Based on its name alone, you may think of the North American racer (Coluber constrictor) as the black mamba of the New World. Turns out, you’d be quite incorrect!

With its top speed of 4 mph, the racer would be left in the dust of a mamba slithering 12.5 mph. This is scarcely faster than the average walking speed for a human.

With all that out of the way, what exactly is so special about the North American racer? Well, it’s a modest-sized snake, measuring around 20-65 inches (3 to 5 feet) long. They are found across the United States, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Coast, and their coloration can be black, blue-gray, or even olive brown, with a pale underbelly. North American racers don’t like dense forests and are usually found slithering through shortgrass prairies or open forest.

These serpents fulfill a very important role in nature: pest control! If you don’t like pesky rodents or bugs, then these are the creatures to have around.

They are natural born experts at catching a wide range of small animals that humanity often considers a nuisance in large numbers, like mice, squirrels, but also small cottontail rabbits, bird eggs and hatchlings, small turtles and even other snakes.

You may also have been fooled by the snake’s scientific species name, but unlike anacondas, boa constrictors, pythons, and other true constrictors, this snake does not kill its prey via constriction. Instead, it tosses a loop of its body over its prey to keep it steady while it is swallowed down whole.

In North Idaho, they are primarily active in the late spring and early autumn, during which it is especially important for them to fatten up for their overwinter hibernation, when it will be too cold for these reptiles to remain active. Late spring and early summer is the time most North American racers reproduce.

Offspring are born as 3-32 oval-shaped eggs that the mother snake deposits in an old, rotten log, an abandoned animal burrow, or perhaps even a crevice hidden among the sand or leaf litter. Mother racers do not care for their offspring. The eggs remain in the nesting spot until the babies hatch out in August or early September as 7.5- to 14-inch long replicas of their parents.

They’re not quite big enough to feed on the prey their parents would, so they instead settle for insects, helping humans by keeping down the number of these pesty critters. These guys are also known to tackle spiders, small mammals like shrews, smaller amphibians and reptiles and their eggs when they get the chance.

North American racers are not endangered, but some populations are at risk of habitat loss and insecticides, which poison their insect-eating offspring. Sometimes people needlessly assassinate these creatures for the simple reason that they dislike snakes.

Fortunately, snake conservationists are hard at work restoring suitable habitat for the racers and ensuring that they have safe places to live. By educating others about the important role these animals play as nature’s pest control, you can also help make sure racers have long, happy lives in the wild.

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Christian Ryan can be reached at animaladventures1314@gmail.com