The nature of European snakes

[Francesco Tri]

I have never been attacked by a snake ..... and you?

I think that Vipera ammodytes of Montenegro is the worst: always bites!

Then comes the Vipera aspis atra, follows the francisciredi in last place is the Hugyi: not almost never bites!

[Raf Knyazchyan]

I caugh a lot of snakes , but attacked me only Coluber schmidti (more than 1,5 m) and Macrovipera lebetina, who defended the female.And only once unprovoked - Eirenis punctatolineatus male - in the hot afternoon, on the edge od the road

[Pedro Janssen]

I have been attacked a lot by all kind of snakes in my gloves.
Some snakes species intent to bite more often then others, but there is no certain rule.

[Vlad Cioflec]

I like sharing stories about snake encounters, so here goes.

Calm snakes, or maybe they were just having a good day:

Elaphe quatuorlineata
Elaphe sauromates
Hierophis gemonensis
Natrix tessellata
Typhlops vermicularis
Vipera berus


Snakes that attacked me while i was going to take a picture, or otherwise messing with them:

Dolichophis caspius
Zamenis longissimus
Natrix natrix
Coronella austriaca
Vipera ammodytes

Snakes that attacked me cause they were just paranoid:

Vipera ursinii

Cheers!
Vlad

[Daniel Bohle]

Who attacked whom is the question

It's a helpless diskussion ... for natrix I use allways these:
http://www.tongs.com/images/products/de ... _Trans.gif

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

Imho you rrrrrreally have to annoy Natrix natrix before it may bite. I've only seen this once with a sicula in S Italy. Ursinii is an underestimated mean bastard, all of them. Sauromates seemed to be indeed more feisty than quatuorlineata, like the books say.

[Daniel Bohle]

http://www.ringelnatter.net/_english/behaviou.htm

Biting

The grass snake bites very seldomly (Kabisch 1978). During the investigation only two of the registered grass snakes did bite (< 0,5 %).

[Ilian Velikov]

I agree that Natrix bite very,very rarely..in fact I havent found one that does,yet! And that goes for N.tessellata,too!The only individual that tried(in my experience) was a small juvenile Grass Snake which was performing "fake" bites - striking but withouth opening the mouth.

[Gerald Ochsenhofer]

Concerning N. natrix - Richard snapped the "photographic proof" during our Montenegro - trip last year.
The snake was "unusually" agressive right from the start of the disturbance and (successfully - no one was expecting it) tried to bite if you got too close - in this case the finger on the upper right corner of the image.
Perhaps this unusual habit was connected with the bad physical condition of the snake - it was noticeable "skinny".

But - this is the only oberservation I remember, unlike Blanus and Typhlops

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

Nice, Gerald!

But - this is the only oberservation I remember, unlike Blanus and Typhlops

Do you mean those don't bite? Although of course very small and not really intimidating, Blanus seems to bite very often, in my experience.