Corn Snake Vs. Copperhead: Overview & 12 Key Differences
One of these snakes can be kept as a pet, but the other can’t. Let’s try to find the truth. But first, some background on these two magnificent snakes.
Copperheads get their name from the coppery-tan colour of their skin and the shape of their head, which is triangular like that of pit vipers.
Corn snakes can be orange, red, grey, or brown, among other colors. The head of a corn snake looks like a spear. It is smaller than a copperhead and has a thin body all over.
Corn snakes don’t bite because they don’t have many teeth. Copperheads are poisonous and will bite if they feel threatened.
Corn snakes, on the other hand, are scared easily and will run away. Even though they look very different from each other, some people mix the two breeds.
Corn Snake Overview
Personality/ Character
Corn snakes make great pets because they are calm, easy to handle, and don’t get too big.
If a corn snake feels threatened, it will run away instead of fighting back. They aren’t dangerous to people and can keep other snakes and pests away, especially if they are kept in the garden.
Even when scared or hurt, corn snakes do not bite lightly. As hatchlings, they are more likely to bite, but their bite is not painful because they have small fangs. Even though the snakes will always try to get away, they are easy to handle and care for.
Corn snakes used to spend most of their time in cornfields, where they hunted rodents for food. This is how they got their name, and their bodies look like Indian corn because of the way the grains line up.
Because corn snakes and rat snakes are so similar, they are often mistaken for each other and sometimes called “red rat snakes.”
Breeding
Corn snakes have babies when it’s cold. In the wild, this can happen in the winter. When you want them to have babies, you can make their cages cooler and give them less light.
Temperature and light cycles affect when corn snakes have babies. Raise a male and a female corn snake together so they can breed. If you have hatchlings, you should look for hemipenes and pop them.
Corn snakes lay huge groups of eggs in warm, damp places in the spring. After they mate, they wait 30 to 45 days to lay their eggs. The number of eggs varies from 10 to 30.
Feeding
Before you feed your corn snake mice, warm them up or let them come to room temperature. Don’t put the mice in the microwave or cook them in the kitchen. Also, if you feed your corn snake live mice, you should always keep an eye on it so the mice don’t hurt it.
Your corn snake should be fed at least once or twice a week, and the hatchlings should be fed once a week.
Use enough gallons of the right sizes and shapes to house your corn snake, so it doesn’t feel squished and has enough room to move around. Give the cage at least 8 to 12 hours of light a day, and turn the lights down at night.
Health & Care
The snake’s tank should always be clean, and new substrates should be added. Always give your corn snake places to hide in its home so it feels safe. You can hide behind a big box, some bark, or some rocks.
When your corn snake is ready to shed its skin, its eyes will turn milky grey or blue. Its body will lose its shine and start to look white. During this time, you shouldn’t touch it because it might get angry.
The following are signs of a healthy corn snake:
- It’s awake and moving.
- Except that when it sheds, its eyes are clear.
- It eats every day.
- It looks good on the outside.
- It doesn’t have any ticks or mites.
- It often sheds its skin all at once.
If your corn snake is sick, the following things will happen:
- Flaking that does not occur frequently or at all
- Vomiting
- Feeding that is slow or not very interested
- Spots or bumps on the skin
- It’s hard to breathe.
- Having skin peeling issues?
- Unusual feces
- There is a white, unpleasant thing in the mouth.
If you have any of these unusual signs, you should always talk to a doctor. Your snake can get sick from fungi and bacteria, which you shouldn’t ignore. Some diseases could make the snake lose its teeth, which would make it unable to eat well.
Suitable for
Because of how they act, corn snakes make great pets for anyone. Because they are calm and quiet, they are a great choice for beginners. Also, they eat well, which makes them a good snake pet for everyone.
Copperhead Overview
Personality/ Character
Copperheads are hard to control when they are kept as pets. They are hard to control because they can’t tell who is a friend and who is an enemy.
Also, the copperhead snake is hard to calm down, and when you get close, its tail vibrates.
