Here in the US we have only 2 categories of poisonous snake--pit vipers and coral snakes.
The former have many varieties, all of which have very similar head-shapes, keeled scales (unlike almost all our harmless snakes except hog-nosed), IR pits on their faces between their eyes and noses, and most of which have rattles on their tails. They have cytotoxic venom delivered from hollow fangs near the front of the mouth that tends to be locally destructive to tissue and thus results in crippling injury, but rarely kills people. In addition, most bites are dry, so on a yearly basis few people die.
The latter are brightly-colored relatives of the cobra and have two species with very limited ranges, along the Arizona/California border, and in Florida. They are small snakes topping out at about 2 feet long, with grooved posterior fangs and neuro-toxic venom that causes less local tissue damage than the pit-vipers, but is more likely to kill you if you are dosed with it. However the small size of the snake and posterior fangs mean most of these bites also fail to inject venom.
If you know this much, you can easily avoid the dangerously poisonous native snakes in the US (there are a couple with venom about as dangerous as a honeybee sting). If its not one of these few toxic snakes, then it's non-toxic. But it could still be a nasty, bacteria-mouthed biter, so best to admire without touching.
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Here in the US we have only 2 categories of poisonous snake--pit vipers and coral snakes.
The former have many varieties, all of which have very similar head-shapes, keeled scales (unlike almost all our harmless snakes except hog-nosed), IR pits on their faces between their eyes and noses, and most of which have rattles on their tails. They have cytotoxic venom delivered from hollow fangs near the front of the mouth that tends to be locally destructive to tissue and thus results in crippling injury, but rarely kills people. In addition, most bites are dry, so on a yearly basis few people die.
The latter are brightly-colored relatives of the cobra and have two species with very limited ranges, along the Arizona/California border, and in Florida. They are small snakes topping out at about 2 feet long, with grooved posterior fangs and neuro-toxic venom that causes less local tissue damage than the pit-vipers, but is more likely to kill you if you are dosed with it. However the small size of the snake and posterior fangs mean most of these bites also fail to inject venom.
If you know this much, you can easily avoid the dangerously poisonous native snakes in the US (there are a couple with venom about as dangerous as a honeybee sting). If its not one of these few toxic snakes, then it's non-toxic. But it could still be a nasty, bacteria-mouthed biter, so best to admire without touching.