Tag: snakes

Snake and toad

We ran across this on the trail yesterday

A small snake trying to eat a toad?

Apparently it concluded this wasn’t going to work.

Then it showed the underside of its tail, which allows a 100% identification: a young lystrophis_dorbignyi, or Falsa Crucera de Hocico Respingado. I’ll let you try to figure out what that means in English on your own….

Meanwhile, worth noting that we have never seen a toad before on a dog walk.

Tiny snake

At the end of our driveway I found this little guy heading into the road, and encouraged him to keep moving. Lots of traffic with a mini-market next door, and unfortunately a lot of ignorant Uruguayans will kill any snake por las dudas (just in case). making no effort to determine if it’s a threat.

Best I can guess is it’s an immature Culebra de Peñarol.

Big snake in the road

This critter appeared today, crossing our sometimes-very-busy street. When I stomped my foot behind him to encourage him to move, he instead raised his head like a cobra. But then he resumed his way across the street and into the ditch. I stood guard in case yet another delivery truck came along for the mini-market next door.

It’s called Culebra de Peñarol, because that futbol team’s colors are black and yellow.

Its scientific name is Liophis poecilogyrus sublineatus. It grows to about 70 cm in length, and this one was about that. It lives in every departamento in Uruguay, and is not endangered in any way, though this individual was for a couple of minutes.

Is it poisonous? you ask. I don´t know. Maybe we should eat one to find out? Oh, you mean venemous? It is not listed as one of the four dangerous species of snakes in Uruguay. However, I did run across an account of someone who got bitten by one.

You can read about the incident here if you care.

TL;DR: you probably don’t want to get bitten by one.

Another snake

This from yesterday. As last time, almost off the trail. Definitely alive, but very sluggish — I gently nudged it with a stick. Syd yelled at his dogs to keep them away from it. Happily, none really noticed snake nor yelling. And regardless, managed not to step on it.

snake
snake

Here’s the last one (30 September) — different coloration:

And this from November 2016 — Falsa Crucera de Hocico Respingado – Lystrophis dorbignyi (the tail is a giveaway):

Unidentified snake, Canelones, Uruguay

And this from last November — Falsa Coral – Oxyrhopus rhombifer rhombifer (?):

I’m not particularly into snakes, but it presents an interesting challenge to figure out “who’s who” in the local snake world.

On the walk

I’ve walked by this many times, but this day it caught my attention: burned-out (from the fire that deforested our dog-walk area) trunk of a pine tree. Charred outer bark, and inside the wood is disintegrating in rectilinear chunks. Huh?

Then, a snake. OK, just a snake – but no, the air was quite cool; the sun was quite hot, and the sky was blue dotted with puffy clouds, and it was lying still, almost into the sandy trail. We tried to keep the dogs from noticing it – and they didn’t – but because Syd and I stopped to look at it, three dogs came back, curious about the unusual human behavior. One almost danced on top of it, but amazingly none stepped on it. And still it didn’t move.

My best guess is it got to the side of the trail in lovely radiant heat from the sun, but when a cloud blocked the sun the cool air took over, its energy went away. I am not a biologist, much less a herpetologist. If you know more, I’d be interested to hear if I’ve got a handle on this.

It appears to be Lystrophis dorbignyi, or South American hognose snake.