Ribbons snakes and garter snakes are one in the same. People just came up with the names ribbon and garter, to differentiate between the long skinny ones, and the short fat ones. this is why i dislike common names, and would rather use the only true, correct names, the scientific latin names. They are all the same genus, thamnophis, and all thamnophis are actually by the books, a rear fanged venomous animal. Don't let that scare you though, their venom is so incredibly mild that it won't do anything, unless you have some sort of allergy to it. They are all semi/heavily aquatic snakes that favor amphibians, fishes, earthworms, leeches, slugs, and snails as prey. I actually was priveledged to take a very good solid bite from a large female the other day and she dug in deep enough to get her rear fangs into me. You can very, very clearly see where they penetrated my skin, and the areas around those two teeth marks are swollen and tender, and my wrist aches a little. She held on for about 30 seconds chewing! If it's still as cool looking tomorrow I'll take a picture. You can literally see the entire tooth layout on my skin!!! Sure did bleed a lotAnyway, you can refer to a nice species list of thamnophis here!
http://www.thamnophis.com/caresheets...itle=Main_Page
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