r/snakes • u/Nujabezia • 14h ago
r/snakes • u/Phylogenizer • May 12 '25
All Snake ID Requests Should Be Submitted to /r/WhatsThisSnake
reddit.comHi everyone! I wanted to let you know that we're now going to redirect all Snake ID requests to the curated place for them, /r/whatsthissnake. As /r/snakes and /r/whatsthissnake have developed side by side we find ourselves in a position where we are running two parallel subreddits, but with slightly different rules. We hope is that this streamline into WhatsThisSnake will be gentle - we don't want a snake to go unidentified because we're learning how best to handle IDs. There is going to be a transition period where we still get a lot of ID requests here, so please do your part to kindly help !redirect people in need and by reporting jokes, misinformation and other problematic comments.
This spring Reddit is more popular than ever and it is hard for the moderation team to keep up. When I founded /r/whatsthissnake 12 years ago, with on average one request every day, I never imagined we'd have 150K members and 20k people a day browsing the subreddit. In the past, we've made a number of incremental changes that have been so helpful they have been instituted other places on Reddit, from introducing the term "Reliable Responder", to developing the bot and tweaking our community resources so that every Reliable Responder can choose to perform mod actions. We hope that these changes will allow us not only to maintain the level of quality provided but to reduce workload on the moderation team, because honestly, moderator burnout is a serious problem. They are doing this for free and you would no believe the abuse they receive here - not just from me, but from the users too. If you see a moderator or other flaired user in cleaning up a thread, espcially in these busy, snakey spring months in North America, throw em a thanks.
r/snakes • u/Phylogenizer • Mar 20 '26
Moderator Announcement Rule Change - Posts concerning individual or private ownership or care of medically significant species are not allowed. Posts involving animals in zoos, institutions or accredited breeding facilities are allowed with proper contextualization.
It’s a fact of life that no matter how much context we provide to our posts, when someone sees something interesting, they want to imitate it. Each day /r/snakes puts around one hundred thousand impressionable people face to face with snake related images, text and ideas. Faced with this responsibility, and with an increasing number of recent, low quality posts concerning medically significant snakes, we have to choose the right level of content we allow.
Recent low quality posts concerning captive venomous care include improper use of personal protective equipment, poor quality/security housing, very inexperienced keepers asking (and receiving!) advice on how to keep and breed their first venomous snakes and straight up animal abuse reposted from social media. Many of these clearly rule-breaking posts are removed before you see them, but a growing number of posts are clearly low quality, irresponsible content but don’t explicitly violate the rules. Over the past three years the mods have debated a rule change and we have decided to only allow posts involving venomous snakes if they are from an accredited zoo or institution. In short - we’re going to remove posts involving the private care and ownership of medically significant snakes.
Many modern herpetology texts recommend against individual private ownership of medically significant snakes. We don’t take a stand on what anyone wants to do legally, ethically and with their own time, but we do have to regulate what is posted, shared and thus propagated here. In short, we don’t care what you do, but don’t post it here. Besides being a lighting rod for the low quality content discussed above, private ownership offers unique challenges that are better suited for an institutional or team setting. Snakes are escape artists as well as attractive nuisances and must be contained outside of personal residential spaces in secure, locking enclosures to prevent both snake egress and human ingress as well as secondarily in a sealed room or facility behind a windowed door with no items on the floor under which an escaped snake can hide or avoid detection. It takes a team to execute an envenomation plan and the cost of antivenom is beyond that of most private owners, has a short shelf life and when antivenom is borrowed from institutional stocks it puts those keepers at risk.
Zoos and institutions don’t always do it better, but the onus is on them to provide best practices in care. If we limit posts to places where a team of people works together to provide a standard of care, usually for the right reasons, we can limit what we propagate on the platform.
We do not recommend any other available subreddits as well-moderated sources of captive venomous keeping. The most popular places on social media dedicated to this are inundated with low quality posts and comments and even when they outright ban irresponsible behavior, examples of the low quality content we remove are highly upvoted, and content is often sensationalist, psychopathic or disturbing. Please don’t suggest a specific place in the comments of this post. We’re aware of the options and we’re choosing not to redirect or name other online spaces.
Posts on wild venomous species are still allowed as usual with a species name and a location, but please be sure to see Rule 6 (unchanged) on what amount of contact and PPE use we find acceptable for sharing online.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER
r/snakes • u/IllegalGeriatricVore • 2h ago
Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID Baby Dekay's brown - Northern CT
r/snakes • u/TheHippieRaine • 12h ago
Pet Snake Pictures Can’t look away for a second
Doesn’t matter where I let him slither, he always goes up!
