‹ Compare two snakes
Gray Ratsnake vs North American Racer
(c) Dominic Gentilcore, some rights reserved (CC BY)
Gray Ratsnake
Pantherophis spiloides
Non-venomous(c) Jonathan Eisen, some rights reserved (CC BY)
North American Racer
Coluber constrictor
Non-venomousThe quick way to tell
Look at the back. An adult racer is plain and satiny, with no blotches, and is slim all over. A Gray Ratsnake usually shows darker blotches, even faint ones, and its body is shaped like a loaf of bread, flat underneath.
Pattern ★ This settles it
Dark gray or brown blotches on a gray to brownish back; some northern adults turn nearly black.
Plain black, blue-gray, olive or tan; belly pale to gray; young strongly blotched.
Head
Narrow head barely wider than the neck; white to cream chin.
Small head only a little wider than the neck; large eyes.
Eyes
Round pupil, fairly large dark eye; no heat-sensing pit.
Round pupil in a large eye - a sight hunter; no heat-sensing pit.
Pits
None. There is no pit between the eye and the nostril.
None. There is no pit between the eye and the nostril.
Tail
Tapers evenly; no rattle.
Long and slender; no rattle.
What it does
An excellent climber; bluffs with a tail buzz in leaf litter.
Fast and nervous; vanishes at speed, bites when held.
Where it lives
Appalachians west to the Mississippi: Florida panhandle, Alabama and Mississippi north through Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan to Wisconsin and Ontario.
Nearly nationwide: every lower-48 state except Arizona, and into southern Canada, but absent from most of the desert Southwest.