| 1 | Manchurian black ratsnake |
A ratsnake of endless names, also including the Amur ratsnake and Russian ratsnake. This species measures 140-180cm and inhabits a large area of land, including far eastern Russia, southern China and the Korean peninsular. This is a classic member of the Elaphe ratsnake family: a semi-constrictor which also relies on grappling, which constantly prowls the countryside at a steady pace. Like every ratsnake on this list, they lack even a mild venom.
Manchurian black ratsnakes prey on mammals like mice and birds such as Eurasian tree sparrows. They love birds’ eggs too, as in captivity they happily eat quail eggs. Their habitats are flexible, as Elaphe schrenkii are commonly found on the edges of streams near forests, but are comfortable in manmade areas in Korea, lurking near farm buildings and the border of agricultural fields. This species doesn’t live in the middle of nowhere – it regularly mingles with humans. Manchurian black ratsnakes make their dens in cracks in asphalt and concrete structures, with females laying their eggs in them.
Manchurian black ratsnakes are adaptable and will eat like a pig in captivity. Keepers love this snake, regarding it as curious and inquisitive, always on display, rather than hiding in a corner, although they do flee sometimes when you first enter a room. This is the blackest member of the Elaphe ratsnake family (which has 18 members).
| 2 | Four-lined snake |
The westernmost Elaphe ratsnake species. Four-lined snakes (Elaphe quatuorlineata) are most abundant in Italy, inhabiting the lower two thirds, where they inhabit rocky open areas, borders of forests, sparse woods like oak woods, and crumbling, abandoned buildings. Their easternmost point lies in southeast Greece, and eastern Bulgaria, and they inhabit all the Balkan countries inbetween (Albania, Macedonia, etc).
This species does have 4 black lines, two on each flank, while its spine is a consistent brown colour. On each side, a stripe connects to the eye. Bizarre folklore surrounds this snake, such as coiling around a cows’ legs to immobilise them, and squeezing its udder to extract and drink the milk.
The least weasel is one of their natural enemies, one of the smallest mammal carnivores in Europe. Four-lined snakes tackle predators by constricting their neck, even if they have no intention of eating them. Pet cats are also deadly foes, including one that was killed on a porch, allowing a Dahl’s whipsnake which the four-lined snake had just swallowed to slither out of its mouth. Their diet consists of 77% mammals and 23% birds, according to a 1997 study, which is standard stuff for the Elaphe ratsnake family. At up to 2.5 meters, four-lined snakes are one of Europe’s longest species.
| 3 | Hodgson’s ratsnake |
This ratsnake hugs the southern borders of the Himalaya, in a long, thin territory covering Nepal and extreme northern India. This is typically olive brown, but also greenish occasionally, sometimes with hints of bright blue skin visible between its scales, usually black. It’s a high altitude ratsnake, which has never been found below 1500 metres. Supposedly, the juveniles can have black crossbands which eventually fade.
Hodgson’s ratsnake is very poorly researched, with just scraps of information to form a picture with. A captive report found that it happily ate mice, similarly to its ratsnake kin, before refusing all food from October to April. They’re confirmed prey for other snakes, namely the Caspian cobra, which they overlap with in northern India.
Hodgson’s ratsnake moves by day and is sometimes spotted on farm roads. Like other Elaphe members, they’re no threat to humans, and will normally flee if flustered. They’re excellent climbers, skilfully weaving their way up tree trunks, though they’re not a fully arboreal snake. About the exact makeup of its diet, and which wild species dominate, we have no idea. Hodgson’s ratsnake is just another Himalayan mystery.
| 4 | Japanese four-lined ratsnake |
One of two Japanese Elaphe members, the other simply being the Japanese ratsnake (Elaphe conspicillata). While four-lined snakes are the westernmost Elaphe member, these two are the easternmost. The Japanese four-lined ratsnake (Elaphe quadrivirgata) inhabits both major islands, Honshu and Hokkaido, plus some offshore islands like Mikurajima and Mijake.
