Eastern Hog-Nosed Snake (March 30, 2007)College Station, Texas

(Heterodon platirhinos) Harmless, Inoffensive, Beneficial

Photos courtesy of Lorraine E.; text by Jerry Cates

The eastern hog-nosed snake preys chiefly on toads and frogs, in that order.  One might expect, therefore, to find this snake around a swimming pool, where such critters often congregate.  What one might not expect, however, is the behavior of this snake, which spreads its hood like a cobra when threatened.

To get an idea of how small this snake's head really is, see if you can discern its eyes.  If you cannot pick them out, here's a hint: go to the tip of the nose, at the far right, (and notice the structure of the scale over the nose, which is a feature of this species and helps it root around in the soil to locate prey) and work back to the left until you reach the dark bar in the middle of the snake's forehead--the snake's right eye breaks the bar before it sweeps down and backward, toward the mouthline (notice the round pupil, surrounded by a golden iris).  All the skin from the eye out to the edge of the face, laterally, is "puff" that shrinks to the side when the snake relaxes.

The scales on this species are keeled.  In some specimens the longitudinal midline keels are pronounced.  In this one they are less so for the scales on the sides, with strong keels on the spinal row.  A total of either 23 or 25 rows of dorsal scales occur at mid-body; in the photo below, 11 rows can be seen, which tells me at least one and possibly two additional rows are not visible.

Many thanks to Lorraine, a superb photographer, who took time to send me high-resolution images of this snake so the above details would be of the best possible quality.

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