Corn snake

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A large scale corn snake breeder showing off one of her prize snakes. Note the docility, practically a comatose state, of this specimen.

“These snakes are amaizeing”

~ Jungle Jack Hanna on Corn snakes

The corn snake (cornius snakus) is a snake that bears an uncanny, although completely superficial, resemblance to corn. This feature is thought by zoologists to aid in camouflage. Furthermore, the corn snake, unlike corn, is perfectly harmless unless eaten (upon consumption of a corn snake a human being must immediately began feeling around their teeth with their finger and tongue, attempting to remove the renments of the snake from between their teeth) . Whilst commonly kept as pets, this particular species is still banned from transport on passenger airlines due to a tragic and infamous incidence of snakes on a plane.

Adaptations

Corn snakes are medium sized snakes (i.e not as small as an little snake but not half as big as a really big tree). It feeds by sucking the sap out of corn plants and corn kernels, and, although native to North and Central America, is now a common pest to farmers worldwide.

The Corn Snake in American Indian mythology

The following was roughly translated from an ancient American Indian tapestry found in a cave in what is now Arizona:

"When Great Spirit made corn, She made corn snake to slither beside corn, in sky and ground corn snake and corn mingle spirits. To kill corn snake is to destroy this season's corn crop, but to embrace corn snake as one would embrace a mate brings much rain and no locusts. Embrace often, and lay with all manner of corn snake, may the trees themselves sing of this love and this embrace. --Chief Lookoveryonda

Totem's from all across North and Central America bare witness that this attitude was shared by almost all tribes, and the term "snake", or "trouser snake", when used as a graphic physical reference, harkens back to this practice.

Fear of corn snakes

Historically, aside from the American Indian, many cultures have a deep fear of corn snakes. Their strange molting renmants, which resemble large leaves with tiny yellow strings attached, are typically avoided.

Varieties

In their estimated 320 million years of existence, corn snakes have evolved into a huge number of varieties. For example, one common form, the Pop corn snake, will protect itself when attacked by internally heating the water within its body, expanding in an instant to many times its normal size. This usually scares the predator off, although its arch enemy, the Southeastern Moviegoer (a noctural rodent), will continue its attack and usually consumes its prey.

Here are some of the more common corn snakes, compiled and photographed by the Reptilian Department of the University of Arizona:

Butter corn snake

I can't believe its not butter corn snake

Candy corn snake

Snow corn snake

Bloodred corn snake

Charcoal corn snake

A mix of different hatching corn snakes

News footage of a man picking up a Pop corn snake.

Corn snake attacks

A horse under attack by a swarm of corn snakes. Notice how they not only bite and devour the body, but their venom creates rapid colour changes in the cows skin. This is not painful, according to humans who have been bitten. More like a warm breeze which leaves the skin multi-hued

Bites by individual corn snakes do little harm, as they are easily detected and knocked aside with a whisk of a hand, paw, or tail. It is only when corn snakes swarm a victim that the danger of extreme itching and embarressment occurs.

Corn swarm, the common term for an attack by multiple corn snakes, is rarely seen and has been photographed only three times: In 1903, during a swarm on an anteater; in 1977, when a cow was swarmed in India, and that one time they swarmed a gibbon.