Snakes in Mississippi

Mississippi is home to around 40+ snake species, and just 6 of them are venomous. That means most of the snakes in the state are harmless and play a quiet role keeping rodent and pest populations in check. The state's warm climate and abundant water keep snakes active for much of the year.

Mississippi's habitats are heavily shaped by water, which drives much of the snake diversity. The Mississippi River floodplain and Delta region in the west create vast bottomland hardwood forests, swamps, and oxbow lakes. To the east and south are pine forests, sandy uplands, and the Gulf coastal plain with its marshes and bayous. This abundance of wet lowland, combined with drier pinewoods, supports a wide spread of species.

The venomous snakes group plainly. The Eastern Copperhead and the Northern Cottonmouth are pit vipers, the copperhead favoring woods and the cottonmouth tied to swamps, bayous, and river edges. The rattlesnakes are the Eastern Diamondback of the pine country, the Timber Rattlesnake of the bottomland and upland forests, and the small Pygmy Rattlesnake. The Eastern Coralsnake is a banded elapid, secretive and rarely encountered as it stays in leaf litter and burrows. The familiar color rhymes only roughly hold in the US and are not a safe identification method.

The snakes most people actually run into are harmless. Black racers and rat snakes are common around farms and homes, kingsnakes are valuable because they eat other snakes, and garter snakes turn up in gardens. Several watersnakes patrol the same waterways as cottonmouths and are constantly killed in cases of mistaken identity. On safety, the honest picture is that most bites occur when people try to handle or kill a snake, and deaths are very rare because of antivenom and modern care. Do not handle any wild snake, and if a bite happens, call Poison Control at 1-800-222-1222 or 911.