Cotton mouth bites students in class...

[samintx]

http://www.tylerpaper.com/article/200810...2/-1/RSS01

Now a cottonmouth seems like something you could ID without any problem but Steph will be the final arbitor of this story. It was mistaken for a non lethal snake.

[OWC Jamie]

< “I don’t know if we will allow snakes back into any of our classrooms.” >

Because everyone knows what a water mocassin is now ? :-)
Lawyers and politicians, too ?

[incognegro]

Here I thought this was going to be about students smoking pot in the bathroom between classes.

[john-o]

Good one, incog! Got a snort out of me...

[Don Kiyoti]

The rule of thumb in the continental United States is that if a snakes pupils are round, it's non-venomous. If they are vertical, like a cat's, the snake is venomous. I believe the exception to this is the coral snake. I don't expect the student to know this, but the teacher should've known better.

[Stephanie]

Samintex, people mistake snakes every day. They mistake non-venomous ones for venomous ones & vice versa. I am curious as to how big this snake is. I say this because baby snakes often have a different pattern/coloration than their adult counterparts. A baby cottonmouth may very well "look" like a baby ratsnake (to those who aren't well versed in snake identification). Don't forget, many non-venomous snakes practice mimicry to fool predators into thinking they're venomous (think of bullsnakes vs rattlesnakes).

Don Kiyoti is mostly correct in the rule of thumb for identifying venomous snakes in the US; however, there is some debate over just what snakes are truly venomous.

Some argue that hognoses & garters are mildly venomous & neither have vertical pupils. BUT, it should also be noted that IF they are venomous, their venom does not affect humans (except, I know of one case where some guy let a hognose chew on him for hours & suffered a reaction).

I have no doubt I would have been able to identify this snake correctly on first sight - there are other ways to identify venomous snakes (knowing which snakes tend to be thin bodied vs thick, knowing which have smooth scales as opposed to keeled, etc).

Once you know a little about snakes, it's easy to identify them. My guess is the people involved didn't do their homework in identifying the snake.

[Stephanie]

P.S. Here are a couple of snake identification tests:

http://www.ou.edu/oupd/sntest.htm
http://www.envenomated.com/viewpage.php?page_id=4

[incognegro]

[RAMd®d]

Seriously.

That's what I get for clicking this thread.

[decocritter]

Me too - I hate snakes..I don't know why I am reading this