Corn Snake

A Snake That Squeezes, Then Swallows

The corn snake is a constrictor, a snake that wraps around its prey and squeezes. It bites its prey to get a firm grip, then quickly coils around its meal and squeezes tightly until the prey is subdued. Then it swallows the food whole, usually headfirst. Corn snakes have also been seen swallowing small prey alive.

Hatchlings eat lizards and tree frogs. Adults go for larger prey such as mice, rats, birds and bats.

Tooth factory Corn snakes are polyphyodonts, animals that can regenerate their teeth constantly.

Nose First, Eyes Second

Corn snakes have rather poor eyesight and depend mainly on smell. Their tongue works with the Jacobson’s organ in the roof of the mouth to pick up scent molecules, and they can tell which direction the scent came from. They can also feel ground vibrations through their bodies, which helps them find small or hidden prey.

How Big, How Old

Corn snakes are about 61 to 182 centimeters (24 to 72 inches) long. Hatchlings measure 25 to 38 centimeters. An average adult weighs about 900 grams. In captivity, corn snakes have been reported to live up to 32.3 years, and their lifespan is shorter in the wild.

Where It Lives

Corn snakes live in the eastern United States, from southern New Jersey to Florida, into Louisiana and parts of Kentucky, and are most abundant in Florida and the southeast. They inhabit wooded groves, rocky hillsides, meadowlands, barns and abandoned buildings. They are secretive and spend most of their time underground in rodent burrows, though they also climb trees. Corn snakes are sometimes mistaken for the venomous copperhead and killed. The Red List rates the species Least Concern.

A Colour Lab with Scales

Corn snakes are the most commonly bred snake species in the pet industry. One team calls the corn snake a new model species for investigating how reptiles get their colours, because numerous colour and pattern mutants have been isolated in the last five decades.

The lavender morph has gray blotches on a pink background, instead of red blotches on orange. Researchers traced it to a single change in the LYST gene that cuts the protein short, and used it as evidence that the colour-making compartments in red and yellow skin cells and in light-reflecting skin cells are lysosome-related organelles. The amelanistic morph, which lacks the dark pigment melanin, shows white borders instead of black ones around an otherwise normal pattern of orange saddles.