Animal · United States
Corn snake
Pantherophis guttatus — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The corn snake is a slim orange snake of the American Southeast with a checkered belly, and it kills mice by wrapping around them rather than by biting. It has no venom at all.
Picture credit: Peter Paplanus (CC BY 2.0) · Peter Paplanus (CC BY 2.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the corn snake live?
Home: Fields, pine woods and old barns of the eastern USA.
In the wild it lives in these countries: the United States.
Conservation status from the IUCN: not in danger.
The short profile
Fully grown: usually 90–150 cm long, up to 182 cm. It weighs about 0.7 kilograms. On the menu: meat.
The story behind it
A corn snake hunts at dusk, following the smell of mice with its flicking tongue. When it finds one it strikes, throws two or three coils around the animal and tightens every time the mouse breathes out, until the blood can no longer circulate. Because it eats so many rodents, farmers have long been glad to have it in their barns. The name probably comes from both the grain stores where it hunts and the belly scales, which look like the black-and-white pattern of flint corn. Corn snakes climb well, swim when they have to, and spend cold weeks hidden under logs. In captivity they have been known to live more than twenty years.
Find it on the globe
Corn snake is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
Is a corn snake venomous?
No. It has no venom and no fangs to inject it with. It kills mice by coiling around them and squeezing, and a bite from one feels like a scratch.
Why is it called a corn snake?
For two reasons. It was often found in grain stores, where it hunted mice, and the pattern on its belly looks like the black-and-white kernels of flint corn.
Where do corn snakes live?
In the eastern United States, from New Jersey down to the Florida Keys. It likes fields, pine woods and the edges of farms, and often shelters in barns and under old boards.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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