HOW TO TELL PIT VIPERS FROM NON-POISONOUS SNAKES

One way to tell if a snake is poisonous is to provoke it to bite you in the ankle.

Then, if your leg turns purple and swells to twice its normal size and you get deathly ill, you can be pretty well assured that the snake was a pit viper of some sort. And all our poisonous snakes are pit vipers.

This method, however, is not recommended. A preferable means is visual examination.

In general terms, the pit vipers tend to be heavier in body with wider, triangular-shape heads and blunter tails than non-poisonous snakes. When viewing a single snake, however, it can be difficult to assess how wide the head and how blunt the tail might be.

A sure-fire differentiation between the pit vipers and all the non-poisonous snakes is the shape of the eyes. The pit vipers -- including the cottonmouth, copperhead and rattlesnake -- have elliptical pupils. That is, the pupil of a viper's eye is vertical, pointed at the top and bottom and thinner side to side -- like a cat's eye. Non-poisonous snakes, meanwhile, have eyes with round pupils.

Another means of identification is to examine the underside of a snake's tail. If behind the anal vent the snake has a double row of scales, with scales side-by-side all the way to the tail tip, it's a non-poisonous snake. Conversely, a pit viper has a single row of scales on the back, underside portion of the tail.

Of course, not everyone wants to look a snake in the eye at close range or lift its tail to do a scale inspection just for the surety of knowing whether or not it's a viper.

Some folks would rather keep their distance and make an assumption.