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Average length: 5-7 feet.
Growing to lengths of over eight feet, Ratsnakes can make for truly impressive specimens. Most people are unaware though that ratsnakes are ‘scary cats’ themselves.
When first captured, ratsnakes will mock strike and thrash around with gusto. For all the show they make though, they rarely bite.
These large snakes come in a variety of colors ranging from light yellow to olive-brown, gray, and sometimes almost black. A healthy well fed ratsnake is robust in the centre of its body and tapering towards both ends. Other identifying characteristics are a netted pattern of black lines on the tail and black lines on the part of the snake’s face below its eyes.
Ratsnakes are diurnal snakes with large lustrous eyes. They are also excellent climbers and swimmers and will actively chase and hunt any small animal they can overpower. Their diet includes rats, lizards, skinks, frogs, toads, small birds, bats, and sometimes other snakes. Being unable to constrict or envenomate its prey the snake usually holds on to its victim and pressurizes it with its bite till it stops moving. Sometimes though it swallows its prey live.
I once rescued a ratsnake from someone’s house which I put in a cloth bag while transferring it to my home. When I reached home I was shocked to find three live toads that had materialized out of nowhere and were jumping around inside the snake bag! Turns out that my act of handling the snake had disturbed it into vomiting what it had only just finished gulping down greedily. I let the frogs go after that; they probably never thought that they would see the light of day again!
Ratsnakes are often confused for cobras. An easy way to tell them apart is to observe the thickness of the snake’s head. A cobra has a large head which is almost the same dimensions as its mid-body. On the other hand, a Ratsnake’s head is smaller and usually only half the girth of its mid-body.
Rat snakes are very common snakes in Goa and it is not unusual for people to sometimes come across two large specimens in a secluded area the front part of their long bodies coiled around each other and twisting into the air like a spiral staircase. Most people witnessing such a sight end up believing that the snakes involved are a mating pair. Actually what they are seeing is two males involved in a ‘combat dance’! The ‘combat dance’ is a test of strength. Each male is using sheer body strength to coil around his competitor and push him down into submission.
