Snake near drowning: the first hour and the pneumonia that follows

Quick answer

A snake pulled from water needs warmth, stillness and a vet. Almost everything else people do in the first ten minutes makes the outcome worse.

A snake found submerged and motionless is not necessarily dead. Reptiles tolerate a loss of oxygen far better than mammals do, and snakes have recovered after periods that would have killed a dog outright.

The immediate danger is drowning. The danger that actually kills most of these animals arrives one to three days later, as pneumonia in a lung that cannot cough anything out.

• Lift the whole body out, support it along its length, and let water drain from the mouth with the head tipped gently down. Do not swing, shake or squeeze the snake.
• Never blow into a snake's mouth. It has no diaphragm and effectively one lung, and forced air can rupture it.
• Warm the snake gradually towards the top of its normal preferred range. A cold snake cannot mount an immune response.
• Go to a reptile vet the same day even if the snake looks completely recovered. Looking fine at hour three means nothing.
• Do not conclude a snake is dead in the first minutes, and never freeze or bury an animal that a vet has not confirmed dead.

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Do not attempt mouth to mouth or any forced ventilation on a snake.

A snake has no diaphragm. It breathes by moving its ribs, and most species have one functional lung, part of which is a thin walled air sac with almost no blood supply. Human lung pressures rupture that sac. If assisted ventilation is needed it is done by a vet, through a correctly sized tube, at very low pressure, with the glottis visualised. There is no safe home version.
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Decide in 60 seconds

Why a snake drowns when it looks like it should not

Almost every snake can swim. Very few can climb out of a smooth sided container.

That gap is where these accidents live. A snake in a bath, a sink, a plastic tub, a bucket or a swimming pool can keep its head up for a long time, but it has no way to leave, and it fails when it becomes exhausted, chilled or panicked.

The situations that produce the cases are consistent.

Unsupervised soaking. An owner puts a snake in a bath or tub to help a difficult shed, gets distracted, and returns to a snake that has run out of strength. This is the single most common origin.

Water bowls with a trap in them. A large heavy bowl is a good thing, but a snake that wedges itself between a bowl and a piece of decor, or gets pinned under a bowl it has tipped, cannot lift its head clear.

Escapes. A loose snake finds a toilet, a garden pond, a water butt, an aquarium or a bucket left in a utility room.

Flooding. A tipped bowl in a deep sided tub with no drainage, particularly with a small snake or a hatchling.

An animal that was already ill. A snake with a respiratory infection often soaks more, and a snake with neurological disease may have lost the righting reflex it needs to keep its head up. In these cases the drowning is a symptom of something that was already wrong, and the underlying disease has to be found.

Hatchlings and small snakes drown in far less water than owners expect, and they lose heat fast, which compounds everything.

What is happening inside the lung

The glottis is the small breathing opening on the floor of the mouth. In a healthy snake the tissue around it is pale pink and dry. Frothy fluid, bubbles or a dark red colour after a water accident are all significant. Do not force a snake's mouth open at home unless a vet has shown you how.

A snake's respiratory system is built around one long lung running back from the trachea. The front portion is vascular and does the gas exchange. The rear portion is a thin walled air sac that stores air and does very little else.

Water that reaches the vascular portion interferes with gas exchange directly. Water that reaches the air sac simply sits there, because there is no ciliary escalator strong enough and no cough to expel it.

Freshwater is not neutral. It is hypotonic relative to the tissue, so it draws fluid across membranes and disrupts the surfactant layer that keeps the lung open. That damage continues after the snake is out of the water, which is exactly why the animal that looks fine at hour two can be in trouble at hour thirty.

Then there is what was in the water. Bath water carries soap residue. Pool water carries chlorine. Pond and tank water carry bacteria, including the organisms that cause aggressive reptile pneumonias. Each of these adds a second injury on top of the first.

