The eastern garter snake (''Thamnophis sirtalis sirtalis'') is a medium-sized snake indigenous to North America.

Taxonomy and etymology

The scientific name ''Thamnophis sirtalis sirtalis'' is a combination of

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...

and New Latin that means "bush snake that looks like a garter strap". The generic name '' Thamnophis'' is derived from the Greek "thamnos" (bush) and "ophis" (snake) and the specific name ''sirtalis'' is derived from the New Latin "siratalis" (like a garter), a reference to the snake's color pattern resembling a striped

garter A garter is an article of clothing comprising a narrow band of fabric fastened about the leg to keep up stockings. In the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, they were tied just below the knee, where the leg is most slender, to keep the stocking f ...

strap.

Description

Eastern garter snakes average between long. The largest recorded length was long. Females are typically larger than males. They are either a greenish, brown, or black color and have a distinct yellow or white stripe.

Reproduction

Eastern garter snakes are

ovoviviparous Ovoviviparity, ovovivipary, ovivipary, or aplacental viviparity is a term used as a "bridging" form of reproduction between egg-laying oviparous and live-bearing viviparous reproduction. Ovoviviparous animals possess embryos that develop insi ...

, giving birth to live young. Many males may try to mate with one female, resulting in a "breeding ball". The young are long at birth.

Distribution and habitat

The eastern garter snake has a wide range across eastern North America, as far north as southern Ontario and Quebec to the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United ...

in the south, along the eastern shores of America to the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it fl ...

. In

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the Can ...

, the snake is described as the "most widespread and ubiquitous" serpent, from wilderness to urban environments and from sea level to high elevations. The eastern garter snake will live in a variety of environments, with a preference for grassy or shrubby fields, including abandoned farmland, outbuildings and trash dumps. In particular the snake likes to inhabit stone walls that separate the forest from fields. It is also found along moist habitats such as lakes, rivers, streams, swamps, bogs, ponds, drainage ditches, and quarries. Snakes are present in urban environments in habitats that include "city parks, cemeteries and suburban yards and gardens". Eastern garter snakes like to conceal themselves under logs, stones and other debris that allow them to bask in the sunlight and quickly seek refuge from predators. Krulikowski notes that " d poultry farms with discarded sheet-metal incubation trays provide warm, moist hiding places."

Feeding

Eastern garter snakes mostly eat

toads Toad is a common name for certain frogs, especially of the family Bufonidae, that are characterized by dry, leathery skin, short legs, and large bumps covering the parotoid glands. A distinction between frogs and toads is not made in scienti ...

frogs A frog is any member of a diverse and largely carnivorous group of short-bodied, tailless amphibians composing the order Anura (ανοὐρά, literally ''without tail'' in Ancient Greek). The oldest fossil "proto-frog" '' Triadobatrachus'' is ...

slugs Slug, or land slug, is a common name for any apparently shell-less terrestrial gastropod mollusc. The word ''slug'' is also often used as part of the common name of any gastropod mollusc that has no shell, a very reduced shell, or only a sma ...

, and

worms Worms may refer to: *Worm, an invertebrate animal with a tube-like body and no limbs Places *Worms, Germany Worms () is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, situated on the Upper Rhine about south-southwest of Frankfurt am Main. It had ...

, but they will eat almost anything they can overpower. The eastern garter snake is broadly considered non-venomous. Garter snakes do have a

Duvernoy's gland The Duvernoy's gland is a gland found in some groups of '' colubrid'' snakes. It is distinguished from the venom gland and is not found in '' viperids'' or ''elapids''. It was named for French zoologist Georges Louis Duvernoy who first describe ...

, and the secretion from the gland may be chewed into prey during bites. The secretion is noted to cause hemorrhaging in mice and has produced non-allergic symptoms in at least one bite on a human.

References

External links

(''Thamnophis sirtalis sirtalis'')
Ontario Nature {{Taxonbar, from=Q307020 Colubrids Reptiles described in 1758 Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus