Wifey's Fotothing

I don't mean to scare anyone… this creature seemed quite harmless to me and my son. Visitor in our garden.

Brown racer (Alsophis vudii)

This snake belongs to group of snakes known as the Colubrids. Over half of all snakes fall into this group, making it the largest family of snakes. Colubrids are represented throughout the whole of the West Indies. Their ancestors are believed to have come from Central and South America. The Alsophis genus has 16 different species and collectively they are known as the West Indian racers, as they are the most widely distributed of all the Colubrids in the West Indies. They are found in The Bahamas, the Greater Antilles, the Cayman Islands, and the Lesser Antilles south to Dominica, with one species in South America and another in the Galapagos Archipelago, in the Pacific Ocean. These snakes are rear-fanged vipers, and carry only a small amount of toxin that can only bring down a very small animal and are not a concern for humans. These snakes tend to feed on small cold blooded animals such as lizards, frogs, and other snakes. Most members of this genus are very common where they occur, except on the islands where Mongooses have been introduced (i.e. in Jamaica).

The Bahamian Brown Racer is the most common snake on the majority of Bahamian islands. Like all racers they are fast moving snakes and will even pursue their prey with agility and speed on the ground as well as in the trees. This snake very rarely bites humans but instead prefers to use its speed to flee from them.

There is another racer found on the Bahamian islands, the Hispaniola lesser racer (Antillophis parvifrons). This racer is mostly found in Haiti and the Dominican republic but is less commonly found on many other islands in the West Indies such as The Bahamas, Jamaica and Cuba.