Corn Snake (Gray)

Grey is Sarett Nature Center’s ambassador Corn Snake and he has lived here for almost 15 years! He is about 21 years old, we call him our “old man snake”. He is extremely gentle and a wonderful ambassador, being recently retired from programming due to his age, but he would still love to meet you when you visit the nature center. He enjoys basking under his heat lamp and getting wrapped up in the live plant that is next to his enclosure when naturalists let him explore.

Corn snakes are a nonvenomous, semi-arboreal species of snake native to the southeastern United States, parts of Mexico, and the Cayman Islands. They are found in the temperate forest biome, preferring wooded groves, rocky hillsides, meadowland, as well as barns, woodlots, and even abandoned houses. They are long, slender snakes with oval heads and round pupils. Exact color and pattern depends on locality and morph, but generally, a wild-type (“normal”) corn snake will be orange or brownish-yellow with large, black-edged red or brown blotches down its back. There are two alternating rows of smaller blotches on each side. The belly often has a black and white checkered pattern.

When newly hatched, corn snakes can measure anywhere between 10-15 inches (25-38 cm), but they grow to be about 3-5 feet (.9-1.5 m) as adults. As small as 2 feet and as large as 6 feet is possible. There is no significant size difference between the sexes. Captive corn snakes usually reach adulthood around 1.5-2 years old, and with good care they can live long lives — 15-25 years. Some have lived as long as 30!

Corn snakes are crepuscular, which means that although they are active at night, their peak hours are around dawn and dusk. In the wild, these hours are spent hunting prey like small mammals, frogs, fish, and even birds on occasion. Because they don’t have hands to help them subdue prey, corn snakes use their teeth and powerful constricting muscles to squeeze prey until it passes out.

Early European settlers encountered this species in their corn fields and corn cribs, concluding that it was eating their corn. The truth is that the snakes were actually doing those farmers a favor by eating the rodents that would otherwise be feasting on the corn, but the name “corn snake” stuck!