r/snakes • u/Seanzee55 • 23h ago
Pet Snake Pictures Sometimes she thinks she’s a tree python, sometimes I forget she’s coiled around me
Out of the three balls I’ve owned, Hachi here just gets it. She loves to come out of her tank and she will wrap up around me tight as hell and just observe whatever I may be doing for the day. She started off so spicy too, the only snake I’ve ever been bitten by, and now she’s my best buddy. Still wouldn’t use her as a good snake for someone new trying to get over a fear, that job is for my BEL male Kaiba who is just the most docile idiot I’ve ever met but more of a wiggle worm
r/snakes • u/FairPattern9650 • 5h ago
Pet Snake Pictures My snake just gave this little alien plushie a really tight hug 🐍
r/snakes • u/loobot3000 • 13h ago
Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID Pygmy Rattlesnake in GA
r/snakes • u/TheMarchetti • 4h ago
Pet Snake Pictures Caught my girl (1 year old BCI) sitting on her temporary log
Thought this made a good photo so I had to snap it! Dont worry yall, I know she needs more stuff in her enclosure. She just outgrew her biggest centerpiece and i have ordered some new stuff to replace it and get more clutter and climbing stuff in there for her. So the bare enclosure is only temporary until the stuff I ordered her comes in!
r/snakes • u/ElisNexusDragon • 18h ago
Pet Snake Pictures Absolutely amazing and beautiful
r/snakes • u/Gengi_End_5660 • 4h ago
Pet Snake Pictures How it started vs now
(First two images are when the enclosure was first made, the last two are recently)
r/snakes • u/Seanzee55 • 16m ago
Pet Snake Pictures This scene comes to mind every time Hachi refuses to get back in her tank
r/snakes • u/Friendly-Actuary-313 • 11h ago
Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID A stunning eastern copperhead my husband spotted in our driveway after a much needed rainstorm! Central Alabama
Of the 5-6 copperheads I’ve seen here in Alabama, I’d never seen one with such a pink tint before today! The photo really doesn’t do it justice. Just an absolutely extraordinary color!
r/snakes • u/beadebasr • 5h ago
Wild Snake Photos and Questions - Not for ID Locking eyes with a White-Lipped Pit Viper during a downpour in Hong Kong
galleryr/snakes • u/Some1_you-dont_know • 11h ago
Pet Snake Questions Does his body condition look good?
First of all, sorry for the low quality pics, he only likes coming out at night and i didnt wanna turn the big lights on. Hes a 1 year old BI and currently eating a large mouse every 12 days, soon to be moved up to a weaned rat. I just wanna make sure he looks ok cuz hrs my first snake and i havent been able to find much on proper BI body condition other than they should look like a loaf of bread.
r/snakes • u/Forsaken-Champion605 • 22h ago
Pet Snake Pictures Weekend pets
Found this beautiful babies under some shelving. Hope everyone is having a great holiday weekend!
r/snakes • u/Expert-Tomorrow5934 • 1d ago
Pet Snake Pictures Sunbeam Snake (Xenopeltis Unicolor) health check pics
He is losing some weight from being fat af, he got transferred from his PVC to a very large storage bin set-up recently to monitor his activity a little better, looking better than ever tbh
r/snakes • u/PaleontologistOk9127 • 23h ago
Pet Snake Pictures Apartment sitting LOST HELP
So I am apartment sitting for a friend and their family and they have a little ball python, and a little dog smaller then my fore arm I was to watch for them for 2 of the four days (Started on Friday) I would change the water and send a picture of in there in closure once a day but the third night I couldn’t stay over so I walked their dog for like over 30 min its a little one so it should be tuckered out, and checked on the snake. the next morning I came in and the inclosure was opened and some stuff fell on the floor. My friends room and really tidy but they have a a lot of knick knacks on their shelves that are up high but non of them have been misplaced besides what’s next to the in closure. The snake has their next feed tomorrow ( Tuesday). I feel horrible I called them as soon as I saw the door opened and after I checked the in closure. I need help!
r/snakes • u/Fickle_Half_3774 • 3m ago
General Question / Discussion Ball Python game
I wanted to share my pre game footage for my game i have been working on for some time. It's about ball pythons, care and breeding.
r/snakes • u/Artilerus • 8h ago
General Question / Discussion Is this okay?
New to kingsnakes. 2 month old california kingsnake, 3ft 50-gal wood enclosure. also does destroying her tunnels looking for poop make me a bad parent? On warm side it’s 85-90 during the day and 75-80 at night. humidity fluctuates 30-40 during the day and 40-50 at night. she’s eating live pinky mice fine. thankyou
r/snakes • u/One-Translator-1956 • 23h ago
Pet Snake Pictures Yearling Rhino Ratsnake
A young rhinoceros ratsnake (Gonyosoma boulengeri) from a group I've been raising up for about a year. It's been a tedious process to get them feeding on rodents (or even feeding at all for some individuals), but I finally have seven out of ten taking drop fed pinkies/fuzzies.
r/snakes • u/PresentationSafe7171 • 18h ago
General Question / Discussion This is possible ??
Bci x epicrates Maurus
r/snakes • u/EelsSlithering1nABag • 1h ago