Animal Diversity Web

Ge­o­graphic Range

Store­ria dekayi is an abun­dant snake that is widely dis­trib­uted.

It is found in south­ern Canada, in the United States east of the Rocky Moun­tains, and in the north­ern por­tions of Mex­ico (Dit­mars 1936).

• Biogeographic Regions
• nearctic
  • native

Habi­tat

This is a snake that is still fairly abun­dant. The rea­son for this can be mostly at­trib­uted to its smaller size and broad habi­tat pref­er­ences. Brown snakes are typ­i­cally found hid­ing among loose stones or flat rocks that are found in the wild and in large cities (Dit­mars 1936). These snakes will spend most of their life under the ground, but dur­ing heavy rains they will some­times go out into the open (Hard­ing 1997). This usu­ally oc­curs in Oc­to­ber - No­vem­ber and dur­ing late March - April when they are mov­ing to or from hi­ber­na­tion spots (Hard­ing 1997). Some­times these hi­ber­na­tion spots will be shared with other snakes such as garter snakes, red-bel­lied snakes, and smooth green snakes (Hard­ing 1997). (Dit­mars, 1936; Hard­ing, 1997)

• Habitat Regions
• temperate
• terrestrial

• Terrestrial Biomes
• chaparral
• forest
• scrub forest

• Wetlands
• marsh

• Other Habitat Features
• urban
• suburban

Phys­i­cal De­scrip­tion

The brown snake is a fairly small snake that rarely ex­ceeds 15 inches in length (Dit­mars 1936). It has a stout body with large eyes and heav­ily keeled scales (Collins 1987). Store­ria dekayi is typ­i­cally found to be a gray­ish brown color with a lighter streak on its back that is bor­dered on each side with black dots. The belly of the brown snake is a pink­ish white color. Typ­i­cally there are 17 scale rows at mid­body and the anal plate is di­vided (Hard­ing 1997). Males and fe­males gen­er­ally look the same, but males tend to have longer tails (Hard­ing 1997). There are sev­eral other sub­species of Store­ria dekayi that look slightly dif­fer­ent, but there is no tex­tual ev­i­dence of any sea­sonal vari­a­tion. Young brown snakes are small, about 3 1/2 inches long on av­er­age and are black or dark gray in color (Simon 1979). A dis­tin­guish­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of the young is a light gray­ish white col­ored ring found around the neck. At this age they are some­times con­fused with ring necked snakes, but are dis­tin­guished by their keeled scales (Dit­mars 1936). (Collins, 1987; Dit­mars, 1936; Simon, 1979)

• Other Physical Features
• heterothermic

• Sexual Dimorphism
• female larger
• sexes shaped differently

• Range length

  23.0 to 52.7 cm

  9.06 to 20.75 in

Re­pro­duc­tion

• Mating System
• polygynous

The brown snake is vi­vip­a­rous, and gives birth to 12 - 20 young (Dit­mars 1936). This oc­curs dur­ing the later parts of the sum­mer around late July to early Au­gust (Dit­mars 1936). After the young are born there is no parental care in­volved, but some­times young brown snakes will stay close with the par­ent (Hard­ing 1997). Brown snakes reach sex­ual ma­tu­rity by the end of their sec­ond sum­mer, usu­ally by this time they have dou­bled in

length (Hard­ing 1997).

• Key Reproductive Features
• iteroparous
• seasonal breeding
• sexual
• fertilization
  • internal
• ovoviviparous

• Breeding interval

  Brown Snakes breed once yearly.

• Breeding season

  Brown Snakes give birth to their young in late summer.

• Range number of offspring

  3.0 to 41.0

• Average age at sexual or reproductive maturity (female)

  2.0 years

• Average age at sexual or reproductive maturity (female)
  Sex: female

  730 days

  AnAge

• Average age at sexual or reproductive maturity (male)

  2.0 years

• Average age at sexual or reproductive maturity (male)
  Sex: male

  730 days

  AnAge

The young are nour­ished within their mother's body while they de­velop. Once the young are born there is no fur­ther parental care, but some­times young Brown Snakes will stay near their mother.

• Parental Investment
• precocial
• female parental care

Lifes­pan/Longevity

Lit­tle is known of Brown Snake lifes­pans in the wild, but a cap­tive in­di­vid­ual lived to be 7 years old. Wild Brown Snakes may ap­proach this lifes­pan in the wild, though many young die be­fore be­com­ing ma­ture.

