Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Are there any herbivorous snakes?

All snakes are carnivorous on some level. Some are insectivorous, some piscivorous, some carnivorous, but they all eat other animal life. There have been documented accounts of certain snakes eating carion, too. None are herbivorous.

My friends ran a pet store for years and one day this guy comes in and purchases one of those brochure-type caresheets for his eight-foot Burmese python. He was very excited about his new pet, and wanted to give it the best care possible.

The next week, Python-guy comes back in, and my friend asks how his snake is doing, if it ate, etc. Python-guy replies that everything is fine, except that it was really hard to get the snake to eat its vegetables.

My friend laughed, thinking it was a joke, but it WASN'T. This guy actually tried to feed his python lettuce and such. Well, the snake wouldn't eat it, so the guy brilliantly decided that he would make the snake eat it.

His victory? The snake eventually swallowed: a grape.

He expressed hope that it could be worked up to larger fruits and vegetables given time.

My friend was both amused and disgusted, and tried to explain that ALL snakes eat flesh, whether it's bug flesh or rabbit flesh. Nope. The guy would have none of it. He kept repeating that he wanted the snake to have 'a balanced diet.' He even pointed out the graphic next to the 'food' category on his care brochure, which was a generic-type line drawing of, like, food (a piece of meat, some vegetables and such) and said 'look -- that's an orange, right there!'

I guess he was taught about the four food groups at gunpoint!

Also true: a guy at the drive-thru at Arbys INSISTED to me that all albino snakes are vegetarian. He refused to believe any differently, and said that he was getting 'some albino snakes real soon now 'cause they don't gotta eat mice.'

The best and brightest, folks. You gotta love food service.

Cheers!

--Naamah

I seem to remember there are accounts of Erpeton tentaculum taking some sort of aquatic plants. Whether it was on purpose or not is something I do not know, but I felt that was worth mentioning. Andy
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Andy Maddox
Houston Herp Key
The Reptizone

Burgundy baby, With your blue eyed soul, You play the hits and I'm on that roll, Capricorn sister, Freddie Mercury, Jupiter Child cry

That would be interesting..can you find any accounts of that? I would definitely be interested in seeing that..

A keeper on the rearfang forum said he saw one doing it. I don't know if he's around any more. I guess it ate a plant that was something like duckweed. Several other people had heard about it. Maybe it's a trace mineral thing or something, like a cat eating grass. I don't think it's a large or even essential part of their diet. My local zoo maintains a few without it.
Another fun fact is that another member of the Homalopsinae, the crab eating snake, is supposed to be the only snake that tears its food into pieces to eat it. They take the legs off of crabs.
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Peter: It's OK, I'll handle it. I read a book about something like this.
Brian: Are you sure it was a book? Are you sure it wasn't NOTHING?

Yeah, I've seen Indigo Snakes try to pull prey items apart, too...but that was just because they wanted to, especially other snakes.

Thank you for the interesting responses. Here's something I found when looking for the crab eating snake. There's a mention of the plant eating snake in there too.
http://www.szgdocent.org/cc/c-eat.htm

That plant eating snake is the one I talked of. The tentacled snake, Erpeton tentaculum. I guess I just need to take the plunge and get a pair...watch them for what they do. Or at least that is a good excuse to get a pair lol. Andy
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Andy Maddox
Houston Herp Key
The Reptizone

Burgundy baby, With your blue eyed soul, You play the hits and I'm on that roll, Capricorn sister, Freddie Mercury, Jupiter Child cry

I have a Tentacled that I have kept for 2 years...It has never ate a plant.....But then....I didn't offer it one.....
I did see a banded water snake attack a large Bufo marinus and after a battle pulled it's leg off and ate it. (the toad died later...the snake survived).
Frank

Very interesting! Thats quite nice to see...the natives taking back what is theirs. If only we could get more Nerodia to pull that stunt. Andy
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Andy Maddox
Houston Herp Key
The Reptizone

Burgundy baby, With your blue eyed soul, You play the hits and I'm on that roll, Capricorn sister, Freddie Mercury, Jupiter Child cry

Well if you think about it, snakes eat mice and mice eat vegetables, so if a mouse had recently injested a carrot or something and the snake ate the mouse, wouldn't the snake be inetvertently eating vegetables?