The last piece is temperature. A snake is an ectotherm, and its immune response only works properly at its species-appropriate body temperature. A chilled snake with contaminated water in its lung is defenceless in a way that a mammal in the same situation is not.

The first hour, step by step

Have the carrier, towels and a heat source ready before you handle the snake. Fumbling for a box while holding a wet, obtunded animal costs minutes you do not have.

1. Get it out, supporting the whole body.

Lift with both hands, or with as many hands as the snake's length requires. A limp snake has no muscle tone to protect its spine, and a large constrictor lifted by two points can be injured by its own weight.

2. Let the water drain passively.

Hold the snake with the head lower than the body for a short period and let fluid run out of the mouth and nostrils under gravity. Support the body along its length while you do it.

Do not swing the snake, do not shake it, and do not whip it downwards. These manoeuvres are still recommended in old advice and they cause spinal and rib injuries without clearing the lung, because the lung runs most of the body's length and gravity alone will not empty it.

3. Do not squeeze or "milk" the body.

Compressing a snake's body compresses the lung and the internal organs against a rigid rib cage. It can force fluid deeper rather than out.

4. Dry it and get it warm, slowly.

Blot with a towel. Then place it in a clean, dry, escape-proof container with a towel and bring it up towards the warm end of its normal preferred range.

Gradually is the key word. Use ambient warmth, a room heater, or a heat mat with a thermostat under one end of the container, never a heat lamp close to the animal and never hot water. A snake that is barely conscious cannot move away from a heat source, and thermal burns from exactly this mistake are common and severe.

5. Position the head slightly higher once draining has stopped.

Once no more fluid is coming out, let the snake rest with the front third of its body slightly elevated so remaining fluid is less likely to track deeper into the lung.

6. Keep it quiet and dark.

Handling, light and noise all cost the animal energy it needs elsewhere. Check on it, do not keep picking it up.

7. Call a reptile vet now.

Do this while the snake is warming, not after. The treatments that make a difference to aspiration pneumonia work best before the pneumonia is established.

The 72 hours that decide the outcome

Minute zero to thirty: the acute phase.

The snake may be completely limp, with no righting reflex, no tongue flicking and no visible breathing. Breathing in a snake is subtle at the best of times, and in a hypothermic one it can be almost undetectable.

This is the period in which people wrongly conclude the animal is dead. Reptile metabolism at low temperature is extraordinarily slow, and the tolerance for oxygen deprivation is measured in a completely different unit from a mammal's. Warm it and give it time.

Thirty minutes to six hours: early recovery.

Signs that the animal is coming back, in roughly this order: muscle tone returns, then movement of the front of the body, then tongue flicking, then a righting reflex, then normal breathing with visible rib movement.

A snake that is tongue flicking and can right itself has passed the immediate survival hurdle. It has not passed the pneumonia hurdle.

Six to forty eight hours: the quiet window.

This is the dangerous phase, because the snake often looks normal. Owners cancel appointments here. The lung injury is progressing chemically while the animal appears to be recovering.

Twenty four hours to one week: pneumonia.

Watch for open mouth breathing, gaping, a stretched or elevated neck with each breath, a soft click, wheeze or pop on breathing, bubbles or mucus at the nostrils or in the mouth, refusal to eat, and lethargy that is deeper than post-event tiredness.

Snakes are normally silent. Any sound associated with breathing is abnormal and is an emergency after a water accident.

Severe cases can also show late neurological signs from the period of low oxygen, including a loss of coordination or an inability to right itself that appears days later.

Look-alikes, and what is not an emergency

Normal soaking. Snakes get into their water bowls deliberately. Common reasons are an approaching shed, an enclosure that is too warm or too dry, and mites. A snake sitting in the bowl with its head up, alert and flicking its tongue is behaving normally, though the reason it is doing it deserves a look at your temperatures and humidity.

A cold, torpid snake. A snake found in cold water may be profoundly slowed rather than drowned. It looks similar in the first minutes. Warming distinguishes them, which is another reason not to make a decision about death early.

