Behavior/Reproduction
An agile climber, gray rat snakes are at home from the ground to the tree tops in many types of hardwood forest and cypress stands, along tree-lined streams and fields, and even barns and sheds in close proximity to people. Within its range, almost any environment rich in rodents, and vertical escape options, proves a suitable habitat for the gray rat snake. As scent-hunters these powerful constrictors feed primarily on rodents, birds, and their eggs as adults, while neonates and juveniles prefer a diet of frogs and lizards. When startled, this species, like other rat snakes, stops and remains motionless with its body held in a series of wave-like kinks. The gray rat snake will defend itself by raising its head and bluffing a strike. If handled, these snakes will musk a victim by releasing the foul-smelling contents of their cloaca, and will bite if necessary. However, the gray rat snake is less likely to bite than other members of its species, and wounds from a bite rarely require more than a bandage. Breeding takes place from April to July. Females deposit 5 to 27 eggs around mid-summer, and the 10" to 12" (25–30 cm) hatchlings usually emerge in September.
Read more about this topic: Gray Rat Snake
Famous quotes containing the words behavior and/or reproduction:
“This whole business of Trade gives me to pause and think, as it constitutes false relations between men; inasmuch as I am prone to count myself relieved of any responsibility to behave well and nobly to that person who I pay with money, whereas if I had not that commodity, I should be put on my good behavior in all companies, and man would be a benefactor to man, as being himself his only certificate that he had a right to those aids and services which each asked of the other.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it “the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.” The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of “Artist.””
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)