Monday, June 13, 2011

Mistaken Identity?

As Ive been looking in to the E. Indigo Ive noticed several references to the confusion between the Indigo and the Black Racer snake. As you can see they look quite similar. Can you pick out which is the E. Indigo?







If you guessed the one on the right: You are correct!
But you could see how easy it would be to mistake one for the other. But no worries my friends the Black Racer is also nonvenomous and eats venomous snake. But if you are curious here are some tips.

Comparisons:
The Black Racer                    The East Indigo
Skinny bodied                           Thick bodied         
Aggressive                                 Typically calm
3 1/2 to 5 feet                           6-8 feet                
Color varies                               Dark Iridescent blue/black
                                                  touch of red on throat

2 comments:

  1. I rescued one of these many years ago.

    In the process, I gained an incredible amount of knowledge about them. The one I rescued was 62 inches long, and preferred frogs or toads, exclusively, over even baby mice. I had it for an extended period, and fed it every day, as it woke up very early, usually 6am...

    I didn't see it eat another snake but have heard of them doing that, quite frequently. It was so calm, it would sit on my lap for hours as I typed away on my pc or watched tv, but never, never showed any aggressiveness to me, or any of my lucky friends who got to see and touch such a rare treat.

    The snake got relocated to an old, abandoned hunting lodge, so I am confident that it lived out a happy life free from real estate development that threatened its old home. But during the whole experience, I came to believe that it was a very intelligent animal, far more active and smarter than the boa I had for 18 years. A really engaging animal..kind of un-snake like, with a lot of personality. It remains my favorite snake of all time, and I would be happy to lend any information to your conservation and research effort.

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  2. Black Racer will not have orange anywhere on it..Usually the throat will be white, although i've seen some darker. They are quite fast, and agry if you do catch them... 999 out of 1,000 black snakes i've seen are black racers, in north florida.

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