Japanese four-lined snakes average at 1-1.5 metres. They vary in colour; some are steel grey, others nearly white, some yellow with virtually red eyes, and a few are fully black (melanistic). Its patterns closely resemble Italy’s four-lined snake, yet the pair are separated by nearly 10,000km. Within Japan, the namesake thin lines easily sperate it from the Japanese ratsnake, which is one of the plainest ratsnakes.
Elaphe quadrivirgata mainly sticks to the ground, and likes to hang out near small streams, on the edges of forests or rice fields. They prefer amphibians, but have a highly flexible diet. On Yukushima island they overwhelmingly ate the Okada’s five-lined skink, while on the mainland, they ate 96.6% frogs and toads. Montane brown frogs, Kajika frogs, and Japanese field frogs are confirmed prey, plus the occasional mammal like Japanese field mice. They rely more on frogs than the neighbouring Japanese ratsnake, which has evolved to be an expert bird egg predator.
| 5 | Flower snake |
The most sought after ratsnake by reptile collectors. Flower snakes have a reddish head, sharply contrasting grey and dark red patterns, followed by a brighter red for its tail. They have the most memorable patterns of the Elaphe ratsnake family, with another name being “red-headed ratsnake”. At up to 2.5 metres, they’re one of the longest too.
Flower snakes (Elaphe moellendorffi) inhabit far northern Vietnam and southern China. Their range overlaps with the beauty ratsnake, but not with the Manchurian black ratsnake, which lives further northeast. Flower snakes inhabit forests, and even caves. In captivity, they happily eat mice and rats, yet somehow, Elaphe moellendorffi is much more delicate than other ratsnakes. Of the thousands exported from the Chinese countryside, a tiny fraction survive.
Flower snakes are also exploited for traditional Chinese medicine. The snakes are dried, then rolled into a disc shape with the head placed at the centre, held in place with bamboo sticks, and dried over a charcoal fire. You now have a dry snake disc, with a slightly fishy and salty taste. This remedy is believed to strengthen the waist and knees, and combat convulsions. Combined with the pet trade, this craze has sent their wild numbers into freefall.
| 6 | Beauty ratsnake |
An extremely widespread ratsnake, which is the most southerly of all 18 Elaphe species. Beauty ratsnakes are non-venomous, yet extremely vicious if backed into a corner, or even worse, picked up in your bare hands. They love to hang out in villages and amid farm buildings, searching for rats and mice, their main prey. They also slither directly up stone walls and live in roofs. But their most unique tendency is living in caves. There’s an entire subspecies called Ridley’s cave racer (Elaphe taeniura ridleyi), which is ghostly white and found in cool, dripping caverns all over southeast Asia, preying heavily on bats.
Beauty ratsnakes range from northeast China, through Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia, into most of Malaysia. Chinese people call them the cauliflower snake, and turn their skin into luxury handbags. Beauty ratsnakes have vibrant, vividly contrasting blotches, which tend to coalesce into neater stripes as the tail approaches.
Beauty ratsnakes can eat 3-5 mice at once, or 200 per year. They’re extremely easy to feed in captivity, eating mice every 5-6 days. Supposedly, they can constrict a mouse’s head so hard that its nose starts bleeding.
| 7 | Blotched ratsnake |
The 2nd westernmost Elaphe species, after the Italian four-lined snake. Blotched ratsnakes (Elaphe sauromates) begin in Bulgaria, continue eastwards through Romania, southern Ukraine, Turkey, and end in Uzbekistan. This is a thick-bodied ratsnake which is hard to miss, yet they’re naturally sparse in the wild, and rarely encountered. Even dedicated herpers can struggle to find them after scouring the Bulgarian countryside for days.
Blotched ratsnakes can reach a jumbo 2.6 metres in length, and prefer open areas like rocky steppe, semi-deserts, or rugged mountain steppe near forests. These open habitats bring them to the attention of birds, particularly the long-legged buzzard. In Romania, they’re becoming increasingly rare due to expanding agriculture.
