Corn Snake Size Comparison: Just How Big Do They Get?

Corn snakes are southeastern United States natives. Their easy-going temperament, easy care requirements, and beautiful colors make them popular snake pets worldwide. Corn snakes almost never need to eat anything bigger than a mouse and have no venom.

But have you ever wondered just how big a corn snake gets, or what it looks like compared to reticulated python or a person?

Where do Corn Snakes Live?

Wild corn snakes live across the southeastern United States from New Jersey to the Florida Keys and westward to Mississippi and Louisiana. They’re often called the American corn snake because in Australia and a few other countries, escapees from captivity have established breeding populations and begun wreaking havoc.

They’re also called red rat snakes and are just as adaptable and great at climbing as other rat snakes. They can live in the forests and grasslands just as easily as they can live in barns, garages, and near grain silos — they only need food and shelter.

What Do Corn Snakes Look Like?

These snakes are long and slender with an orange or brown base color. Wild corn snakes usually have black-outlined dark red blotches on their backs and belly blotches that look somewhat like maize. Some people believe this is where their common name originated, but others think it’s because they were always hanging out near the grain silos eating rodents. No one knows for sure.

Corn snakes have small narrow heads with spear tip markings on their heads and round pupils, but people sometimes confuse them for venomous copperhead snakes. It’s understandable, given how similar their patterns can look from a distance. However, corn snakes are long and thin whereas copperheads are a bit chunkier and shorter. In addition, copperheads have hourglass markings that look like chocolate kisses from the sides — corn snake’s blotches aren’t that distinctive.

Types

Corn snakes are members of the Pantherophis genus — the same genus you’ll find black, western, and great plains ratsnakes. These snakes get into all sorts of predicaments and people find them in the oddest places like climbing up vertical walls or hanging from porch lights.

In the pet world, there are dozens of color morphs — including albino, striped, lavender, anerythristic, motley, and more. However, the color morphs aren’t different species. They’re color gene mutations that can be passed genetically.

Size

Corn snakes can get pretty long, but not as long as you think. It’s their thin bodies make them look really long.

A really big corn snake can reach six feet long, but you’d never know it unless you stretched it out and measured from nose to tail. But most will never get longer than five feet and only weigh one or two pounds.

Diet

All snakes are carnivores. This is true whether they eat insects, mammals, or other snakes — corn snakes are no different. The only greens they get are in the stomach of their prey.

Corn snakes eat lots of rodents. Mice, rats, baby squirrels — they’re not picky. Because they can climb so well, they’re often up in the trees (or garage rafters), hunting baby birds, and even eating lizards and frogs.

Size Comparison: Corn Snake vs. Human

These snakes aren’t very big. Compared to some snakes, they’re downright delicate. Corn snakes, for all their length, strength, and agility, are long and lean. They may only measure as big around as your garden hose!

So, comparing a long thin snake like that to a person seems a little silly, doesn’t it?

Yet, we’re going to do it!

If you stretched the very biggest corn snake you could find out in a straight line, it would only barely be longer than the average human male in the U.S. — which, in case you were wondering, is five feet, nine inches. The very biggest corn snake ever recorded was a whopping six feet, two inches long.

While that sounds huge, remember that they only weigh about two pounds, or maybe two and a half — if you found that six-footer. They average about three to five feet long as adults and could easily coil around an adult’s arm and probably have room to spare.

Size Comparison: Corn Snake vs. Garden Hose

Aside from color, corn snakes are built similarly to a garden hose: long and thin. Of course, the garden hose is likely quite a bit longer than a corn snake, but the thickness is similar.

If it were dark and you reached down to pick up a garden hose, a corn snake would be about the same thickness. However, the moment you picked it up, it’s likely to react. Perhaps violently, but perhaps not. Fortunately, even the worst corn snake bite is harmless!

Size Comparison: Corn Snake vs. Ball Python

Another popular pet snake, the ball python seemed like a reasonable comparison. Even if it was a really big ball python, it probably wouldn’t hit six feet, but ball pythons are a whole lot thicker! Even a six-foot-long corn snake would still only be about half as big around as that really big ball python.

The photo featured at the top of this post is © iStock.com/praisaeng