Bristol snakes 9: Northern Pine Snake

Northern Pine Snake

The last of Bristol Zoo’s snakes I will post about in this series is the impressive Northern Pine Snake Pituophis melanoleucus. These are some of the largest snakes in North America, and can grow as thick as my wrist and nearly 2m long.

Bristol snakes 8: Corn Snake



Corn Snake

Almost certainly the most commonly kept pet snake in the world, and tying with the Leopard Gecko and Inland Bearded Dragon as the default reptile pet, at least here in the UK, the Corn Snake Pantherophis guttatusis native to the south eastern United States, where it prefers fairly dry areas with plentiful rodent burrows.

Bristol snakes 7: Royal Python

Royal Python

As well as the various snakes on show in the Reptile House, the volunteers have several snakes that are used in the Animal Encounters talks. One of the most popular of these is the Royal Python, Python regius, of which we have three so that we can spread the workload between them. As I am sure most people are aware, Royals are one of the most popular pet snakes, owing to their small size (even large females seldom reach 1.5m) and usually placid demeanour, which makes them very good for handling.

Bristol snakes 6: Amethystine Python

Amethystine Python, Bristol

Every reptile house has at least one species of giant snake on show, and usually these are Burmese Pythons Python bivittatus, Reticulated Python P. reticulatus, Common Boa Boa constrictor, or Green Anaconda Eunectes murinus. At Bristol, there is a different, and much less often seen species, the Amethystine Python Morelia amethistina (note spelling). There is 2 pair on show, each around 3m long.

Bristol snakes 5: Savu Python

Moving on from the boas, we come to the, in many ways similar, pythons. Except for the introduced Burmese pythons in Florida, pythons are restricted to the warmer parts of the Old World, with various species ranging from Africa across into Australia. Here at the zoo there are two species on show in the Reptile House, the Savu Island and Amethystine pythons, plus Royal pythons that are used in education talks, but it is the Savu Python that I will begin with.