Specimen of the Month: Eastern Fox Snake

By guest contributor and Summer Naturalist Intern, Cade Campbell

While harmless to humans, fox snakes are quite the opposite to their rodent prey. Fox snakes are the largest snake species found in the Northwoods, growing over five feet in length. They live in sunny, open meadows and pine savannahs mostly south of Cable, but are likely spreading farther north. Like all other snakes in Northwest Wisconsin, they are nonvenomous. This means capturing feisty, biting prey such as deer mice, rats and chipmunks can be a problem even for the largest, most experienced snakes. Luckily, they are excellent constrictors and usually dispatch any mammal or bird prey with a quick and painless squeeze, rather than suffocation, to avoid a dangerous injury. In the winter, they take refuge deep below the snow, protected in rock piles or other underground crevices.

Eastern Fox Snake (Pantherophis vulpinus). Photo by Mike Day

Fox snakes often have shiny, orange-tinted scales that might resemble a red fox’s coat, and they eat some of the same small mammals foxes like to hunt. But their name is unrelated to appearance or behavior; fox snakes get this name from their unique smell! When threatened, fox snakes often prefer to “musk” their captor rather than biting. This pungent, chalky fluid smells similar to a fox’s territorial scent marking around a den, and the snake was named for this unique defense mechanism.

Despite a docile, completely unaggressive nature, these snakes are often killed by humans for a variety of uninformed reasons. One is simply a misguided fear of snakes altogether, often fueled by false representations of snakes in media and elsewhere. The other is because of the fox snake’s specific rattlesnake mimicry. Fox snakes have blotched patterns for camouflage against tree bark and leaf litter, but so do rattlesnakes like the massasauga. To take advantage of their similarity, fox snakes have developed a clever mimicry strategy. When threatened, some fox snakes will rapidly vibrate the tip of their tail in dry leaves, creating a loud, rattling sound similar to a rattlesnake’s warning. While the two species may be found living peacefully side by side farther south, rattlesnakes do not live anywhere near Northwest Wisconsin.

Regardless, any snake found in the wild (venomous or not) should be left alone. They should be watched from a distance, but not only for the snake’s safety. In most situations, humans are much safer avoiding snakes. Snakes only bite as a last resort and attempt to avoid humans and other larger animals at all costs. Reptiles, especially some of the more scarce species (like the fox snake) are essential to Northwoods habitats, and belong in the forest as unbothered by humans as possible.

Be sure to check out the fox snake on display in our hallways through the rest of August!