Texas has the most snakes in the United States however if you wish to discuss poisonous snakes, you need to want to Arizona, which has — await it — 19 of the nation’s 20 harmful snakes.
That consists of 13 rattlesnake types alone, World Atlas says. They frequently reside in the desert however don’t be shocked if you’re on a putting green on a cloudless Arizona day and you see some sort of rattlesnake relaxing in the sun.
How does South Carolina’s crop of snakes compare?
Puny.
South Carolina is home to 3 kinds of rattlesnake — Eastern diamondback, wood and pygmy — in addition to copperheads and cottonmouth.
Arizona’s list is downright daunting to those folks who get all twitchy around snakes, particularly the ones that can hurt you.
Here we go: Arizona black rattlesnake, ridge-nosed rattlesnake, Colorado desert sidewinder, banded rock rattlesnake, Grand Canyon rattlesnake, desert massasauga, Great Basin rattlesnake, Hopi rattlesnake, Mojave rattlesnake, Mojave desert sidewinder, northern black-tailed rattlesnake, meadow rattlesnake, Sonoran Coral Snake, Sonoran desert sidewinder, tiger rattlesnake, southwestern speckled rattlesnake, western twin found rattlesnake and western diamondback rattlesnake.
Sidewinders?
Scary looking and they can go 18 miles an hour with that uncommon side slither.
But here’s the important things about South Carolina. Venomous snakes can be anywhere. They aren’t so particular about where they live.
Take copperheads, for instance. They like wooded, rocky locations and they like your yard rural sanctuary, AZ Animals website says..
Identify them due to the fact that of the copper-colored heads and hourglass-shaped banding patterns on their bodies. They are the snake probably to bite you.
Cottonmouths are semi-aquatic pit vipers, so that puts them around rivers, lakes, and swamps. They have dark, thick bodies and you can see the white lining inside their mouths when you make them mad.
Another pit viper discovered in South Carolina is the wood rattlesnake. They’re huge and reside in the woods in the mountains. They are all sorts of colors — yellow, brown, gray and black. You’ll understand them by their rattle at the end of their tail.
And folks who study them state they are not usually aggressive however their venom is powerful.
If one bites you get to a healthcare facility for anti-venom.
Another especially powerful snake is the Eastern diamondback rattlesnake. These huge bruisers — they can grow to 7 feet — were when rather widespread in South Carolina however their environment is getting sparser therefore are they, AZ says. They have long fangs and can inject a great deal of extremely powerful venom. Bites can be deadly.
The Centers for Disease Control reports that 7,000 to 8,000 individuals are bitten by poisonous snakes in the United States each yet. Five die on average.
The last time on record that someone died in South Carolina was in 2016 when a man in the Santee National Wildlife Refuge was bit in the lower leg by a rattlesnake, according to a story in The State. He collapsed and died within 15 minutes.
The last death in Arizona was 2007 when someone out for a walk was bitten by a Mojave rattlesnake.
People who have been bitten can suffer long-term injury such as losing a finger or even eyesight.
Interestingly, North Carolina has the highest number of snake bites a year with 157.8 snake encounters per million inhabitants, according to the World Animal Foundation. The national average is 30 bites per million.
There are 700 types of poisonous snakes in the world and 30 live in the United States, according to AnimalsAroundTheGlobe.
If all this snake talk is giving you the heebie-jeebies, there are places besides your living room you can go. Hawaii, Maine, Rhode Island, and Alaska have no native species of poisonous snake.