Copperhead snake bites are painful, but adults don’t usually get sick from them because they don’t make enough venom. It can find its warm-blooded prey because its skull has a hole in it. You have to be okay with snakes if you want to keep one as a pet.
Copperheads in the wild like to sunbathe during the day and hide at night. You can also see them hunting and swimming.
On the other hand, snakes are more active at night, and they usually sneak up on their prey by trying to look like they belong there.
Copperhead snakes can live well in many different places. They only need one meal every two weeks and can live in places that aren’t too warm.
Feeding
Copperhead snakes are predators. They eat lizards, mice, birds, and frogs. You can feed it thawed mice while it is in a cage. To avoid getting bitten, it’s best to use long forceps to put the mice back in their home.
Breeding
Copperheads have live hatchlings, which means they lay eggs. In the spring, when they mate, the eggs hatch inside the female. When they hatch in the late summer or fall, they have two to eighteen babies.
In the spring, copperhead snakes lay their eggs. During this time, the men go out to look for women and get angry with each other. They sleep through the winter and don’t worry about other snakes like rattlesnakes and rat snakes.
The female copperhead gives birth to a lot of babies through a thin membrane. After a short time, the babies are able to get out of the membrane on their own.
Hatchlings are born with sharp teeth and poison, which lets them eat before going to sleep for the winter.
Health & Care
Copperheads are another species that likes to hang out in groups and can be found in the wild. So, you can store more than one in the same container. Your snake will stay healthy if you clean its cage regularly and in the right way.
Place a large bowl of water in the snake’s home so it can drink and soak. If you change this dish every day and clean it well once a week, bacteria won’t be able to grow in it. If the snake doesn’t eat the mice, take the mice out of the cage.
Your copperhead snake could get sick if you don’t keep it clean. Mouth rot is a common illness that can be caused by bad food, mouth injuries, or living in a dirty place. This illness has made my gums bleed.
Your copperhead snake can get parasitic infections from ticks, worms, lice, coccidians, and protozoa. Some infections in your snake can be treated with dewormers.
When a copperhead snake is sick, it may lose weight, look at the stars, have trouble shedding its skin, and breathe through its mouth.
The snake’s skin shedding is another sign that it is sick. This can be fixed by making sure the enclosure is always dry. When setting up the cage, give the copperhead a lot of places to hide and a place to warm up.
The following are signs that your copperhead is healthy:
- Healthy appetite
- Lively and attentive eyes
- Soft and natural breathing
- Smooth and glittery scales
Suitable for
Because they are so aggressive, copperheads are not the best choice for first-timers. They need a lot of attention, so only people who have kept snakes as pets before should own them.
On the other hand, a beginner can keep it if they have the right cage, know how to feed it, and watch how it acts.
What’s the difference between a corn snake and a Copperhead?
Corn snakes live in the southeastern United States, while copperhead snakes live in the eastern and central parts of the country.
Copperhead snakes are much more dangerous than corn snakes. A corn snake’s nose is also much smaller than a copperhead’s.
Along with the differences, I’ve also seen some similarities between the two species. If you want to pet a corn snake or a copperhead, you’ll find some good advice about how to do so right here.
All of the information in this article comes from sources that are very reliable.
Corn Snake Versus Copperhead: Key Differences Explained!
Because there are so many corn snakes and copperhead snakes in North America, it’s not surprising that people often don’t know how to tell them apart.
Here are some more specific differences between corn snakes and copperhead snakes to help clear things up:
Color
The two kinds of corn snakes are red corn snakes and yellow corn snakes. The red corn snake is the most common and what most people think of when they think of a corn snakemost common and what most people think of when they think of a corn snake. Even though it is rare, the yellow corn snake is still a beautiful snake.
Copperhead snakes live in North America. They are poisonous snakes. It is usually dark brown or reddish brown, and its head is coppery. Copperhead snakes can hurt people if they are not treated with respect and care.
