Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I woke up yesterday morning to a crisp 44 degrees here in central VA. I had the day off so decided to look for snakes. As cool as it was I knew that when the sun broke above the tree line that it wouldn't be long before they ventured out to warm up. Headed down to an over grown wood pile on the corner of my property and was immediately rewarded by the presence of a decent sized amelanistic eastern hog. I snapped a couple of pics after picking it up and shot the attached video while trying to convince him to "play dead" again. The last half of the video is better than the first half.

That is just awesome. Really awesome. The female Heterodon platirhinos that I recently acquired due to malnutrition did a fake-fake death. It rolled over but did a 360 roll and went right side up immediately ha-ha. Would you be interested in allowing that video for educational use?

Again, really awesome, really sweet. Eastern Hogs are my favorite non-venomous snake species by far (hence my user name ha-ha).

Absolutely it can be used. You should hook up with Korey Steele (sp?). He was a frequent poster here a few years back who was working on his masters degree and was doing some sort of study on eastern hogs or cottonmouths. He is or was a member of the Virginia Herpetologicol Society.

BTW , this is the same snake, well I believe so anyway because its the same spot, where I unintentionally interrupted a bad meeting this fellow was having with an eastern king. The king reased him when it became aware of my presence and crawled off. Playing dead definitely doesn't help where king snakes are involved!! Glad it happened now because if it was the same snake then I never would have gotten that video.

This post reminded me of an encounter I had where a small eastern hognose was being swallowed by a speckled king several times its size. I would have never known they were there if the (hog?) hadn't been making a high pitch humming noise. The king had half of him swallowed(I guess the hognose was too small to constrict).Anyway I pulled the hog out of the kingsnake's mouth and let it go. I kept the kingsnake. I listened to that noise for a few minutes before I finally found what was making it.The kingsnake shouldn't have had any trouble swallowing the hognose of that size in seconds.

nice video, and find, but for the record that isnt an amelanistic (albino) hog, its a good ol' melanistic eastern or black phase. Nice find though.
Will

Ooops. You are right. I was just chatting with someone about amel Nelsons milks and guess I typed it wrong. Thanks!!

Great vidio, thanks for sharing!