Many of Powder Valley Conservation Nature Center’s 80,000 annual visitors may be surprised to know they are walking among Missouri’s most common venomous reptile on the trails: the copperhead snake.
“I think it's wonderful that … there's little taste of wild within [St. Louis] suburbia where you can hike amongst venomous snakes,” said University of Health Sciences and Pharmacy in St. Louis researcher Ben Jellen. “The odds of you seeing them are infinitesimally small, but it adds a little bit of mystique. It's like the possibility of seeing Bigfoot.”
Despite their commonality, scientists have uncovered surprisingly little about the species — until now. The results of Jellen’s six-year study on copperheads at Powder Valley lend new insight into their population size, how they survive the extreme heat and cold, and their movement throughout the oak-hickory forest.
“We found that the snakes would use the power line corridors for movement; they would treat it as edge habitat. That's really important for the species because they'll hibernate in these rocky outcrops, but they need open, grassy areas for an abundance of rodents for their main prey,” he said. “We [also] found they avoided roads and streams at all costs.”
Jellen was also interested to discover that copperheads are not at the top of the food chain.
“I didn't expect them to be prey for so many other animals that were out there,” he said. “They are food for owls, hawks and coyotes. The babies are food for moles that burrow up underneath them.”
Because of their place in the middle of the food web, he added, copperheads are unlikely to use their venom as a defense mechanism.
“Snakes are not aggressive. I've been doing this for 20-odd years, with a number of different species, and particularly the venomous snakes — they always rely on their camouflage,” Jellen said. “I can't tell you how many times that we've had a radio transmitter in a snake and we're trying to locate it, and we are within a two-foot area — I know the snake is within two feet of me, and I still can't see it — but it also gives absolutely no indication that it's there.”
For those fortunate enough to spot a copperhead in the wild, Jellen shared some advice.
“Just take a wide berth; walk around them,” he said. “[If] there's a log in front of you, step on the log and then well over to the other side. Don't just step right on the other side of the log — you may step on something that's trying to hide.”
For more information on Ben Jellen’s research — including a project with the potential to revolutionize ways to curb invasive species like Burmese pythons, brown tree snakes, and black and white tegus — listen to St. Louis on the Air on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or click the play button below.
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