A surprise litter of copperheads!

So, I work a small zoo as the primary keeper for the reptile and amphibian collection. A while ago, our aged copperhead female, Penny, passed from reproductive cancer. Replacing animals like copperheads can be tricky. Not only do we not like to purchase animals and support the often questionable acquisitions of the reptile pet trade, but no one is selling copperheads anyway! Venomous snakes are commonly sold on the market, but copperheads rarely, because there are more regulations on native wildlife than exotic. Anyway, our standard practice for adding new venomous snakes to the collection is either getting them from other facilities that have surplus or getting them from people who move "problem animals" professionally, usually responding to local calls regarding copperheads or rattlesnakes in people's homes and yards (we have a collection license for native animals).

Replacing Penny was hard, because no one had any available, but eventually one of our contacts had two copperheads available. I was out of town at the time, and so our curator chose between the two. For two weeks, this very young animal lived in quarantine before I got back. She was determined to be probably 2 years old at most because she still had a little green color to her tail, as very young copperheads do. The concern with collecting copperheads from the wild is that they are ovoviviparous, which means they give life birth. If you collect a wild, gravid female without realizing it, you WILL have baby copperheads - there are no eggs to dispose of. But she seemed young enough that being gravid was not a concern.

Fast forward to yesterday, my first day back at work in two weeks. I go down to see her for the first time and look in the enclosure to see not one copperhead . . . but nine!!! She had given birth to eight babies within the last hour, because someone had checked on her very recently! This means we had to separate them all out and ensure the babies were secure. They are so incredibly tiny! If you are familiar with hooking snakes, you understand the challenge of hooking a snake no larger than a large earthworm. Snake hooks rely on counter body weight to keep the snake balanced and unable to crawl off once suspended, but a tiny snake has almost no body weight at all. And while it is a myth that baby copperheads have "more potent" venom than adults, it IS true that they HAVE venom and it is no different from the adult venom except in volume - meaning a bite is still not something to risk. So moving all eight babies into smaller, more secure tubs was interesting.

But boy are they cute! We are not keeping them. They will be released somewhere safe. We certainly do not have the capacity to care for nine copperheads. But it was quite a surprise to find them and quite a welcome home! The picture quality is no good because I of course could not get super close to them, and through the plastic was difficult, but I think you get a sense of their tiny-ness all the same.

The fresh pile of them, complete with yolk sacs:
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Itty tiny babies!
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Ooh, what tiny perfect beautiful babies! They look so brand new and flawless, and their colours are lovely, very subtle patterns. I'm used to catching and moving pencil-thick baby snakes at work so I know how adorable that miniature perfection is! (But the common native species we have round here is barely venomous at all so can be picked up with bare fingers, and anyway they're so chilled I've never had one even look like it might consider striking, they're happy to curl up and snuggle in my hand while I walk them somewhere safer)

holy smokes what a wonderful surprise! So glad you can release them too back into their native habitat.

Aww how cute!

What a surprise! And you had no idea that she was pregnant?

They must be ever so cute, those tiny, little snakes

Cute

I wonder what local mice and voles think about you. Will you ask their opinion before you release these tiny vipers? I think you're very lucky of working with animals, it is such a fantastic experience and I am glad you share it with us.

George wrote:

Ooh, what tiny perfect beautiful babies! They look so brand new and flawless, and their colours are lovely, very subtle patterns. I'm used to catching and moving pencil-thick baby snakes at work so I know how adorable that miniature perfection is! (But the common native species we have round here is barely venomous at all so can be picked up with bare fingers, and anyway they're so chilled I've never had one even look like it might consider striking, they're happy to curl up and snuggle in my hand while I walk them somewhere safer)

That's very cool, is that the adder? Baby reptiles are incredible in their miniature perfection.

SUSANNE wrote:

What a surprise! And you had no idea that she was pregnant?

We did not! I hadn't even seen her before she gave birth, so I don't know what she looked like prior - whether she LOOKED gravid or not. But no one, including the professional wildlife handler collecting her, suspected, so I imagine she must have not have looked it. It can be hard to tell, especially on a snake you can't get hands on or that you didn't see prior to pregnancy. She is so young, they probably thought she was "normal" wide body when in fact she was probably a still thin snake full of eight babies.