Regurgitation and aspiration of prey. A snake that has regurgitated and inhaled material shows the same delayed pneumonia picture without ever having been in water. The history separates them.

Neurological disease that caused the accident. Stargazing, a lost righting reflex or poor coordination before the incident points at a primary neurological problem. Say so to the vet, because it changes the investigation entirely.

What changes by species, size and situation

Heavy bodied pythons and boas are competent but not agile swimmers, and they tire in a smooth container. They are over-represented in unsupervised soak accidents because they are the species most often soaked for shedding help.

Agile colubrids such as corn snakes and kingsnakes are more likely to reach water by escaping. Ponds, toilets and aquariums are the usual endpoints, and the delay before discovery is usually longer.

Semi-aquatic species such as garter and water snakes swim well. When one of these drowns it is almost always because it was trapped, and you should look for the trap before you put the enclosure back together.

Hatchlings and small snakes have a very low thermal mass. They chill within minutes and their reserves are small. Warming has to be prompt but is also easier to overdo.

Large constrictors create a handling problem of their own. If you keep an animal you cannot lift alone, work out in advance who else can help and keep a container large enough to hold it.

A snake in shed has clouded spectacles and impaired vision, soaks more, and is generally less coordinated. Shedding is the period in which most of these accidents happen.

Cold seasons make it worse in two ways: water in an unheated room is colder, and a room that runs cool means the snake is already at the lower end of its range before it goes in.

What the vet will want to know

The history is what shapes the treatment plan here, more than the physical examination.

Preventing the next one

A good water bowl is heavy, stable and shallow enough that the snake can rest on the bottom with its head clear, and it sits where a tipped bowl will not flood the enclosure.

Never leave a snake in a soak unattended, not for a minute. If a soak is genuinely needed, the water should be shallow enough that the snake can rest its body on the bottom with the head above the surface without swimming, and you stay in the room.

Choose a water bowl the snake can climb into and out of, heavy enough not to tip, and positioned away from the heat source so evaporation does not spike humidity in the wrong place.

Check for traps every time you rearrange the enclosure. Gaps between a bowl and a rock, a hide or the glass are where snakes wedge themselves.

Treat escape prevention as drowning prevention. A loose snake in a house has access to water it cannot get out of.

If your snake is soaking far more than usual, investigate rather than accommodate it. Persistent soaking points at heat, humidity, mites or illness, and the underlying problem is what puts the animal at risk.

What never to do

Do not swing, shake or spin a snake to clear water. It causes spinal and rib injury and it does not empty a lung that runs the length of the body.

Do not blow into the mouth or use any device to force air in.

Do not put a chilled snake into hot water or under a close heat lamp. Rapid rewarming and contact burns are both real, and an obtunded snake cannot move away.

Do not offer food. A snake recovering from a hypoxic event and a lung injury should not be digesting a meal, and regurgitation risks a second aspiration.

Do not force water into the mouth for hydration.

Do not give any human medication, including decongestants, and do not use essential oils, steam or vapour rubs near a reptile. Aromatic compounds are directly damaging to a reptile respiratory tract.

Do not decide the snake is dead and dispose of the body in the first hour. Warm it, wait, and let a vet confirm.

When to get help

Contact a reptile-experienced vet immediately, on the same day, for any snake that has been submerged and become limp, unresponsive, or has had water come out of its mouth or nostrils. Treat this as an emergency even if the snake recovers in front of you.

Go back urgently at any point in the following week for open mouth breathing, gaping, a stretched neck with each breath, any clicking or wheezing sound, bubbles or mucus at the nostrils, or a snake that will not eat and stays lethargic.

While you are arranging the appointment, keep the snake dry, quiet, dark and at the warm end of its normal range, and leave the handling until the vet asks for it. Take a photograph or short video of the breathing before you leave, because a snake in a consulting room often breathes differently from a snake at home.