Great Plains Rat Snake

Appearance

The Great Plains rat snake is typically light gray or tan in color, with dark gray, brown, or green-gray blotching down its back, and stripes on either side of the head which meet to form a point between the eyes. They are capable of growing from 3 feet to 5 feet long.

Naming

The epithet, ''emoryi'', is in honor of Brigadier General William Hemsley Emory, who was chief surveyor of the U.S. Boundary Survey team of 1852 and collected specimens for the Smithsonian Institution. As such, it is sometimes referred to as Emory's rat snake.Additional common names for ''Pantherophis emoryi'' include the following: brown rat snake, chicken snake, eastern spotted snake, Emory's Coluber, Emory's pilot snake, Emory's racer, Emory's snake, gray rat snake, mouse snake, prairie rat snake, spotted mouse snake, Texas rat snake, and western pilot snake.

Behavior

Great Plains rat snakes prefer open grassland or lightly forested habitats, but are also found on coastal plains, semi-arid regions, as well as rocky, moderately mountainous regions. They can often be found on farmland, which often leads it to be erroneously called the chicken snake, and other areas with a relatively high rodent population, which is their primary diet. They will also eat birds, and occasionally snakes, lizards and frogs, all of which they subdue by constriction. They are primarily nocturnal, and oviparous, laying clutches of as many as 25 eggs in the late spring. Like most rat snakes, when agitated, the Great Plains rat snake will shake its tail vigorously, which by itself makes no noise, but when it shakes amongst dry leaf litter, it can sound remarkably like a rattlesnake, and often leads to misidentification. Great Plains rat snakes tend to remain still for a majority of their time awake, which is odd for a nocturnal being. On average, the Great Plains snakes only move 188 meters per day. The Yellow-Bellied Racers, a snake that often lives in the same habitat, moves more often than the Great Plains snake - which could lead to a decline in their population as they are not as mobile.

Warning signs of agitation are curling up tightly, shaking its tail rapidly. Though this snake has very small teeth and is nonvenomous, it will bite. However, as a whole, this species of snake is very calm and non-aggressive.