Hobbies And Interests
Description
With its alternating red, black and yellow stripes, the non-venomous scarlet snake is often mistaken for its fellow non-venomous brethren, the scarlet kingsnake, and the venomous coral snake. However, unlike the kingsnake, the colored bands of the scarlet snake do not encircle the entire body and the snake's belly is solid white, pink or gray. And, unlike the coral snake, the scarlet snake has black bands separating its red and yellow bands.
Habitat
Scarlet snakes use their pointed red snouts to burrow underground in the dry, sandy soils of pine and oak forests as well as sandhill scrub habitats. If they can't burrow, they will hide under logs, rocks, leafs or debris.
Behavior
During the day, you will rarely see scarlet snakes out in the open, but at night they are active above ground. They reproduce in early summer, laying two to nine eggs. Rarely will they bite if handled, but avoid picking them up in case you mistake a deadly coral snake for the scarlet snake.
Diet
Despite their petite size, scarlet snakes primarily eat the eggs of other reptiles, finding them underground and then using their large teeth to peel open any eggs that are too big to swallow whole. They will also eat other snakes, lizards, frogs, insects and small rodents such as mice. A scarlet snake in captivity ate nine Texas spiny lizard eggs in one sitting, according to the authors of "Texas Snakes: Identification, Distribution, and Natural History."
Like other snakes, a scarlet snake is cold-blooded and doesn't need to eat as much as other mammals of similar size to maintain its body temperature. Because scarlet snakes use only 10 percent of the energy used by similar size mammals, they only need to eat about a 10th as much food, according to MacroEvolution.net.