The patterns on their skin are another way to tell which species it is. Corn snakes have blotchy brown or reddish brown patterns, while copperheads have bands that look like a cross and are dark brown or black. These bands help the snakes stay hidden in their own environments.
Venom
Corn snakes used to have poison, but now they don’t. Instead, they kill their prey by wrapping their coils around them and squeezing them to death.
This process is called constriction. A copperhead waits for its prey, like a mouse, to pass by before it strikes, bites it, and waits for the venom to kill it so it can eat it.
Both snakes swallow their food whole because they can’t chew. To do this, they can open their jaws. If a corn snake is too hungry, it may eat its prey while it is still alive.
Compared to other pit vipers, like rattlesnakes, a copperhead’s venom is not too bad. Even though the hemotoxin in the venom affects the blood, it rarely kills people.
Range
The copperhead lives in a bigger area than the corn snake does. It can be found from Massachusetts to Mexico, as well as in the Midwestern states of Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas.
The corn snake lives from New Jersey to the very south of Florida. It lives mostly in the south and can’t be found naturally west of the Mississippi River.
Size and Weight
Copperheads come in a smaller range of sizes than corn snakes. A corn snake can grow to be between 2 and 6 feet long, while a copperhead can reach between 2.5 and 4.5 feet.
Even though the copperhead is bigger and stronger, it weighs a lot more than the corn snake. A corn snake can be up to 2 pounds long, while a male copperhead can be up to 7 ounces long and a female copperhead can be up to 4 ounces long.
Habitat
Seeing how corn snakes and copperhead snakes live in different places is very interesting. Corn snakes live in the southeastern United States, while copperhead snakes live in the eastern and central parts of the country.
Corn snakes like places with a lot of places to hide, like forests or fields. Copperhead snakes, on the other hand, like to live where there are lots of trees and long grasses or other things to hide in.
Most likely, the different diets of these two snake breeds explain why they like different places to live.
Copperhead snakes eat everything, while corn snakes mostly eat meat. To find food, corn snakes need more open space, while copperhead snakes can find food more easily in wooded areas.
Diet
One of the most obvious differences between the two breeds is what they eat. Copperhead snakes only eat meat, while corn snakes eat mostly plants.
Because the two snake breeds live in different places, their diets are different. Corn snakes live in places with a lot of plants, like fields and woods. Copperhead snakes, on the other hand, tend to live in places with a lot of rocks and few plants, like deserts.
So, corn snakes have changed so that they can eat plants, but copperhead snakes haven’t. This difference in what these two types of snakes eat can have a big effect on their health. For example, corn snakes can get sick or even die if they don’t eat enough protein.
On the other hand, copperhead snakes usually only get sick when they eat something they can’t digest, like a plant.
Overall, corn snakes and copperhead snakes eat different things because they live in different kinds of places.
Snout
One of the most obvious differences between a corn snake and a copperhead snake is the shape of their noses.
A corn snake’s snout is much thinner than a copperhead’s, and its nostrils are closer to the end of its snout. This difference in appearance is because these two snakes live in different places.
Corn snakes like open fields and the edges of woods, but copperheads like places with a lot of trees. Because their homes are different, corn snakes use their eyes more to find their prey, while copperheads use their noses more.
Behavior
Most people think of snakes as dangerous creatures with scales that move around and should be avoided.
But not every snake is the same. In reality, there are many different kinds of snakes, and each has its own habits and ways of living.
The corn snake and the copperhead snake are two examples. Even though they are both snakes, their behaviours could not be more different.
People think that corn snakes are much nicer than copperhead snakes. They also bite less, even when they are angry.
Corn snakes will usually try to run away or hide before they attack. On the other hand, copperhead snakes are more aggressive and strike quickly when they feel threatened. They also tend to bite more, and their bites can be very painful.
The environments where corn snakes and copperhead snakes live are very different. Copperhead snakes like to live on rocks or near water, while corn snakes like to live in fields and forests.
The different places they live can also change how they act. Because they like to bask in the sun, corn snakes are more active during the day. On the other hand, copperhead snakes are usually nocturnal, which means they hunt for food at night.
