Mud Snake (Red-bellied Mudsnake)
This colorful snake is Farancia abacura (Colubridae), a nonvenomous colubrid endemic to the southeast of the United States. They are commonly known as Mud snakes because their habitat includes marshes, swampy weedy lake margins, wetlands along the edges of large rivers, oxbow lakes, beaver ponds, slow mud-bottomed streams, shallow sloughs with rotting logs, floodplains, drainage ditches, and brackish tidal areas.
Specimen shown belongs to the subspecies Farancia abacura abacura, known as the Eastern Mud Snake, and found throughout Florida, except the Florida Keys.
These snakes get a reduced pattern and color as they age. The dorsum will be almost uniform black and the red banding on the sides will be almost null.
Photo credit: ©Jake M. Scott
Locality: Eastern Mud Snake, Okeechobee County, Florida, US
