| 1 | Gopher snake |
Venomous: no.
Record length: 267.7cm.
A species of virtually the entire western USA. Gopher snakes are commonly encountered in California, Colorado, and Oregon alike, and they also appear in northern Mexico and southern Canada. Gopher snakes have extremely flexible habitats, popping up in woodlands, grassy fields, rocky canyons, towns and wetlands. But agricultural areas rise above the rest to become perhaps their favourite location of all.
A huge study on 2600 gopher snakes found that mammals comprised the majority of their prey (76.8%), and there are few better places to fulfill these desires than crop fields. Gopher snakes lurk within rows of swaying crops, and especially bushy areas on the outskirts of fields.
This means that gopher snakes are economically beneficial for farmers, reducing the quantity of crops lost to nibbling pests, achieving naturally what scientists spent thousands of hours striving towards in their pesticide labs. Gopher snakes have endless fields to choose from; wheat, corn potato, and soybean fields are all options.
On the other hand, gopher snakes are a nemesis of egg farmers. They’re cunning enough to slither into henhouses and burgle the eggs, and even attempt to swallow grown chickens, sometimes failing and leaving dead chickens covered in a snaky slime. Thankfully, gopher snakes are a harmless constrictor, whose only real weapon is a blunt-nosed bash where they close their mouths tightly and launch themselves forward.
| 2 | Coastal taipan |
Venomous: yes.
Record length: 335cm.
This dangerously venomous snake is notorious for inhabiting Australia’s sugar plantations. Back in the 1950s, they became so abundant that workers were reluctant to sign up in Queensland for fear of the taipan bogeyman preparing to pounce. The sugar industry was even forced to hire a snake aficionado called Ram Chandra (AKA “the taipan man”) to travel around and reassure everyone.
Coastal taipans are mainly found along Australia’s populous east coast, unlike inland taipans which inhabit the outback. Their natural habitats include more open areas, including grassy fields and sparse woodlands with healthy moisture levels. Sugar plantations are a close mimic of this. Their diet also helps, as alongside their inland cousin, the coastal taipan is the most mammal-eating of Australia’s many venomous snakes. They simply adore rodents, and their confirmed prey include dusky field rats and pale field rats.
Coastal taipans have a neurotoxic venom which can paralyse a rat’s hind legs in seconds. Their venom has an LD50 score of 0.075mg, making them the world’s third deadliest land snake. Fortunately though, despite lurking between crop rows, bites on workers are surprisingly rare, particularly compared to the infamous Russell’s viper of India. The Australian sugar industry has almost certainly benefitted overall from the reduction in gnawing rodents.
| 3 | Russell’s viper |
Venomous: severely.
Record length: 185cm.
The Russell’s viper might be the worst snake in the world. We judge this not on their venom, which is still top 10 for severity, but their extreme attraction to crop fields and rice paddies, which causes them to bite thousands of Indian farmers per year.
Russell’s vipers are mainly mammal eaters, and are an ambush species, which lurk between rows of crops and are almost impossible to notice until you accidentally step on one. They’re aided by their supreme camouflage, with typical beige and brown viper shades. Like other crop field snakes, it’s the abundance of rodents which lures them in.
Indian farmers fear this haemorrhagic, cytotoxic snake above all others. Indian farms are typically bushier and more overgrown than a micromanaged German wheat field, giving the Russell’s viper the perfect habitat to thrive in. Antivenom is available, but extremely hard to deliver to these bitten workers, who work in remote villages. Many workers also lack basic protective equipment, such as an impenetrable pair of leather boots.
Amputation is possible with Russell’s vipers bites, depriving farm workers of their livelihood. On the other hand, they do help to reduce rat pests, but most farmers would probably delete the Russell’s viper if they had the chance. The non-venomous trinket snake is also a common species in Indian crop fields.
| 4 | Corn snake |
Venomous: no.
Record length: 182.9cm.
