Ever heard a snake ‘bark?’ You can hear angry reptile’s weird sound in Arizona video

Snakes don’t need to do much to intimidate people, but a video recorded outside a Mesa, Arizona, home caught one “barking” and it’s undeniably creepy.

The raspy, guttural sound is heard more than a half-dozen times as the 2-foot snake whips its open jaws at the camera and at the woman who dared to grab it.

“He’s probably going to bite me,” snake catcher Marissa Maki of Rattlesnake Solutions says in the video. “Don’t bite me. Don’t ... do ... it.”

The angry Sonoran gopher snake continues to “bark” and lunge as Maki edges it towards a waiting bucket, and she somehow gets it inside without being bitten. Maki says it’s the first time she’s heard such a sound on one of her calls.

Rattlesnake Solutions, a snake removal company, shared the 97-second video March 30 on Facebook, where commenters labeled the snake everything from “foul mouth” to “ferocious.”

A resident of the home called the company March 5 for help after she mistook the hiding reptile for a venomous rattlesnake. The woman is also in the video (standing far, far away), and she is clearly taken aback when the snake starts “making noises.”

“The sound you hear is air forced through the throat of the snake, creating a voice intended to intimidate a perceived threat,” Rattlesnake Solutions reported on Facebook. “Gopher snakes are not venomous, and a bite from a snake of this size would result in little more than scratches.”

The species can grow up to 7 feet and they are described as “sometimes pugnacious” by the Tucson Herpetological Society. “These snakes will exhibit gaping behavior, and are capable of exuding explosive hissing upon the approach of any would-be predator,” the society says.

Rattlesnake Solutions owner Bryan D. Hughes told McClatchy News the “barking” heard in the video is not typical of the species.

“More often, they hiss and rasp loudly,” Hughes said. “So this is what it sounds like when they are also striking at the same time. They won’t actually sit there and ‘bark’ at a predator, but this is something that happens.”

The gopher snake in the video was taken by Maki to a secluded area and released unharmed back into the wild, the video shows.

Rattlesnake Solutions offers to help identify snakes at rattlesnakesolutions.com/snake-information.

This story was originally published April 1, 2021 at 5:04 PM with the headline "Ever heard a snake ‘bark?’ You can hear angry reptile’s weird sound in Arizona video."