Animal · Poland, Germany, Austria
Grass snake
Natrix natrix — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The grass snake is an excellent swimmer with two pale yellow crescents behind its head, and it is completely harmless to people. When it is really frightened, it simply plays dead.
Picture credit: Charles J. Sharp (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Kristian Pikner (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Darius Bauzys (CC BY 3.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the grass snake live?
Home: by ponds, ditches and damp meadows.
In the wild it lives in these countries: Poland, Germany, Austria, Czechia, Sweden, Romania, Ukraine, Russia.
Conservation status from the IUCN: not in danger.
The short profile
Fully grown: up to 1.2 m. It weighs about 0.2 kilograms. On the menu: meat.
The story behind it
Grass snakes spend much of the summer near water, hunting frogs, toads and newts. They have no venom and no teeth for holding prey, so they swallow their catch whole and alive. If a fox or a dog comes too close, the snake first hisses and puffs itself up to look bigger. If that does not help, it rolls onto its back, lets its tongue hang out and goes completely limp, as if it were dead. Most animals lose interest in something that will not run away, and once the danger has passed the snake slides off. In early summer the female lays between eight and forty eggs in a warm heap of rotting leaves, grass cuttings or compost, which works like a gentle oven. The young hatch about six weeks later, already as long as a pencil.
Find it on the globe
Grass 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
How do you recognise a grass snake?
Look behind the head: a grass snake wears two pale yellow crescents there, like a half-open collar. Its pupil is round, and its back has no zigzag band.
Where does the grass snake live?
In damp places across Europe: pond edges, ditches, wet meadows, riverbanks and quiet garden ponds. It is at home in the water and can stay under for a long time.
Is a grass snake dangerous?
No. It has no venom at all and would much rather escape. Its best trick is to lie on its back and play dead until the danger has gone.
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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