{"id":246013,"date":"2025-07-07T19:17:20","date_gmt":"2025-07-07T19:17:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/246013\/"},"modified":"2025-07-07T19:17:20","modified_gmt":"2025-07-07T19:17:20","slug":"uks-longest-snake-spotted-swimming-towards-shore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/246013\/","title":{"rendered":"UK’s longest snake spotted swimming towards shore"},"content":{"rendered":"

The UK’s largest snake has been spotted swimming towards the shore in a photo taken near Southampton.<\/p>\n

Daily Echo Camera Club member Kieran Borer snapped a photo as he joked that the snake was “cooling off in the water” during the ongoing heatwave.<\/p>\n

Despite long stretches of sun over recent weeks, Hampshire Wildlife Trust noted that the grass snake is more fond of wetland habitats, such as ponds or streams.<\/p>\n

The wildlife trust also said that the snakes hunt amphibians, fish, small mammals and birds.<\/p>\n

READ MORE:\u00a0<\/strong>Zoo reacts to devastating loss of beloved amur tiger during introduction to male<\/a><\/p>\n

It blends in with grass as it is usually greenish in colour, with a pale belly, a yellow and black collar, and dark markings on its side.<\/p>\n

Grass snakes have an impressive lifespan of around 15 to 25 years, but are often hunted by predators like badgers, domestic cats, hedgehogs, birds and red foxes.<\/p>\n

Hampshire Wildlife Trust did note that the snake does not bite and “are harmless to humans”.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson said: “When caught, grass snakes hiss and release a foul-smelling substance from their anal gland.<\/p>\n

“Although they may also strike with the head, they do not bite.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UK’s largest snake has been spotted swimming towards the shore in a photo taken near Southampton. Daily…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246014,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3847],"tags":[95513,95511,95512,70,31108,16,15,1717],"class_list":{"0":"post-246013","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-daily-echo-camera-club","9":"tag-grass-snake","10":"tag-hampshire-wildlife-trust","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-snake","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114813563336525302","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}