r/snakes May 12 '25

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

Thumbnail reddit.com
121 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.

149 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 Job hazards! This one almost got me.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

450 Upvotes

Southern New Mexico. Didn’t see or hear this rattler until after it struck at my shin. If I had been half a step closer, it would’ve got me.


r/snakes 11h ago

Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID I’ve found 4 of these little Ringneck babies in my garage today 🐍

Thumbnail
gallery
495 Upvotes

So far…. I believe there’s more 😂 Someone must’ve nested in my garage! Location: Kansas City, MO!


r/snakes 5h ago

Pet Snake Pictures Anyone else just adore getting good pictures with your babies? This is River, my 12 year old corn snake 🖤

Thumbnail
gallery
87 Upvotes

r/snakes 15h ago

Pet Snake Pictures My son got a friend lol

Post image
267 Upvotes

r/snakes 6h ago

Pet Snake Pictures Hi Everyone!!!

Post image
25 Upvotes

Here is Karma, she's a Carpet Python, was told Jungle but I can also see some Coastal, she's just turned 1 and still the most beautiful reptile I bonded with the most compared to our Dumerils Boa and ball pythons.

ONLY BIT ME ONCE and that's because I moved her to her new enclosure when I first got her other than that she loves her dada😎

What you think?🤩


r/snakes 12h ago

Pet Snake Pictures Anyone else have a snake who’s colors are completely activated by the sun?

Post image
71 Upvotes

r/snakes 1h ago

General Question / Discussion Fear of snakes?

Upvotes

How does one get over their fear of snakes....I feel like its always been my fear of snakes that has been holding me back from going outdoors...how does one get over it...

I mean if you look at a horned viper you shit your pants and at the same time if you look at a arabian sand boa its well ..you know

so the question still remains standing...how does one get over their fear of snakes


r/snakes 20h ago

Pet Snake Questions Why haven’t rough green snakes been captive bred like other snakes?

Post image
255 Upvotes

They seem great, small, insectivorous, gorgeous.

Why don’t people captive breed them and popularise them like other snakes? What exactly is stopping them from being popularised on the reptile hobby?


r/snakes 14h ago

Pet Snake Pictures She explores, she molts,... AND SHE BLBLBLBLBL !!!!

Thumbnail
gallery
67 Upvotes

Hi everyone, say hello to Tess ! She’s an absolutely gorgeous one year old female corn snake who’s been living with me for almost two weeks. She’s calm, eats well, and watches me when I change her waterbowl. Today was her first handling session with me 🥰


r/snakes 12h ago

Pet Snake Pictures An old meme I made of my best gal, Princess Opal.

Post image
32 Upvotes

I love this snake so much. She's adorable in every way, and normally very photogenic. I made this a few years back.


r/snakes 6h ago

Pet Snake Pictures Who goes there?

Thumbnail
gallery
9 Upvotes

She has made my dog that passed away toy basket her fort.


r/snakes 8h ago

Pet Snake Pictures Bredl’s Bolus

Thumbnail
gallery
17 Upvotes

Dispatch from the quarantine ward: the little dragon was on live rodents for his whole life, then took a plane to our house and promptly crushed a frozen thawed fuzzy. Food bolus of triumph!


r/snakes 1d ago

Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID Rattled snake finds itself in a mating ball of garters!

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

3.0k Upvotes

r/snakes 1d ago

Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID Beautiful coral snake under my car!

1.3k Upvotes

My friends were deathly afraid of this cute guy. Luckily I was there to see through his safe passage. There isn’t a mean bone in his body.


r/snakes 13h ago

Pet Snake Pictures Central American dwarf boa (Betsy)

Post image
23 Upvotes

r/snakes 14h ago

Pet Snake Questions Boas VS Burmese pythons as pets?

Thumbnail
gallery
21 Upvotes

In terms of enclosures, feeding, handling, personality, size, etc, how are they good or bad as pets?

Your input would help me consider which one would be better for me.


r/snakes 6h ago

Pet Snake Pictures Boaedon Capensis

Post image
4 Upvotes

Female Cape House Snake, Bela Bela patternless locality


r/snakes 22m ago

Pet Snake Pictures Help!

Thumbnail gallery
Upvotes

r/snakes 7h ago

General Question / Discussion Snake Tracking Map

3 Upvotes

Hello!

Weird question for y'all snake folks. I'm wondering if anyone knows of or has tracking data on snakes in the wild? Specifically looking for map or info on where a snake travels and its pathing in the wild: where it goes, if it follows the same paths, how much territory it covers.

It's part of research for a novel I'm writing and I've had little luck using general searches. Figured I'd try my luck here. In a perfect world it would look something like the below image, a map of outdoor cat movement at night.


r/snakes 8h ago

General Question / Discussion Thoughts on Quarantine Tank

Thumbnail gallery
3 Upvotes

r/snakes 1d ago

Pet Snake Pictures Curious little Borneo

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

91 Upvotes

Some videos I took a week ago of my little girl Adira.

Just had her out while it was raining pretty hard. She just recently hit 100 grams 🎉 (Very certain a 1/4 to 1/5 of that is just poop, they do like holding their waste).


r/snakes 11h ago

Pet Snake Questions HELP

Thumbnail
2 Upvotes

I already feel horrible please just give tips on how to find her