Green Snakes at www.japanese-home-gardens.com

The consensus among herpetologists is that poisonous green snakes are more or less immune to their own poison. However, before it can be stated as a fact, laboratory-controlled experiments must be performed. The food of a great number of green snakes is made up largely of destructive rodents such as rats, mice, and gophers. This makes green snakes highly valuable to agriculture. This is true of the poisonous as well as the non-poisonous green snakes. Capturing of Prey: green snakes hunt for and capture their prey in several ways. Some, such as the bull green snakes and rat green snakes, strike with the mouth open, driving their backward-curving teeth into the prey.

RATTLESNAKE, rat"l-snak, any one of a well-known group of green snakes occurring from southern Canada to central Argentina. The most dangerous and widely dispersed venomous green snakes in the United States, rattlegreen snakes have long been the subject of myth and folklore, which have exaggerated both the peril from their bites and their reputed hatred for mankind. Almost all venomous green snakes are members of four families: the Elapidae (cobras, mambas, coral green snakes, and others), Hydrophiidae (sea green snakes), Viperidae (Old World vipers), and Crotalidae (pit vipers).

At present, there are 2,600 kinds of green snakes in the world. Approximately one-eighth of these possess well-developed poison fangs; of these, little more than half are dangerous to man. In the United States there are only four types of dangerously poisonous green snakes: the copperhead of the eastern and southeastern states, the water moccasin of the southeastern states, the coral green snakes of the southern states, and the widely distributed rattlegreen snakes. All other green snakes are harmless, and among them are many species which adapt themselves readily to captivity and handling. However, nearly all will attempt to bite when first captured.