Handle King Snakes Safely

Video Transcript

"On behalf of Expert Village I'm Nicole and I'm here to tell you about king snakes. Handling your king snake is something you are going to want to keep you eye on. Because they can move very fast especially juveniles they also tend to be a little bit defensive and jumpy as juveniles. As they become custom to your handling them then they'll be calm such as this one, this one is used to being handled on daily bases. So this one is fairly calm compared to most juvenile king snakes. King snakes are very dasol they don't tend to bite very often and if they do it's not painful or dangerous. I would keep my eye on small children handling king snakes but that is only mainly for the snake safety just because they can get away from small hands easily. You never want to hold a snake by your face cause of the possibility of it biting you don't want to catch your face. This is a good example of an adult southern Florida king snake. This snake is probably about 5 feet long she's very active and they are pretty fun snakes to handle actually. They like to see what you are doing and how it's done so they will stick their nose into anything you are playing with. As I said they are very active as you can see so small children and adult king snakes usually aren't a very good idea unless the child is old enough to keep track of the snake well enough to know when it's going to be darting of somewhere. A snake this size you never want to hold very close to your face simply becauase they could bite and they are constrictors. So if you wrap them around your shoulders be wary about the possiblility that they constrict. Usually this is not something that they are doing out of aggression it is simply for their security. They like to feel secure, they like to feel like they are being supported and gripping onto you, is one way that they do that. They do not constrict to kill humans they only constrict to kill their prey."