Up close and venomous: See the difference, watersnake vs. cottonmouth

Plain Bellied Water Snake

Here is what they call the plain bellied water snake. As you see, its belly is completely plain and the cotton mouse has a checkered pattern on it and real colorful

And you can see, has no facial pits, which the cottonmouth will. But he does have the diamond-shaped pattern head which it’s more pointed on these than the others, than the Cottonmouth.

But he also what I always notice is these little yellows and the striping right around their face here and in the and the other one will not. The cottonmouth will not have that, and there’s that, there’s that beautiful belly marking. See, we don’t have that, the plain belly. But look at this and look at this head. It’s got more of a round nose.

Okay, he’s. He can hunt day or night And it’s just like our eye.

The pupil opens and closes to collect the light and and those guys have a vertical slit. That’s something. That’s because they’re mainly a night hunter. I just lay around like a log during the day and they come real active in the nighttime, but a lot of the snakes do.

But they’re. There’s two of them side by side, almost the same age, and they’re they’re acting. They’re acting pretty good, it’s, you can tell. They have been around each other, these species, for these two types, because they’re, they’re not either one wanting to eat each other. Both basically eat the compete for the same kind of food. There’s you a drink.

There’s your moccasin on the rocks. This is another cottonmouth, you guys, and he has the beautiful pattern, which we don’t find a lot, and let’s just the. Let’s do this.

Okay, now, this is exact same snake, but he’s wet. So there’s your brilliance and, man, he has got the beautiful pattern. When we get him. There’s the old cotton. The reason they had to name the Cottonmouth water Moccasin is because he’s just cotton white in there and he does not like. Oh, he doesn’t like that.

Look at the tail. There’s that beating of the tail again and see how it goes down stuffy. Look at those lands coming down the back and the and the Mars.

Three Versions of the Oklahoma Cottonmouth Water Moccasin

What we have here is three versions of the Oklahoma Cottonmouth Water Moccasin. We have the little baby neonate here with the fluorescent tail that resembles all our copper heads we had when he is born.

He is ready to wiggle that tail in a luring, seductive way. And a little insect- just imagine a cricket or a grasshopper coming up there. And this is a fully mature adult, probably three years old, ready to have birth, to give out 16 to 20 of those little Neo nights.

And this is kind of rare to get this good color pattern. I’ve only seen a few of those that have that beautiful color pattern. And and then the other thing to always remember is when these things are wet, the color pattern will will come out even greater and but more of a rounded nose and, you know, more of an arrowhead shape than the water snakes. Look, look under these little sheets there’s the tip of a flying- those are just little like knife sheets- and there’s little bitty ones sitting in rows.

They shed those. This is the glottis right here. That’s where the forked tongue is slid into.

So when he swallowed something that cuts off all the throat air passage, this can move from side to side and he can get air.

You know, they’re just amazing. You can see the pits. They can see there’s the nostril and there’s the pit.

Nostrils

Same thing. Nostrils are always up on the tip and then the pit, and then the eye, and we’re getting all that to color tongue. That tongue- see it come out there when he closed. That tongue is also luring, like the tail.

When he was a baby, the man, he, this, this snake is just. He’s a really performing here. He’s just been. There’s that flattened out tail.

Then it goes to that point like you won’t see on them and see right now the whole rib spinal column and all the ribs are flattened out one by one down each side, so he gets as much room to spring up like a big old rocket springing.