HomeBig BoxesNews RSS Feed

Blizzard-Phased Corn Snake Captured in Australia

Exotic snakes are euthanized in Australia

Herping The Peruvian Amazon Rainforest
7500 Frogs Released After Frog Poaching Ring Busted In Turkey
Australia’s FrogID Week Runs November 8-17. Help Find Frogs!

Snake catcher Codey Rowe of Gympie, Australia was called out to relocate a large snake from a residence and when he arrived, he was shocked to find a large white snake. He sent photos of the snake to Richie Gilbert of Sunshine Coast Snake Catcher 24/7, thinking the snake was an albino Eastern brown snake or a Taipan. Confounded with what Rowe had captured, Gilbert counted the scales and took some photos and sent the data to an expert in the United States, who identified the snake as a blizzard-phased corn snake.

Corn snakes are illegal to keep in Australia, so Rowe surrendered the snake to Australia’s biosecurity department, which is a fancy title for pest management in Queensland. Exotic snakes are euthanized in Australia. In 2014, a contestant on The Voice Australia invited the camera crew into her home where she showed off her pet corn snake. Viewers of the show reported her to the country's NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service for keeping an illegal exotic reptile. It was confiscated and destroyed.  Corn snakes are one of the most popular pet snakes in the United States, where they are a native species. 

Advertisement