Overview
The Southern Hognose Snake (Heterodon simus) is the charming, sharply upturned-nosed fossorial marvel of the southeastern American sandhills. The smallest and rarest of the North American hognose snakes, this stout, harmless colubrid is specialized for life in the deep, sugar-sand soils of longleaf pine forests. Famous for its sharply pointed, spade-like rostral scale used to dig for buried spadefoot toads and an elaborate, theatrical defensive performance that includes hissing, neck-spreading, and dramatically playing dead, it is a treasured icon of fire-maintained southern ecosystems.
Biology and Physical Characteristics
Heterodon simus is a compact, heavy-bodied snake with heavily keeled scales that give it a rough, matte texture. Its coloration is a handsome camouflage of pale greyish-tan, light brown, or straw-yellow, patterned with twenty to thirty dark brown to charcoal dorsal blotches alternating with smaller lateral spots. Its distinguishing anatomical hallmark is its sharply upturned, pointed snout: its rostral scale is strongly elevated and sharply keeled, curving backward much more steeply than in the Eastern Hognose Snake. Its eyes are large with round pupils, and its mouth features enlarged, rear-facing maxillary teeth used to puncture and deflate inflated toads.
Behavior and Ecology
Diurnal and fossorial, the Southern Hognose Snake uses its sharp snout like a miniature bulldozer, burrowing with ease through loose, sandy soils to unearth buried spadefoot toads. When confronted by a predator, it mounts one of the animal kingdom’s greatest theatrical performances: first, it flattens its head and neck into a miniature cobra-like hood, puffing up its body and hissing loudly while striking with its mouth closed. If this bluff fails, it rolls onto its back, thrashes violently, hangs its limp tongue out in the sand, and feigns death. If flipped upright by a person, it promptly rolls back onto its back, insisting that it is dead.
Conservation and Human Impact
The Southern Hognose Snake is classified as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Historically widespread across the southeastern coastal plain, it has suffered catastrophic declines of over fifty percent due to the widespread destruction and fire-suppression of longleaf pine sandhills, conversion of sandy habitats to pine plantations and agriculture, vehicular road mortality, and predation by invasive red imported fire ants. It is legally protected across its range, with remnant strongholds in the Ocala National Forest in Florida and Sandhills Game Land in North Carolina.
Interesting Factoid
If playing dead doesn’t convince you it is gone, the Southern Hognose Snake will dramatically roll right back onto its back if you try to flip it over, insisting that ‘real’ dead snakes only lie belly-up!