‹ Compare two snakes
Pygmy Rattlesnake vs North American Racer
(c) Jolieokefenokee, some rights reserved (CC BY)
Pygmy Rattlesnake
Sistrurus miliarius
Venomous(c) Jonathan Eisen, some rights reserved (CC BY)
North American Racer
Coluber constrictor
Non-venomousThe quick way to tell
Check the tail tip. The Pygmy's tail is short and ends in a tiny rattle that is easy to miss. The racer's tail is long and whip-thin with a pointed tip, and adult racers are plain, not spotted.
Tail ★ This settles it
Very slender with a tiny rattle that sounds like an insect.
Long and slender; no rattle.
Head
Small head, only a little wider than the neck, with a dark stripe through the eye.
Small head only a little wider than the neck; large eyes.
Pattern
Round dark spots down the back, often with a rusty stripe between them.
Plain black, blue-gray, olive or tan; belly pale to gray; young strongly blotched.
Eyes
Vertical slit pupil; heat-sensing pit between eye and nostril.
Round pupil in a large eye - a sight hunter; no heat-sensing pit.
Pits
A deep heat-sensing pit on each side of the face, between the eye and the nostril.
None. There is no pit between the eye and the nostril.
What it does
Stays hidden under leaves; rattle often too faint to hear.
Fast and nervous; vanishes at speed, bites when held.
Where it lives
Southeast from eastern North Carolina through Florida and west to eastern Texas and Oklahoma, north into western Tennessee, far western Kentucky, Arkansas and southern Missouri.
Nearly nationwide: every lower-48 state except Arizona, and into southern Canada, but absent from most of the desert Southwest.