Endangered NJ looks at the endangered and threatened wildlife, natural resources, historical preservation and environmental issues with a special focus on New Jersey. Body scales are keeled and the belly is pink or light brown with dark blotches along the sides. This flyer focuses only on southern snake species commonly confused with NJ’s venomous timber rattlesnake. Copperheads are very shy and secretive snakes, preferring to remain concealed within rock, coarse woody debris, leaf litter, or vegetation rather than venturing out into the open. Ernst, C.H. In: Snakes: Ecology and behavior. Courtship and mating typically take place in summer and early fall. Copperheads have a dark-colored pattern that forms hourglass-shaped bands from side to side, but coloration is highly variable among individuals and changes according to seasonal shedding periods. Of the 22 species of snakes found in New Jersey, only the timber rattlesnake and the northern copperhead are venomous, and each of these species is generally shy. When animal control officers realized it was a northern copperhead, they rushed to the scene to keep people back and to seize the animal before it slithered away. Neonates are only about the size of a green bean (Figure 5). The Northern copperhead is in New Jersey’s northern region. 0000009630 00000 n “No one in New Jersey has died from a snake bite in the past 100 years,” says Schantz. In New Jersey, copperheads are found mainly in the northern portion of the state in the New Jersey/New York border area in parts of Hunterdon, Mercer and Somerset Counties, and the Palisades in Bergen County. Pages. 0000001657 00000 n The dark brown, saddle-shaped crossbands are narrow on … They and the timber rattlesnake produce a toxin that travels the circulatory system and slowly digests tissues and organs. Its bite can cause extreme pain, nausea, and tissue damage. 0000009951 00000 n Copperheads are one of the pit vipers—the group of snakes that includes the cottonmouths and rattlesnakes—and have heat-sensing organs (or “pits”) located on the face between the eyes and nostrils. The dark brown, saddle-shaped crossbands are narrow on top and wide on the sides. It takes at least a year or two to recuperate enough energy reserves to reproduce again. The northern copperhead is one of two venomousspecies of snake found in New Jersey (the other being the timber rattlesnake). The Northern copperhead lives in North America and often lives in forests and places where there are a lot of trees. Copperheads are declining in New Jersey due to human persecution, road mortality, illegal collecting, and loss of suitable and connected habitats, resulting in their classification as a Species of Special Concern. 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