Perhaps the most popular snake in captivity worldwide. Corn snakes are perfect for a beginner, as they’re non-venomous, active and curious, and simple to feed. Their name has long been debated, but is believed to have originated from the species’ tendency to appear in crop fields.
In the 1600s, early US colonists stored their harvests in roasting corn cribs in hot parts of the country, essentially sheltered barns made from wood. These rickety structures would attract rodents in their thousands, but corn snakes were often hot on their heels, ready to swallow a tasty meal, and inadvertently save New World explorers from certain starvation in the process. These colonists recognised the corn snake’s skills as early as the mid-1600s, affectionally granting them the name.
These days, corn snakes are still plentiful in the overgrown outskirts of crop fields, as the species generally dislikes open areas. Their favourite wild habitats include bushes on the edges of forests and woodlands, often next to rural roads. They’re also attracted to human structures like roofs.
Mammals make up most of the corn snake’s diet, with a particular favourite being the white-footed mouse. Corn snakes naturally inhabit the southeastern USA, including Florida, the Carolinas and Alabama.
| 5 | Indochinese ratsnake |
Venomous: no.
Record length: 256cm.
This harmless 2 metre snake lives in Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia, but particularly Indonesia. This is a long, thin brown snake which you could easily trip over, mistaking it for a fallen tree branch. Indochinese ratsnakes are alert, focused, and never truly relax around people, whether it’s cameramen or farm workers. They’re closely related to the oriental ratsnake, another rat addict which is most heavily based in Thailand.
Indochinese ratsnakes (Ptyas korros) prey on many animal families, but especially mammals such as Tanezumi rats and Malayan field rats, and they regularly stray into the domain of mankind to get them. In fact, this species prefers to make a permanent base in farmers’ fields, so that the rodent party never ends.
Ptyas korros is such a crop field clean-up snake that without them, Indonesian agriculture’s fate would hang in the balance. Ptyas korros is a widely harvested species, with thousands per year being scooped out of the Indonesian countryside for the skin and meat trade (often illegally).
By the 2000s, this had accelerated so far that sudden rat plagues appeared from nowhere and devastated Indonesian crops. Farmers didn’t realise quite how much they were benefitting from this snake until it left. Consequently, farmers in the Javan region of Jogyakarta are now releasing their own batches of Indo-Chinese ratsnakes.
| 6 | Ball python |
Venomous: no.
Record length: 182cm.
The most popular python in captivity worldwide. This species naturally lives in central and west Africa, and is a relatively small python at an average of 50-100cm. The ball python is also a boon to west African farmers, and for once, they’re completely aware of it. Ball pythons are so beneficial for crop fields that in Nigeria and Ghana, they’re almost treated like secondary employees of farms. Workers revere them, and simply leave them in peace as they work.
Ball pythons divide their calories between mammals and birds. They often rest under dead palm oil trees, or under piles of leaves, which are perfect ambush positions for rodents scurrying past. Pests they helpfully hoover up include African giant rats, rufous-nosed rats, and the globally ubiquitous black rat.
Ball pythons have even been honoured with temples in Nigeria and Ghana, and are hailed as a deity, a relic from the time on Earth when all was water. Being so small, they cannot swallow a human, and they rarely bite viciously like a blood python.
That said, as the economy expands, more of Nigeria is graduating to mechanised industrial farm equipment, whose slicing blades can be fatal for ball pythons. It’s traditional hand-picking farmers who benefit most from the ball python’s ancient protection.
| 7 | Sumatran spitting cobra |
Venomous: yes.
Record length: 160cm.
One of southeast Asia’s deadliest snakes, and one which regularly interacts with human beings. The Sumatran spitting cobra (Naja sumatrana) was once a humble forest dweller, kept in check by birds, tigers and the whole complex ecosystem. Then Indonesia started slashing down its rainforests en masse to create palm oil plantations, and the Sumatran spitting cobra saw an opportunity.
