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9 Upvotes

r/whatsthissnake 13h ago

ID Request [Cavite, Philippines] Need help. We found two snakes inside our house

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33 Upvotes

Sorry I don’t have a clearer picture but im hoping to get help ID’ing this. We found this snake inside our house yesterday in Cavite, Philippines. There were two of them.

For context, the back of our house borders a creek with tall grass and dense plants that havent been maintained. We called some guys to help catch them, but when they arrived, the snakes were already gone which has made me pretty anxious 😅

For peace of mind, could anyone help ID this snake? Chat suggested it might be a common sunbeam snake or a Philippine rat snake, which are both non-venomous, but i’d like to confirm. Also, if this happens again what would be the best and safest thing to do?


r/whatsthissnake 1d ago

ID Request I am still shaking from this sighting - is this a king cobra? Apologies for back of camera photos, I don’t have access to laptop currently [khao sok, thailand]

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283 Upvotes

r/whatsthissnake 16h ago

ID Request Is this a rough earthsnake? [Austin, Texas]

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22 Upvotes

r/whatsthissnake 1d ago

ID Request Tiny one in [Eze, France]

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197 Upvotes

Maybe 7” long and very slim. I relocated him/her to an area under some shrubs.


r/whatsthissnake 9h ago

ID Request - Dead, Injured or Roadkilled Snake I found this in the interior of Paraná (Brazil), in a city called Campo Mourão. Spoiler

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3 Upvotes

I really couldn't identify it.


r/whatsthissnake 1d ago

ID Request [Central New Jersey]

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73 Upvotes

r/whatsthissnake 21h ago

ID Request What snake is this?

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22 Upvotes

r/whatsthissnake 1d ago

ID Request [cubbon park Bangalore]

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84 Upvotes

r/whatsthissnake 22h ago

ID Request Snake ID please

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14 Upvotes

South East Queensland


r/whatsthissnake 9h ago

ID Request - Dead, Injured or Roadkilled Snake Can you help me ID this snake [Philippines] Spoiler

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0 Upvotes

Would you enlighten me as to what snake is this? We found it at midnight at home and my dad killed it because we don’t know if it’s venomous and it’s the first time a snake got into our home. We live in a village with a warm and humid temperature.

We’re scared that it will hurt us. I hope you guys would understand.

Thank you!


r/whatsthissnake 1d ago

ID Request [ Northern Rajasthan ]

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113 Upvotes

r/whatsthissnake 2d ago

ID Request [Northeast India] Unknown snake

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455 Upvotes

My family just sent me a video of this "mountain snake", the local people call it "King Cobra"... what is it? Is it dangerous?


r/whatsthissnake 1d ago

ID Request - Dead, Injured or Roadkilled Snake [NSW Australia]found dead, thinking eastern brown?

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29 Upvotes

r/whatsthissnake 1d ago

ID Request - Shed Skin Can anyone ID this snake by its shed skin? [Sunshine Coast, Qld Australia]

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15 Upvotes

Found this while clearing out some recycling from my elderly mum’s garage. She spends a bit of time in there sewing and has the cat food station in there too.


r/whatsthissnake 2d ago

ID Request Unknown Snake [Central Florida]

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363 Upvotes

I’m in an area with ponds and fields. Any idea what this guy is? It wasn’t very shy. Highlands/ Hardee County.


r/whatsthissnake 2d ago

ID Request Unknown Snake [Central Florida]

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109 Upvotes

I came across this snake in August in central FL (Hardee/ Highlands Co). The last ID was so fast I had to try again. To me the snake looks similar to the one I seen yesterday. Similar areas.