Herps of Iowa: Multiple Choice

Common garter snakes can be distinguished from plains garter snakes from their lack of thick vertical lip bars and side-stripe only one scale removed from their belly..

Timber rattlesnakes vary in color but often have jagged banding and a black tail.

Glass lizards are legless, while still retaining the external ears of most lizards.

Adult fox snakes have a coppery colored head.

Count the lines! Prairie skinks have 7 and plains skinks have none.

Western hognose snakes have a mostly black belly.

Redbelly snakes only have red... on their belly. It doesn't extend to their sides at all.

Ouachita map turtles have multiple yellow splotches on their face, unlike false map turtles which have only 1 behind the eye, or commons which have none.

As their name suggests, red-eared sliders have a red patch behind their eye.

Musk turtles have a rounded, tortoise-like shell with a small plastron. They also have yellow lines on towards the top of their head.

Box turtles are largely terrestrial, and have a hinged plastrons that covers their head when retracted.

Their "spines" are really more like bumpy nodules on the front of their carapace. They also have macaroni shaped nostrils!

Northerns have no white dot in their tympanum (ear) as well as no yellow on their thighs.

Pickerel frogs have yellow under their hindlegs but no white in their tympanums (ear).

Unlike the bullfrog, the ridge (dorsal lateral fold) over the green frog's tympanum (ear) extends down their body.

Spring peepers have a cross pattern on their backs. Unlike the parallel lines of the similar chorus frog.

Smallmouth's lack distinct spots and gills as adults.