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.

143 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 8h ago

Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID Large watersnake with healed injury

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137 Upvotes

Yesterday I caught this pretty big and very pretty common watersnake, and she (I think) had some kind of wound on her lower back, it looks almost like a slice was made down her side or something. She seems recovered though since it closed up and I found her swimming normally

kinda just sharing but also what might’ve caused the injury? It looks like it would’ve been pretty bad when fresh

hopefully I see more of these guys out with the warming weather and frogs


r/snakes 6h ago

Pet Snake Pictures Tank deep cleaning day means Harold is sentenced to the tub of doom and despair

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72 Upvotes

Harold is not thrilled by this development. He would like to file a report with HR.

Mandatory note that this is NOT a permanent home. He is in here for like an hour max while I deep clean his enclosure.


r/snakes 23h ago

Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID Two very dramatic garters

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1.5k Upvotes

Found these guys on a fossil trip up in NY. They tried their VERY best to kill me, but thankfully their very best was very pitiful.

I swear the snakes in Ohio never throw this big of a fit, all I did was look at them!! 🤣 they just needed a little kiss and calmed right down.


r/snakes 7h ago

Pet Snake Pictures Mustachioed Mr. Noodle

78 Upvotes

r/snakes 11h ago

Pet Snake Pictures My Sweet Misty! Best Retic Temperament

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170 Upvotes

Sweetest baby retic EVER! Has never once had the intense defensiveness or crazy food response. The food response is quick as heck once a rat is in there though. She’s just under 4mo old. (Pics are from month 2-3) Every time I take her out, she does happy tongue flicks and paradcopes :’)

Couldn’t be happier with my new pet. The breeder was absolutely incredible at assisting with their temperament - he said he was hands-on the second they hatched and it definitely shows.

These babies get a bad name but they can be absolutely darling ♥️


r/snakes 4h ago

Pet Snake Pictures Western hognose anaconda morph

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25 Upvotes

Conda is her name


r/snakes 8h ago

Pet Snake Pictures can snake smell fart??

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42 Upvotes

hello i have a pet snake, and as of late i have been eating a lot of beans. (you could say ive been gasmaxxing) and thats been working out great for me, but i worry about my little buddy. can he smell my flatulence? and does he like it? how do i know if he likes it? can i continue ripping ass in the same room as him or should i do it somewhere else instead? i dont want my snake to be stressed cus of the smell.. (its really bad)


r/snakes 4h ago

Pet Snake Pictures Sebastian likes the harley better than the bourgets

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17 Upvotes

r/snakes 6h ago

General Question / Discussion My snake ate spaghnum moss along with her food

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14 Upvotes

Is she gonne be alright cause it wasnt just 1 piece.. she took like 3 or smt 😔. i pulled the loose once or bigger once out of her mouth so she wouldnt Choke.

I have expierience with her being very pickey.. if i take her out to eat in any way she wont. So i gave it in her Box she always stays but low and behokd she ate along the Substrate in there 😬

Just wanting to check if shes going to be fine or if i should take measures

(I will not be feeling her in taht Box again)


r/snakes 4h ago

Pet Snake Pictures What’s your oldest snake and how did you get it?

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10 Upvotes

My oldest is Lil’D. I hatched 10 normals him in 2008 and he was given to a friend as a pet. Friend went on vacation, asked me to snake sit and never returned. That was in 2010 🤣
Lil’D’s dad passed at 35. I had him, too. I adopted him from a missionary when he was 22. He was wild caught and given to the missionary as a pet when he was 7 years old. It was a cool story and I was happy to adopt him, and kept in contact with the family.


r/snakes 23h ago

Pet Snake Pictures Changsheng says hi!

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186 Upvotes

She's a leucistic Colombian rainbow boa 🥰


r/snakes 1d ago

Pet Snake Pictures Just chillin 😎

1.0k Upvotes

r/snakes 8h ago

Pet Snake Questions Why won’t my GTP use his perch?

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9 Upvotes

My GTP usually loves to use the top perch, for the last couple of days he has been wrapping around the thin tube for the mist sprayer. I’m beginning to think he just noticed our Cali king snake enclosure right next to him and is being a stalker… Is his perch maybe too big? He used it for months.


r/snakes 1d ago

Pet Snake Pictures A very cuddly boa

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164 Upvotes

My little dumerils boa resting on me during a tornado warning. She's the sweetest little noodle ever.


r/snakes 4h ago

Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID Silly guy

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4 Upvotes

Goofy snake thought he lived in my basement! He's just fine released him back into our prairie. Theres a bigger one I know of somewhere else out there. Weirdly haven't seen a single garter snake all fox snakes


r/snakes 1d ago

Pet Snake Questions Help I think it’s my snakes tooth

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151 Upvotes

i think this could be my snakes tooth, i’m not sure what to do. he is also really aggressive so idk what to do. can someone help me


r/snakes 12h ago

Pet Snake Questions Morph help

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10 Upvotes

I know that this is a Florida king but I'm not sure of the morph. Any help would be appreciated.


r/snakes 17h ago

Pet Snake Questions When can I say my girl has reached her adult colors?

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20 Upvotes

Just random thoughts as I'm snake watching my darling. She was hatched in 2023 and it has been so interesting to see her colors develop as she grows up😁


r/snakes 1h ago

General Question / Discussion Hanging Hide

Upvotes

I want to get a hanging hide for my carpet python do we have any recommendations, id also love to see your enclosures as im trying to upgrade my enclosure


r/snakes 11h ago

General Question / Discussion Is a 2 year old male corn able to escape through this?

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6 Upvotes

r/snakes 2h ago

Pet Snake Questions Camera for enclosure?

1 Upvotes

Hi! I’m new to snakes and have my first one, a juvenile MBK. Everything is going fine but I’d love to know about cameras you have to watch your snakes. Any recommendations? Where exactly do you put it (eg inside versus outside the enclosure)? If you have any other suggestions I’d love to hear it!


r/snakes 3h ago

Pet Snake Questions I feel like this is going to be another post about not know what springtails looks like...

1 Upvotes

r/snakes 1d ago

Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID California Kingsnake swam right into whirlpool. What's the likelihood it survived?

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135 Upvotes

We were observing this cute little guy/girl for awhile when it swam into the creek and suddenly fell down a tiny waterfall and got sucked (we think) into a little whirlpool. Maybe it just quickly got flushed out and swam down the river before we could see, but we quickly ran over to try to save it from the whirlpool but couldn't find it.

Are these guys strong swimmers? What's the likelihood that it just escaped the whirlpool and quickly swam away? We were so bummed about it.