KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Visitors at Zoo Knoxville can see a King Cobra crawling around in a large enclosure. They can see gorillas and chimpanzees swinging between branches. They can see bears and owls and many other animals.
Sometimes, visitors may also see gray ratsnakes slithering around the park. The harmless snake can also be found in lawns and shrubs across East Tennessee, searching for its next rodent meal in many backyards. While many Zoo Knoxville visitors may shy away from roaming snakes, the zoo said it is working to better understand them.
It's working on a new program that involves tracking wild snakes across the zoo. By learning more about their behavior in urban environments and how gray ratsnakes travel, the zoo said it hopes to learn more about how it can better share its space with slithering friends.
"Our zoo, like any city park does, has an abundance of gray ratsnakes," said Phil Colclough on social media, the zoo's director of animal care, education and conservation. "They take care of rodents, and they're really good to have around for that reason."
He said the zoo put four radio transmitters in gray ratsnakes to watch how the population changes. If the population decreases, he said the zoo can work to help the snakes do a little better.
"We've asked all staff throughout the zoo, whenever they find a gray ratsnake on the pathways, to radio our education department. The education department will come down, see if the zoo is suitable for implantation and if it is, and it meets our criteria, then we will collect that snake and give it to our veterinary team," he said.
He said the radio transmitters are implanted inside the snakes, and teams will take note of where snakes are released after the procedure. Then, the teams track them to see where they go. The team will look at the patterns of where snakes go.
"We're here to give people an appreciation of nature," Colclough said. "Not just our animals under human care here at the zoo, but animals that occur in our backyards."
The gray ratsnake is mostly colored black, with white specks between its scales and a light-colored throat. The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency said it is one of the most abundant snakes in the state, and are frequently found in places where people live. It is not venomous and is also referred to as the "chicken snake."
The gray ratsnake also resembles the Eastern Black Kingsnake and the North American Racer, the TWRA said. Neither snake is venomous either, and both can be found in East Tennessee.