Corn Snake

Corn Snake battle analysis

The corn snake is a quiet specialist in small places. It spends much of its life underground, sliding through the tunnels of mice and cotton rats, or tucked under loose bark and in the walls of old barns. At night it hunts by scent, flicking its tongue to follow a rodent's trail, then bites, wraps its coils around the prey and squeezes. It is just as happy in a tree, gripping branches in a stop-and-go climb to reach a bird's nest.

Its weapons stop there. Kingsnakes, which often eat other snakes, squeeze harder than corn snakes of similar size, and the corn snake has no venom and no armor. When threatened it tries to look more dangerous than it is: it shakes its tail against dry leaves to make a rattling buzz and releases a foul musk. Foxes, bobcats, weasels, opossums and hawks all eat corn snakes regardless.

In ABS terms the corn snake has low Attack and Defense, solid Agility from its climbing and burrowing, and modest Stamina. Its Intelligence is decent for a snake, supported by experiments in which young corn snakes quickly learned to find a hidden shelter. Its Special score reflects constriction, climbing and its rattle-and-musk bluff rather than any rare weapon.

Habitat & range

The corn snake lives in the southeastern United States from New Jersey to the Florida Keys and west to Louisiana, in overgrown fields, forest openings, pine and palmetto flatwoods, rocky areas and abandoned farms and buildings, from sea level to about 1,800 m. In colder areas it brumates through the winter; on the warmer coast it shelters in rock crevices and logs during cold spells.

Diet & hunting

Over half the diet is rodents, such as hispid cotton rats and white-footed mice, plus other small mammals like moles. It also climbs to take birds and eggs. Young snakes eat lizards, small snakes and frogs, and in Florida the diet is mainly reptiles and amphibians. It helps control rodent populations and is in turn eaten by foxes, opossums, skunks, bobcats, weasels and hawks.

Social life

Solitary and secretive. It is active mainly at night and spends much of the day under bark, in burrows or in old buildings.

Conservation

The species is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List. It is common across much of its range. Outside its range it is a proscribed pest in much of Australia, where authorities run eradication campaigns, and it is at risk of becoming invasive in Brazil.

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