Tamaulipan Milksnake
Lampropeltis annulata
Summary 2
The Tamaulipan Milksnake, formerly known as the Mexican Milksnake, is a nonvenomous species of kingsnake that is found from San Antonio south into northeastern Mexico. It is reasonably common in South Texas south of Bexar County and can be seen in the southern parts of the city.
This species has the tricolor pattern (red, yellow and black banding) shared with several other species of snake including the Texas Coralsnake.
There is an urban legend / old boy scout rhyme that says you can safely identify harmless snakes from the venomous Coralsnake by looking at the order of the color bands. This is not a safe way to distinguish venomous Coralsnakes from non-venomous snakes. Some harmless snakes are found with "red against yellow" and some coralsnakes can show aberrant coloration where they don't have the pattern they are "supposed to have".
You shouldn't be making potentially dangerous decisions based on remembering a rhyme correctly. I recently saw a post on social media where a group of children picked up a coralsnake and were handling it because they got the rhyme wrong. One child was bitten by the coralsnake but fortunately was not seriously envenomated.
Sources and Credits
- (c) Chris Harrison, all rights reserved, uploaded by Chris Harrison
- Adapted by Chris Harrison from a work by (c) Wikipedia, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lampropeltis_annulata
