r/snakes May 12 '25

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

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122 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.

147 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 4h ago

Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID Three amazing, wild, vivacious timber rattlesnakes (Crotalus horridus) in New Jersey

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130 Upvotes

I can't stop smiling! Timber rattlesnakes are one of my favourite finds. D​espite their poor reputations (due to having evolved one of nature's most fascinating defenses), they r​eally don't want anything to do with humans, and aren't a threat if you are cautious and stay away.

All three were minimally bothered - just moved off the roads and to safety in the woods.


r/snakes 1h ago

General Question / Discussion Safely relocated a Diamond Back Rattler

Upvotes

Nearly stepped on this little guy while watering the garden. Wife got the video. He was released safely back into the wild.


r/snakes 10h ago

Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID >:(

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138 Upvotes

Taken at the STL Zoo


r/snakes 1h ago

Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID my dad found him in the drive way he’s such a chill little guy

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Upvotes

r/snakes 17h ago

Pet Snake Pictures So Snakey.

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327 Upvotes

r/snakes 14h ago

Pet Snake Pictures This is my snakey!

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92 Upvotes

His name is Garden! He is an albino corn snake and he has a tiny gray spot on his head! (I think it’s a piece of stuck shed but idk)

He’s like 4”2 or something, he’s as long as my 4th grade sister and I don’t know her height so that’s just my guess for him.


r/snakes 11h ago

Pet Snake Pictures Is my snake sleeping?

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54 Upvotes

r/snakes 11h ago

Pet Snake Pictures enjoying the afternoon sun

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43 Upvotes

0.1. Firefly Mojave morph Python regius
0.1. Normal morph Python brongersmai


r/snakes 1h ago

Pet Snake Pictures Will I survive

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Upvotes

Will I survive this bite from my black rat snake? Who knows

Picture of culprit in second slide


r/snakes 4h ago

Pet Snake Questions What size prey?

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8 Upvotes

I just got this beautiful mosaic California kingsnake last weekend, I named her Mishka! I am still somewhat new to snakes and was wondering what size mice I should feed her? I was thinking maybe a hopper every 10ish days? I also don’t know how old she is, it wasn’t written on her container and I forgot to ask the breeder. Thanks!


r/snakes 13h ago

Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID Baby rubber boa in willamette valley area

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53 Upvotes

I made a post on here on the 4th of July about finding an adult rubber boa right next to our patio. Now I guess we have baby ones slithering around. I originally thought it was a giant earthworm but it was slithering instead of inching along


r/snakes 2h ago

General Question / Discussion Noodle soup

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7 Upvotes

Wanted to come on here and share this video I made. I got this snake a while back and this video is fairly old, we had someone come into the reptile shop i worked at to surrender a snake he couldn’t care for anymore, upon asking questions we realized he hadn’t even been taking proper care to begin with and it came in with stuck shed.
Im in college right now hoping to become a veterinarian in the future so i took this as a learning opportunity, obviously none of my snakes ever get stuck shed so this was the first time i had to do something like this. Before anyone says anything i conducted proper research and consulted multiple vets i’ve worked closely with.


r/snakes 9h ago

Pet Snake Pictures Plotting

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14 Upvotes

He watched the dead pinkie for 90 minutes before actually eating it.


r/snakes 1h ago

Pet Snake Questions mystery skin condition?

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Upvotes

hi, my texas ratsnake (7-8 months old) has these red marks on his scales and i havent identified them, im not sure if its scale rot or anything similar, ive been spraying affected areas with vetericyn antimicrobial every few days to no avail. does anyone recognize what's going on?


r/snakes 23h ago

Pet Snake Pictures His first time trying quail

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191 Upvotes

He was in shed so had to coax him out a little but it seems he liked the 2 quail chicks I gave him. You can hear his excited huffs and chuffs when he leaves his hide

Also seems my boas are interested at the end haven't fed them poultry yet, but they seem really interested in the quail smell.

Angry Leachie gecko in the background as well


r/snakes 20h ago

Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID Northern water snakes

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98 Upvotes

These were gorging on minnows along a sandbar in Sodus Creek (Folletts, Iowa)


r/snakes 1d ago

Pet Snake Pictures Me and my boa look alike 😂

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1.1k Upvotes

r/snakes 50m ago

Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID sick black tail rattlesnake [Big Bend National Park, Texas]

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Upvotes

we helped him off the road :)


r/snakes 9h ago

Pet Snake Pictures Got pooped on.

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9 Upvotes

r/snakes 1h ago

Pet Snake Questions new corn snake long digestion

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Upvotes

r/snakes 4h ago

Pet Snake or "morph" ID Yoink

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3 Upvotes

My snake is a grumpy lil bastard, even when he's eating.


r/snakes 6h ago

General Question / Discussion Shed memorabilia

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4 Upvotes

r/snakes 1d ago

Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID Doing yard work

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233 Upvotes

Little stink noodle was going for the throat. The black rat was the chillest snake I've relocated (from under my truck tire) in a while.