Looking for Indigo Snakes in Georgia
by Lauren Augustine, Reptile Keeper, Smithsonian’s National Zoo
Eastern Indigo Snakes, Drymarchon couperii, are the largest nonvenomous snake in North America. They live in a variety of habitats depending on the region. They are beautiful, uniformly black but in sunlight they are remarkably iridescent, with a wash of bright orange-red on their chin area (see photo to the left). The northern part of their range includes southern Georgia where the snakes use gopher tortoise, burrows to escape the cold in the winter. These large-bodied snakes eat a variety of vertebrates, using their considerable size and strong jaws to overpower its prey…
(read more: Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute)
(photo: Lauren Augustine)