Roger wrote:

I wonder what local mice and voles think about you. Will you ask their opinion before you release these tiny vipers? I think you're very lucky of working with animals, it is such a fantastic experience and I am glad you share it with us.

Haha, they probably would have something to say about eight new neighbors. Thank you, I feel very lucky to be working with them!

No, we have grass snakes (natrix natrix, just incase there's anything else known as a grass snake in other countries) as our common species, adders are quite a bit rarer in my area cos we don't have the woods or heaths they prefer. I can count my lifetime adder sightings on the fingers of one hand, always in other places I've visited, but grass snakes are multiples every summer.
A farmer friend used to incubate them in his airing cupboard if he ever accidentally dug up a nest in a muck heap, he loved taking his box of brand new hatchlings back to the farm to set free and I wish I could've been there to see it!

They do remind me of a summer in my teens when we had moved up north. A friend of my brother's family had a swimming pool. One afternoon there was a snake in it, he called me and I went over and rescued the little garter snake. I was a reptile loving kid, and kept the little snake all summer, she seemed to enjoy the worms and bugs I offered her. Didn't know she was a she though until I woke up one morning to multiple tiny snakes, with more arriving! They were adorable, but at a dozen babies rather overwhelming, I had no idea where I could get food small enough for them! So I released Mom and brood under some brush in the front yard. That was a really cool experience.

About grass snakes:

In late June this year,  I saw the two young cats being very interested in something on the dirt road by the house, and I went out to see what they were doing.

OH, NO ! They had killed a large grass snake  
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I was ever so sad, but hurried back to get a tin of cat food to lure the little scoundrels away.
Then I went out to get the dead snake off the road.

But touching it, I could feel it was not dead!
It did not move, but there was a feeling of some kind of resistance.

Carefully I put it in the grass by the road, - and two seconds later it was gone

Googling it, I found out that it is not unusual that grass snakes "play dead" if frightened.
For me, the sun began to shine again

how exciting to see the baby copperheads! and the photos showing how tiny they really are. I just love them That must have been a wonderful surprise for you Jill:)

what a wonderful story George, about helping the snakes and also about the farmer helping the nest of eggs. That was very kind!

and that must have been very exiting for you Kelly to see all the new babies! after feeding mum well glad they were released safely as a family. Would the mum still have the babies around her for a while I wonder ??

Susanne - so glad the snake lived! thank you for helping him/her into the grass! thank goodness


I haven't had any snakes as pets, though I do love them - I grew up in Zambia where the majority of snakes are deadly including the black mamba! but I did use to have a couple of very small garden lizards when I lived in tropical Australia
I always released them back outside though. I think I preferred that animals be around me but free at the same time. I loved to sit in the grass and notice the tiny newly hatched lizard babies - around 1cm or 1.5cm long. So tiny yet so perfect!

These are all great stories! [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], I didn't know grass snakes were venomous at all! Are they rear-fanged venomous?

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] that sounds like a fun summer, though certainly a surprise. Ovoviviparous reptiles have that extra little risk to collecting from the wild.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] I am so glad the snake was only fibbing!!

I always thought they weren't venomous, but then I recently read in one of my native wildlife books where it says they do have venom but reassured readers that they're totally harmless because it's so very mild and insignificant. I remember noting that 'fact' because I was surprised to find out they had any at all, when they're famously our safe non-venomous snake in contrast to the adder.
But now a google search tells me they do have no venom at all. So presumably the book was wrong and I was right until it misled me the other day

That's interesting because many amphibian eaters DO have very mild venom in rear fangs (garters, hog nose, etc.), but are often considered nonvenomous for just that reason - it wouldn't do more than irritate a human, and would have to be "chewed" into the skin rather than a simple strike. I THINK that's what's going on here, based on some googling, but it is not very clear.

(There are some deadly rear-fanged snakes like the boomslang, but not many!)

SUSANNE wrote:

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I meant to say, before getting sidetracked on the venom issue, That's a really amazing story, thanks for sharing it with us! It's one of those things the books always say about grass snakes, but very few people get to see the trick in action, wow!
And I'm very glad you went back out to move the snake, otherwise you'd never have known the story ended happily - if it was just not there when you next went that way, you'd have assumed some other predator carried it off, but you got to find out it was fine and have a close-up encounter instead, that's great.

Thankyou, George

You make me very happy.