This deadly serpent is now more abundant than it was originally, thanks to a booming Indonesian palm oil industry whose production increased five-fold from 2000 to 2016. Calorie-dense palm oil fruits attract rats in their thousands, which in turn attract spitting cobras in their dozens. These are a constant menace for farm workers, with Indonesia now suffering 11,000 snakebite deaths per year. Rubber plantations are also a popular hangout for this species.
Naja sumatrana offers double the trouble for cautious farm workers. Its spitting venom targets the eyes, and can reach at least 1 metre away (some say two), causing blindness if untreated. The main venom is rich in paralysing neurotoxins, and has an especially high quantity of heart-targeting cardiotoxins. On the other hand, Sumatran spitting cobras are sometimes swallowed up by reticulated pythons, which also love palm oil plantations.
Despite the name, this species in found in Borneo, Singapore, southern Thailand and peninsular Malaysia, as well as Sumatra.
| 8 | Trinket snake |
Venomous: no.
Record lengths: 138.6cm, 140cm.
A 1-1.4 metre Indian snake which often occupies the same bushy fields as Russell’s vipers. Trinket snakes are non-venomous, yet have savage personalities, baring their fangs while hissing madly. They won’t hesitate to latch onto a farmer’s arm and swing their head from side to side in order to tear through flesh.
Fortunately, this snake can be a peaceful barley field neighbour, as long as you just keep walking when you hear their piercing hiss. Trinket snakes are also common in rice paddies, and can be spotted slithering across roads between two adjacent wheat fields. Their love of crop fields has given them a happy immunity to agricultural sprawl (which has damaged many other snakes). Their only issue is ending up as roadkill commonly, due to heavy tractors weighing 2.5 tons.
Although the trinket snake’s diet isn’t well studied, there are countless reports from Indian snake enthusiasts of them devouring rodents. They live in crop fields with their evolutionary relative the radiated ratsnake, which they diverged from approximately 30 million years ago.
| 9 | Central American eyelash viper |
Venomous: yes.
Record length: 91.6cm.
The Central American eyelash viper isn’t just an agriculture-loving snake, but metamorphises in order to blend into certain crop types. This species is a common branch-clinger, found in Costa Rica, Panama and Nicaragua, which has a dangerous venom but doesn’t usually kill people. They’re famous for their amount of colour phases, with yellow being more common in banana fields, red dominating near bromeliads, and green taking over in traditional forests.
Eyelash vipers have even been scooped up by banana harvesters, fallen into wooden crates, and been transported halfway across the world to Western supermarkets. They eat a varied diet, including mammals and lizards, and are constantly keeping harvesters of various crops on their toes. Eyelash vipers typically rest on branches 1-3 metres high, watching the farm workers busying around below, but can also appear on low bushes, hissing at terrified people fooled by their camouflage.
Eyelash vipers have an excellent memory for branches, and can forage on the overgrown floors of plantations, before returning to the exact same branch perch during the day. This is a nocturnal species, and bite symptoms including vomiting, cold sweats and spontaneous bleeding.
| 10 | Montpellier snake |
Venomous: slightly.
Record length: 216.2cm.
This is one of Spain’s hardiest and most flexible serpents, which goes wherever it feels like in search of its chosen prey. Montpellier snakes even flock to the stench of dumpsters and wastelands in order to swallow up the rats that congregate there, and crop fields are also high on their checklists.
The Montpellier snake weaves in and out of wheat stalks, searching for their prey actively rather than waiting in ambush. They follow stealthily behind rats and mice, exhibiting enormous patience, pouncing when they’re just feet away. Dozens of these battles happen in farmers fields’ every week, but many are unaware, and shoo Montpellier snakes away, even whacking them to death with a boot. Montpellier snakes possess a mild venom, but have rear fangs only, combined with a tiny mouth, which makes delivering venom almost impossible unless you stupidly poke a finger in.
Overall, if all Montpellier snakes vanished from Spain overnight, the country’s agricultural industry would be slightly poorer. This is a fast-moving snake which often appears in bushy areas at the edges of crop fields, or on stone walls between them. They’re also Spain’s longest snake, easily reaching 2 metres.