It’s believed that Elaphe sauromates diverged from the Italian four-lined snake 8.3-7.3 million years ago. Compared to their cousin they have an obviously blotchier pattern, lacking the fine thin lines. Their patterns and colours stay similar from birth, undergoing no ontogenetic change. Research is lacking, but Elaphe sauromates seems to have a typical ratsnake diet, happily eating mice and rats in captivity.
Blotched ratsnakes originally covered more space, but in 2019, those in eastern Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan were split off into a new ratsnake species: the Urartian rat snake (Elaphe urartica), the 15th member of the family.
| 8 | Taiwan stink snake |
At its peak, the Elaphe ratsnake family was much larger. All US ratsnakes were included, such as black ratsnakes and corn snakes, before being switched to the Pantherophis family, and so were green Asian ratsnakes, which are now part of the Gonyosoma family. The new, slimmed down family is now found exclusively in Eurasia, and one faithful member is the Taiwan stink snake (Elaphe carinata), or the “stinking goddess” in Chinese, named for the especially vile smell it produces when it feels threatened. Grass snakes also produce this smell, but Elaphe carinata takes it to another level.
This species inhabits the whole of Taiwan, plus a swathe of southeast China, including near Shanghai and Wuhan, as far north as Beijing. This species has a large overlap with the twin-spotted ratsnake. This is a species of tiny beige and black speckles, which create an appearance like static TV. The proportions vary, and in some, the beige dominates the black, making this one of the paler Elaphe ratsnake species overall.
Taiwan stink snakes also bite aggressively, though they lack venom. They’re a flexible species, inhabiting shrubland and agricultural land alike. Farmers hail them for their ability to hoover up rats. This is a relatively large species at a maximum of 240cm.
| 9 | Blade-toothed ratsnake |
A new Elaphe ratsake species, discovered officially in 2021. The blade-toothed ratsnake (Elaphe xiphodonta) had been missed for decades, but was finally discovered in eastern China’s Shaanxi province. The snake had large yellow patches on the head, with three distinct markings. It had unusually shaped teeth, with sharp cutting edges, and in captivity, it swallowed up quail eggs with aplomb. The only snake they analysed contained feathers, offering more clues.
Its habitat was gently-angled gravel slopes along the shores of the Chang’an river, with a river width of 3 metres, at altitudes of 1700-1900 metres. It inhabited rugged terrain with forests not far away, and was believed to be mimicking the nearby Jerdon’s pitviper for its own protection.
When captured, the new ratsnake triangulated its head in classic viper style. It also released a vile smell similarly to the Taiwan stink snake. Other features included a yellow belly with mottled black markings, and reddish brown blotches on the body. With this fresh discovery, the Elaphe ratsnake family increased to 17 members, and another member was added in 2023: the Levant ratsnake (Elaphe druzei) of northern Israel and Lebanon.
| 10 | Twin-spotted ratsnake |
A species of eastern China, including the outskirts of Shanghai and Wuhan. This species is sandwiched roughly inbetween the territories of the flower snake and Manchurian black ratsnake. It appears in various habitats, including cultivated areas and forest edges, but is declining in the wild due to overharvesting for Chinese medicine.
This is one of the smaller Elaphe ratsnakes, at just 80-100cm. With a slender build, it looks even smaller. Twin-spotted ratsnakes are very easy to keep in captivity, unlike the flower snake. They start as shy for several months, hiding in objects within a terrarium, before growing curious and inquisitive after becoming used to their surroundings. They swallow pinkie mice and hopper mice with no reluctance at all, no need for trick scenting. Dark red blotches are their classic characteristic, but these sometimes fuse to form stripes.
Like all of this list, twin-spotted ratsnakes lay eggs, in this case in batches of 3-8. However, their eggs are especially long and thin, rather than shorter and rounded. This species is most closely related to Elaphe dione, the steppe ratsnake.