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Sinaloan Milk Snake

Sinaloan Milk Snake at the London Tropical Zoo

These beautiful snakes are found throughout Eastern USA, Mexico and Central America.

Milk snakes are stunning colours; they have bands of bright red, yellow and black.

Usually bright colours in nature are a signal for danger but milk snakes are not venomous. They mimic the colours of the deadly Coral snake for protection, as most animals will stay away!

Milk snakes usually eat rodents, bats, birds and lizards but they also eat other snakes!

The Kingsnake family (which the milk snake is part of) are amongst the strongest snakes in the world they need to be stronger to overpower and kill other snakes .

The largest of the Kingsnakes is actually a viper, the King Cobra, which is the largest venous snake in the world. But Milk Snakes are constrictors, which means they squeeze their prey.

Portia came to us as an unwanted pet on 11th October 2003. She is approximately 5 years old and measures nearly a meter but she can reach 1.5 meters when fully grown.

We feed Portia once a week and she has 2 mice for dinner.

Unfortunately, Milk Snakes are very fashionable pets and they are often purchased without even basic knowledge of husbandry, they can also live for 10 - 15 years, so when the novelty wears off the snakes are left homeless.

Thanks to support like yours we can continue to give refuge to homeless animals, such as Portia and continue our conservation efforts.