This is the result of a Western Hognose bite.

A couple of my friends own a large collection of snakes and had taken in two badly abused Hognoses.

Both of the snakes were very underweight and in poor condition.

A couple of days later I was taking some photos of some of their snakes as they were going through the arduous task of cleaning, watering and feeding over 200 adult snakes.

One of the guys was talking to me as he partly pulled a box out of the racking and put his hand in to get the water dish.

Suddenly he pulled his hand back and had a Western Hognose hanging from it. It was a typical feeding response bite. The snake could smell the mice and rats thawing in the room and had mistaken his hand for food.

These pictures show the reaction 20 minutes after he was bitten. The swelling was much worse the next morning. His whole hand was swollen, the skin was stretched so tight that it looked like an inflated rubber glove. It took five days before the swelling was completely gone.

Quite a few people seem to be under the impression that the only way a Hognose could latch onto you is by catching you finger first. As you can see from the picture on the right, this simply isn’t the case.

What you are looking at is the mark left by the upper jaw, the lower jaw mark is between the thumb and first finger.

Anybody who has watched an adult Western Hognose feed will know that they have a very large gape. I didn’t write this page to put people off keeping them (I own a pair myself), it’s here to raise people’s awareness.

Up until this incident I, like everybody else I knew, was under the impression that Western Hognose bites were just like a bee sting and that the chances of it happening were extremely remote, that’s what all the books seemed to say.

They just pointed out that if a Western Hognose felt threatened it would bluff by striking out with it’s mouth closed.

They didn’t seem to think about the risk at feeding time. I’ve since read three different reports of Western Hognose bites, all of which were accidental feeding responses.

These snakes weren’t being aggressive, they simply made a mistake.

All of these bites could have been avoided if the owners had used a bit of common sense and used tongs when offering food.

For a bit more information on Western Hognose bites, click here.

For a graphic rundown of the results of another Western Hognose bite, click here.

Jim Lind