Common garter snake
Thamnophis sirtalis
— Where the name comes from
Thamnophis is “bush snake”, from thámnos and óphis. Sirtalis comes from the medieval Latin for “garter”, and the English name looks at the three pale stripes running down the body like the ribbons that held up stockings. It is the commonest snake in North America and the one most American children have held in their hands.
— Facts
- Group
- Reptiles · Reptilia
- Order
- Squamates
- Habitat
- Damp meadows, shores, woodland, gardens, ditches
- Range
- North America, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico
- Size
- 55–100 cm, 100–150 g
- Diet
- Frogs, tadpoles, earthworms, fish, slugs
- Lifespan
- 10 years
— Characteristics
- 01
It tolerates cold better than any other American snake.
- 02
It winters in enormous groups inside deep rock fissures.
- 03
It bears as many as eighty live young at once.
— What sets it apart
At Narcisse in Manitoba, every spring, tens of thousands of these snakes emerge together from the same limestone pits and knot themselves into mating balls the size of baskets: it is the largest gathering of reptiles in the world, and it has a boardwalk for visitors. Other populations, on the Pacific coast, are engaged in a different contest: they eat newts loaded with a formidable poison and have evolved a resistance that the newts answer by becoming still more toxic, in a chase that has run for millions of years.
