COLUMBIA, S.C. — Texas has the most snakes in the United States but if you want to talk about venomous snakes, you have to look to Arizona, which has — wait for it — 19 of the country’s 20 most dangerous snakes.
That includes 13 rattlesnake species alone, World Atlas says. They most often live in the desert but don’t be shocked if you’re on a putting green on a cloudless Arizona day and you see some sort of rattlesnake lazing in the sun.
Arizona’s list is downright intimidating to those folks who get all twitchy around snakes, especially the ones that can hurt you.
Here we go: Arizona black rattlesnake, ridge-nosed rattlesnake, Colorado desert sidewinder, banded rock rattlesnake, Grand Canyon rattlesnake, desert massasauga, Great Basin rattlesnake, Hopi rattlesnake, Mojave rattlesnake, Mojave desert sidewinder, northern black-tailed rattlesnake, prairie rattlesnake, Sonoran Coral Snake, Sonoran desert sidewinder, tiger rattlesnake, southwestern speckled rattlesnake, western twin spotted rattlesnake and western diamondback rattlesnake.
Sidewinders?
Scary looking and they can go 18 miles an hour with that unusual side slither.
Venomous snakes can be anywhere. They aren’t so picky about where they live.
Take copperheads, for example. They like wooded, rocky areas and they like your backyard suburban oasis, AZ Animals website says.
Identify them because of the copper-colored heads and hourglass-shaped banding patterns on their bodies. They are the snake most likely to bite you.
The Centers for Disease Control reports that 7,000 to 8,000 people are bitten by venomous snakes in the United States each yet. Five die on average.
The last death in Arizona was 2007 when someone out for a walk was bitten by a Mojave rattlesnake.
People who have been bitten can suffer long-term injury such as losing a finger or even eyesight.
North Carolina has the most snake bites a year with 157.8 snake encounters per million inhabitants, according to the World Animal Foundation. The national average is 30 bites per million.
There are 700 types of poisonous snakes in the world and 30 live in the United States, according to AnimalsAroundTheGlobe.
A few states have poisonous snakes. Hawaii, Maine, Rhode Island, and Alaska have no native species of venomous snake.