A corn snake’s attack is quick and deadly. It will quickly attack its target with its sharp teeth and inject the animal with poison that will make it unable to move.
Once the prey is still, the corn snake will squeeze it, which will crush and suffocate the victim’s organs. When a corn snake is scared of a predator, it will curl up and shake its tail to try to scare away the intruder.
If that doesn’t work, it will bite and put poison into you. People rarely die from corn snake bites, but they can be very painful.
When a copperhead snake feels threatened, it will often coil up and strike the person or thing that is threatening it. It may also attack when it is trying to find food.
Snakes can kill small prey or other snakes with their poisonous bites. Even if the predator is bigger, the venom can still do a lot of damage. Copperheads usually only bite when they feel threatened or when they are trying to catch food.
Reproduction
Another big difference between corn snakes and copperheads is that corn snakes lay eggs while copperheads give birth to live babies.
This means that the eggs are carried by the female for between 83 and 150 days. They hatch while they are still in her, and anywhere from one to twenty-one babies, usually six, come out.
Their size depends on how big their mother is, but they are about 8 inches long on average. Copperhead babies can live on their own as soon as they are born, and they can start having babies when they are about three and a half years old.
Copperheads sometimes make their own offspring on their own. This means that they can have babies both when they mate and when they don’t.
Copperheads are one of the few types of vertebrates that can do this, and it can happen when a female snake has been away from males for a long time.
Corn snakes lay anywhere from 10 to 30 eggs in places where the temperature and humidity are just right for hatching. Adult snakes don’t care about the eggs. When the temperature is right, the eggs hatch after about two months.
The babies are about 5 inches long and don’t have as many bright colours as their parents. They are ready to breed when they are between one and a half and three years old.
Copperheads also have a complicated way of courting where the males fight and kill other males before fighting the available female. Biologists don’t know how corn snakes, which are harder to find, find mates.
Corn Snake Versus Copperhead: Similarities
Corn snakes and copperheads are both in the family of snakes called Colubridae. They are alike in a lot of ways.
Corn snakes are native to the southeast of the United States, while copperheads are native to the east and central parts of the country. Both snakes like to live in places with lots of places to hide, like wooded or rocky areas.
Corn snakes and copperheads both eat whatever is available, which means they are both opportunistic eaters.
Mice and rats, which are small mammals, make up most of their food. Corn snakes can eat other snakes, as well as small animals like birds and frogs.
Both corn snakes and copperheads can bite, but their venom does not hurt people.
A bite from either of these snakes will hurt and make you swell up, but it probably won’t kill you.
Corn snakes and copperheads are both common snakes that people like to keep as pets. They are easy to take care of, and you don’t have to worry much about getting bitten.
Care
When taking care of a corn snake, there are a few things to think about. Corn snakes are reptiles, so they need a warm place to live. This means you’ll need to give your corn snake a warm place to live. This can be done with a heating pad for reptiles or a basking lamp.
Corn snakes also need places to hide in their cages. A simple cardboard box turned upside down or a piece of driftwood could work.
Hiding places give your corn snake a safe place to stay.
It is also important to give your corn snake fresh water every day. It’s great to have a big enough bowl of water for your corn snake to soak in. It would be nice if you sprayed water into the cage of your corn snake a few times a week to help keep the humidity up.
Lastly, you’ll have to give your corn snake live food. It could be mice, rats, or some other kind of small rodent. At a pet store near you, you can buy live prey.
By following these simple rules, you can give your corn snake everything it needs to live and grow.
Copper snakes are a popular choice for pets because they are calm and have beautiful colours.
It is important to give a copperhead snake a good home with a place to hide, branches or rocks to climb, and clean water. If you can, you should feed copper snakes live mice or bugs.
It is also important to handle your copper snake often so that it gets used to being around people.
If you take good care of your new snake, you can have it as a pet for many years.
History and Key Facts
The North American Copper Snake is a poisonous snake. It is not only one of the most common snakes in the United States but also the one that causes the most snake bites.
