Natural History of Hognose Snakes

Video Transcript

"What makes Hognose snakes so unique is something that they do to protect themselves from their predators. If a larger animal tries to eat a Hognose snake, their first line of defense is to huff and puff, and I have a small neonate right here, I'm going to show you just how they do it. You can hear that huffing and puffing. They also flatten out their necks to make themselves look bigger. Now, if all this huffing and puffing does not scare away the predator, their next line of defense is actually to play dead. They will roll over on their back and they'll open up their mouths and gape. They'll actually, also, regurgitate their food. Now, these guys are frog eaters, their toad eaters, and the smell of a regurgitated frog or toad is not a pleasant one. Also, to enforce the act, they'll also smell dead. In fact, they'll emit a rather foul smelling musk from their cloaca which is down near the tip of their tail, which she's doing a little bit right there you can see that it's open. She's emitting a very foul smelling musk to make her smell dead. So hopefully that is enough to dissuade the predator from trying to eat this smelly, weird acting snake. Now, what gives this snake away is that if he does this death act on a person and the person flips the snake back over on the right side, the snake will actually flip itself back over and keep playing dead."