[masraum]

Originally Posted by T77911S

red and yellow kill a fellow
red and black safe for jack.

i always look at the head.
triangle is bad. or i call them the ugly head.

You've got to be careful with that red/yellow/black rhyme. It's an OK guideline, but not something that you should rely on 100%.

Snakes can have some pretty extreme variations in their patterns and coloring. Most of the time they look similar, but sometimes you can have huge variation of pattern. It looks like that's what you've got here.

For instance, all of the snakes below are venomous coral snakes that are supposed to match the rhyme, but because of genetic variation, they don't.

Originally Posted by masraum

Here's a Texas Coral snake (melanistic)


This is also a Texas Coral snake (albino)


This is also a Texas Coral snake (anerythristic)


Here's an Eastern Coral snake from south Florida


Here's another Eastern Coral snake with an aberrant pattern

This is a Texas Coral snake with normal coloration. It's the same species as the first 3 pics above.


And this is an Eastern Coral Snake with normal coloration which is the same species as the last 2 photos above.


Certainly (in the US) if you see red and yellow touching, that's a clue to leave the snake alone. But what if it's one of the snakes that has unusual coloring?
https://ufwildlife.ifas.ufl.edu/snakes/coralsnake.shtml

Body is marked with wide bands that completely encircle the body. Red and black bands are separated by slightly narrower yellow bands; red bands often have black speckles. Think of the colors of a stoplight – if you see yellow bands touching red bands, stop! Snout is rounded and black, and a wide yellow band runs across the back of the head. Tail is ringed with black and yellow. Scales are smooth. It may be confused with the harmless Scarlet Kingsnake or Scarletsnake.

I think the "black, rounded nose" is a pretty solid rule (except for albinos!).
The head shape on coral snakes is very different from the crotalid (copperhead, rattlesnake, cottonmouth) heads.