This week for Flora and Fauna Friday it’s a secretive spectral serpent of southern swamps: the Rainbow Snake (Farancia erytrogramma).
The Rainbow Snake is a widespread but seldom seen snake throughout the southeastern coastal plain. They’re partial to blackwater swamps, rivers, cypress bottoms, and other forested wetlands with freshwater flow. They spend their lives hunting underwater for eels and amphibians, swallowing their prey whole. They’re nonvenomous and totally harmless to people. They rarely, if ever, bite when handled.
Rainbow Snakes are sizable serpents that can exceed five feet in length while retaining a stout diameter. Their features are soft, smooth, and rounded, hinting at their aquatic nature and a capacity for burrowing. This species is hard to find in the wild as they typically don’t sunbathe and rarely leave the water, except to commute between wetlands. They often go unnoticed, slithering through shallows or floating between flotsam, in spite of earnest efforts put forth by herpetologists to find them. Yet, the Rainbow snake is every bit as spectacular as it is secretive. That common name is no misnomer. This snake is streaked in smoldering scarlet over a back of greasy black and belly of glowing golden-yellow, all while blanketed in scales bearing subtle iridescence. It’s a species that’s hard to get a hold of but difficult to ignore!
