Black Racers in the Wild

Submitted by Mike Tufaro

I was washing one of my many novelty sized coffee mugs while looking out the window. The bigger the coffee mug the longer it takes to clean and, therefore, the better chances of me seeing something cool out of the window. Well, it just so happened that I saw a black vertical line sticking out on the lawn. This, I thought, was an extremely mediocre thing. Sure it’s cool to see any snake in the wild, but black racers have been well documented as being ophiophagus, that is to say, eaters of other snakes. My dad and his girlfriend were in the house and I mentioned “there’s a snake in the backyard.” The dialogue quickly turned into let’s get out the big camera to take a photograph. Well the black racers I’ve noticed like to stand up tall in the grass and look around. They also have a reputation of being aggressive and speedy. Not an entirely unearned reputation. Well it wasn’t long after the first photograph that this racer put his head down and my dad, with his camera, and I ran out of the kitchen through the patio and right up to the snake. The snake then started making his/her body really wrinkly which is a message to say, “I’m uncomfortable.” This is understandable because two giants just came running out of the house right up close with a big camera pointed at the snake and the snake was practically cornered. The snake, and now the whole family watched each other and I did something that I thought might help the snake calm down. I dropped to my knees and put my hands on the ground. I started acting like a grazer picking up blades of grass and started pretending to eat them. Amazingly, the snake straightened out. The snake was no longer scared. I figured an animal that specializes in eating snakes is not likely going to be grazing on grass, the snake thought so too. I then took notice of how the snake was flicking its tongue in a seemingly patterned way. I tried to replicate and the snake darted towards me in a non aggressive way. I thought to myself, “is it possible that this snake species communicates via tongue flicks? Sailors back in the day used to communicate to each other in a language comprised of only dots and dashes. I must not be so quick to write this off.”

I observed what I could and then looked for someone to share my observations with. I sent this to the Division of Herpetology at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville and this is their response:

Thanks for your email sharing your black racer observations with us. Those are very interesting! Black racers are very active and curious snakes. They are commonly found in residential areas and seem very comfortable coexisting with people if given the opportunity. They often have large home ranges and move around quite a bit. It sounds like your yard is plenty hospitable for them, so I bet they will return to your yard at some point. Most of the aggregations of racers are seen in the spring and early summer when males are searching for females. After that, they seem to be more solitary.

Thanks again for sharing your observations with us and for providing a safe haven for snakes and other wildlife. We really appreciate it!

Best regards,

Coleman M. Sheehy III, Ph.D Division of Herpetology Florida Museum of Natural History 1659 Museum Road PO Box 117800 University of Florida Gainesville, FL 32611 (352) 273-1945 coleman3@ufl.edu