Description: This is a large (4 to 6 feet) primarily aquatic snake but it also burrows into loose soil. It may emerge and be surface active on warm humid, or especially, on rainy nights. It is shiny black above with red bars that are rounded on top along each side. Belly with alternating red and black bars. Scales are smooth and in 19 rows; anal plate usually divided.. Colors dull and the entire snake becomes bluish when ready to shed its skin. Tail tipped with a sharpened spinelike scale. This is a rear-fanged species that seldom if ever bites, even if handled carelessly, when restrained. Between a dozen and 50 eggs have been documented in a clutch produced by this prolific snake.
Habitat: Habitat includes marshes, swampy weedy lake margins, wetlands along the edges of large rivers, oxbow lakes, beaver ponds, slow mud-bottomed streams, shallow sloughs with rotting logs, floodplains, drainage ditches, and brackish tidal areas. This fossorial, semi-aquatic snake burrows in soft soil and among wet debris and mats of vegetation along the water's edge. Eggs are laid in earthen cavity, sometimes in alligator nests. In South Carolina, juveniles entered aquatic habitats in spring (mainly) or in autumn (fall).
Range: USA (Florida, E Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama); Type locality: Louisiana.
Diet: While they have been known to eat tadpoles, frogs, salamanders or fish, their preferred diet consists of amphiumas and sirens — elongated eel-like amphibians that writhe and coil into a ball when disturbed. The mud snake prods its prey with a long, spine-like scale at the tip of its tail, causing the amphiumas to uncoil. Then the snake’s muscular head, jaw and neck help it catch and subdue its slippery meal.
Reproduction: Mates in spring and lays 10 - 100 eggs during the summer months. Eggs hatch two months later and hatchlings are 6 - 9 inches long.
Status: Listed as Least Concern in view of its wide distribution, presumed large population, and because it is unlikely to be declining fast enough to qualify for listing in a more threatened category.
Disclaimer: ITIS taxonomy is based on the latest scientific consensus available, and is provided as a general reference source for interested parties. However, it is not a legal authority for statutory or regulatory purposes. While every effort has been made to provide the most reliable and up-to-date information available, ultimate legal requirements with respect to species are contained in provisions of treaties to which the United States is a party, wildlife statutes, regulations, and any applicable notices that have been published in the Federal Register. For further information on U.S. legal requirements with respect to protected taxa, please contact the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
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