The copperhead is a type of viper. It gets its name from the colour of its head, which is copper. Usually, the snake is two to three feet long, but it can get as long as five feet.
The copperhead has a triangular head, eyes that look like slits, and pits between each eye and nostril on each side of its head. With these heat-sensing holes, the snake can find its prey and strike with pinpoint accuracy, even when it is completely dark.
Copperheads have brown or reddish-brown bodies with dark crossbands that are wider in the middle and narrower on the sides. The belly is white with black spots.
The Copperhead can be found in wooded areas, bogs, and rocky hillsides from the southern part of Canada to the northern part of Mexico.
It lives east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States, from Minnesota to Texas and down to Florida. The snake is active from April to October and sleeps during the winter.
Copperheads are active at night and sleep during the day. It is a slow-moving snake that often stays still for long periods of time, waiting for its prey to come close enough to strike. The snake eats things like mice, lizards, frogs, and birds.
The copperhead mates in the spring and has live babies in the summer. There are anywhere from two to twelve babies. When they are born, the babies are about eight inches long and are already poisonous.
People think the copperhead is dangerous, but its bites rarely kill people. On the other hand, the venom can cause swelling, pain, and damage to the tissues. If a cobra has bitten you, you should go to the hospital right away.
In the United States, people often keep corn snakes as pets. It is related to the king snake and the milk snake because it is a rat snake. Corn snakes don’t have poison and are thought to be calm animals.
They are usually calm snakes that make great pets for people who have never owned a snake before.
Corn snakes live in the southeastern part of the United States. Their name comes from the fact that they like to eat corn kernels, which is one of the main things they eat in the wild. Corn snakes are very good at climbing, and they often go up trees to find food or shelter.
There are many different colours and patterns of corn snakes. Their usual colours are orange, red, and yellow, but brown, black, and white have also been found. Most corn snakes are 3 to 4 feet long, but they can grow to be 6 feet long.
Corn snakes tend to be calm by nature, which makes them great pets for people who are just starting out. They don’t need much in the way of special tools or places to live.
They’re as simple as it gets. If you want to keep a corn snake as a pet, you should do some research to make sure that this type of snake is right for you.
How Dangerous Are Copperheads and Corn Snakes?
Copperheads have poisonous bites. When they feel in danger, they move quickly to attack. Even though its poison doesn’t kill people, it hurts and is annoying when it bites.
Corn snakes are very scared and will run away if they feel like they are being attacked. On the other hand, a corn snake is easy to handle, even for first-timers. They don’t even bite their prey; they just choke it to death.
Try not to hurt a snake, especially if it is not trying to hurt you. It is not likely to move first unless it feels threatened. But if a cobra bites you, you should go to the hospital.
Which Snake is Right for You?
Copperhead snakes are harder to train than corn snakes. The first one is slow and doesn’t attack quickly.
It’s also a very colourful snake that you don’t have to be afraid to touch. Copperhead snakes, on the other hand, don’t know the difference between a friend and an enemy, so they are always ready to strike.
You can take care of a copperhead snake if you know how to handle snakes. You can never be too careful around a cobra, though, because it can strike at any time.
Don’t touch the copperhead unless you have to. Copperheads are very dangerous to handle, so corn snakes are the best choice for keeping as pets. You can never be completely safe around a copperhead.
Give your snakes as much of a natural setting as you can. Even when you feed them, keep the rodents at room temperature to make it look like they caught their food. You could even hang it up for them to catch.
Always think about the place where your snake will live. Make sure no one near you is scared of snakes. Snake tanks are more likely to have their lids opened by young children who don’t understand the rules.
I have been working in animal shelter for the past six years and I have been raising the puppies of different breeds. I have had experience in training the puppies in obedience, agility, and other dog sports.
My main objective is to train the puppies to become good family pets. They should be well-behaved and trained to be loving, loyal, and obedient.
Contact me:
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (912) 634-3631
Address: 102 Village Way Crk Saint Simons Island, Georgia(GA), 31522
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