Red Coffee Snake or Redbacked Coffee Snake

The red coffee snake is found as far North as Mexico and South as Costa Rica. It lives under leaf litter and eats slugs, snails and other mollusks. It’s main predators are coral snakes. It can be found in agricultural areas, humid lowland forests and dry savannas, primary and secondary forests alike.

We had previously mis-identified this as a baby mussurana because they look very similar. It was not until a professional herpetologist verified that this was indeed a red coffee snake that we knew for sure.

The snake pictured was found on our farm (2013) at approximately 50 meters above sea level during the day even though the book says that this snake is nocturnal. This snake appears much more pink than other pictures we’ve seen of it online.