Common Garter Snake
Overview
 
The Common Garter Snake (Thamnophis sirtalis) is a snake
Snake
Snakes are elongate, legless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes that can be distinguished from legless lizards by their lack of eyelids and external ears. Like all squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales...

 indigenous to North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

. Most garter snakes have a pattern of yellow stripes on a brown or green background and their average length is about 50 cm (19.7 in), maximum about 125 cm (49.2 in).
Current scientific classification recognizes thirteen subspecies
Subspecies
Subspecies in biological classification, is either a taxonomic rank subordinate to species, ora taxonomic unit in that rank . A subspecies cannot be recognized in isolation: a species will either be recognized as having no subspecies at all or two or more, never just one...

 (ordered by date):
  • T. s. sirtalis (Linnaeus, 1758) – Eastern Garter Snake
  • T.
 
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