Note the similarities such as the narrow pointed head of mole and pine snakes that is designed for plowing through subsurface burrows. This is a young adult mole snake.
They’re a half a world apart but the similarities between the African Mole Snake, Pseudaspis cana, and the American Pine Snakes, Pituophis melanoleucus ssp. are rather remarkable. Do not mistake the mole snake of this article for our various Mole Kingsnakes. The two are very different. If you have been fortunate enough to work with both African Mole and American Pine snakes you’ll know immediately what I’m talking about.

Both are small-headed, strong-jawed, powerful constrictors that spend a goodly amount of time pursuing rodents in their subsurface burrows. Our gopher and pine snake pursue pocket gophers and the mole snakes pursue mole rats and other rodents. The two differ in scalation, with the scales of the pine snakes being keeled and with the mole snake usually (but not always) having smooth scales. A length of 6 feet is not unusual for them and anecdotal accounts of even greater lengths are often heard.

Mole snake hatchlings and juveniles are straw colored and strongly patterned with dark alternating dorsal and lateral bars. The markings fade with age and adults vary from an almost uniform light olive to dark olive-brown in color. Hatchlings of the American pine snake may be paler than the adults. This snake varies in color by subspecies with the northern subspecies (P. m. melanoleucus) being the most strongly patterned in chocolates, black, and white. The Florida subspecies, P. m. mugitus, is the palest (sometimes almost a uniform straw tan), and as indicated by its common name the Alabama/Mississippi subspecies the Black Pine, P. m. lodingi, is the darkest.

Mole and Pine snakes also differ in reproductive modes. The mole snake bears large litters (usually between 20 and 90) of live young. The Pines produce small clutches (often only 3 to 8) of large eggs.

Both species are tough and they know it. And they’re not at all reluctant to pass that knowledge on. If unduly disturbed both hiss loudly, assume a striking “S,” and lunge at the intruder. But both do tame and some make excellent pets.