• Range lifespan
  Status: captivity

  7.0 (high) years

• Average lifespan
  Status: captivity

  7 years

  AnAge

Be­hav­ior

Breed­ing in Store­ria dekayi starts out with the male fol­low­ing a fe­male that leaves a pheromone trail (Hard­ing 1997). The brown snake (male) uses his tongue to iden­tify a po­ten­tial mate, mak­ing sure it is a fe­male, the male then in­serts a hemipe­nis into the fe­male's cloaca after mak­ing var­i­ous court­ing move­ments (Hard­ing 1997). Brown snakes are typ­i­cally harm­less non­ven­emous snakes. Some of their preda­tors are large frogs and toads, larger snakes, crows, hawks, shrews, weasels, cer­tain bird species, and do­mes­tic

cats and dogs (Hard­ing 1997). When these snakes do feel threat­ened they will flat­ten their bod­ies out to ap­pear larger and place their bod­ies in an ag­gres­sive pos­ture, and they will even re­lease a musky smelling fluid from the cloaca (Hard­ing 1997).

• Key Behaviors
• nocturnal
• motile
• solitary

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Per­cep­tion

Brown Snakes com­mu­ni­cate with each other pri­mar­ily through touch and smell. They use their forked tongues to col­lect chem­i­cals from the air and in­sert these forks into a spe­cial organ in the roof of their mouth, which in­ter­prets these chem­i­cal sig­nals. Be­cause Brown Snakes hunt mostly un­der­ground and at night, they prob­a­bly use al­most ex­clu­sively their sense of smell to find prey. Snakes are also sen­si­tive to vi­bra­tions and have rea­son­ably good vi­sion.

Food Habits

Brown snakes feed largely on earth­worms, snails, and slugs, but will also eat small sala­man­ders, soft-bod­ied grubs, and bee­tles. They have spe­cial­ized teeth and jaws that allow them to pull snails out of their shells and eat them. (Dit­mars, 1936; Hard­ing, 1997)

• Primary Diet
• carnivore
  • molluscivore
  • vermivore

• Animal Foods
• amphibians
• insects
• terrestrial non-insect arthropods
• mollusks
• terrestrial worms

Pre­da­tion

Brown snakes are eaten by large frogs and toads, larger snakes, Amer­i­can crows, hawks, shrews, weasels, blue jays, and do­mes­tic cats. When these snakes feel threat­ened they flat­ten their bod­ies to ap­pear larger and place their bod­ies in an ag­gres­sive pos­ture. They will also smear their at­tacker with a foul-smelling musk that they exude from their cloaca.

• Known Predators

  • large frogs and toads (Anura)
  • snakes (Serpentes)
  • American crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos)
  • hawks (Accipitridae)
  • shrews (Soricidae)
  • weasels (Mustela)
  • domestic cats (Felis silvestris)
  • blue jays (Cyanocitta cristata)

Ecosys­tem Roles

Brown Snakes help to con­trol pop­u­la­tions of snails, slugs, and earth­worms. They also serve as a valu­able food sup­ply for their preda­tors.

Eco­nomic Im­por­tance for Hu­mans: Pos­i­tive

These lit­tle snakes may ben­e­fit hu­mans by con­trol­ling slug dam­age in gar­dens (Hard­ing 1997). No other known ben­e­fits have been found.

• Positive Impacts
• controls pest population

Con­ser­va­tion Sta­tus

This is a fairly com­mon species, but it does face threats such as ex­po­sure to pol­lu­tion and de­struc­tion of rural and urban habi­tats (Hard­ing 1997). No known ef­forts are being made to en­sure vi­able pop­u­la­tions for the fu­ture.

• IUCN Red List

  Least Concern
  More information

• IUCN Red List

  Least Concern
  More information

• US Federal List

  No special status

• CITES

  No special status

• State of Michigan List

  No special status

Con­trib­u­tors

Leslie Sea­holm (au­thor), Michi­gan State Uni­ver­sity, James Hard­ing (ed­i­tor), Michi­gan State Uni­ver­sity.

Ref­er­ences

Collins, J. 1987. Snakes Ecol­ogy and Evo­lu­tion­ary Bi­ol­ogy. New York: Macmil­lan Pub­lish­ing Com­pany.

Dit­mars, R. 1936. The Rep­tiles of North Amer­ica. New York: Dou­ble­day, Doran and Com­pany, Inc..

Hard­ing, J. 1997. Am­phib­ians and Rep­tiles of the Great Lakes Re­gion. Ann Arbor: The Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan Press.

Simon, H. 1979. Easy Clas­si­fi­ca­tion Guide to North Amer­i­can Snakes. New York: Dodd, Mead, and Com­pany.