Yellow Bellied Racer

Conservation Status:
Stable

Description:
Yellow Bellied Racers are a uniform blue-gray, greenish-blue, or brown color, with cream or yellow underparts.  The scales are very smooth.  Females grow slightly longer than males, up to 50 inches in length.  Although males tend to be shorter overall, they have longer tails.  Juveniles look very different from adults.  Instead of the adults' uniform color, they have a pattern of large, light-edged blotches on the back, and smaller spots on the sides.

Range:
Most of the continental United States, except parts of the southwest

Habitat:
They spend summers in open grasslands, moving to rocky, wooded hillsides for the rest of the year.

Diet:
In the wild, they eat insects, frogs, lizards, other snakes, birds and their eggs, and small mammals.  In the zoo they eat crickets, grasshoppers, and mice.

Life Cycle:
Yellow Bellied Racers breed in May.  Females lay their eggs in the summer, laying anywhere from 5-31 eggs per clutch.  Most eggs are laid in a small mammal's burrow. 

Did You Know?

·        The name "Racer" fits this snake well.  It is one of the fastest snakes in Kansas.

·        Yellow Bellied Racers have much larger eyes than other similar-sized snakes.  They use their keen eyesight to track and pursue prey.

·        If threatened by a predator, they will thrash around in one spot, and then quickly slip away into the brush or beneath a rock.  Their predators include hawks and small mammals.

·        Racers are diurnal (active during the day).  They spend the daylight hours basking on rocks or gliding over the prairie in search of food.

·        During the winter, they hibernate in rocky crevices.

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