A lot of animals are named after things they sometimes eat — anteaters eat ants, dung beetles feed on you-know-what. Then we have the milk snake , a vibrant type of North American serpent with no interest whatsoever in dairy products, despite its common name.

The Milk Snake Diet

"Like many snakes, milk snakes are generalist predators that eat just about anything they can catch and swallow," herpetologist Trevor Persons tells us in an email. "In general, younger, smaller milk snakes consume smaller prey such as lizards, while older, larger snakes primarily eat small mammals such as mice or voles."

Rodents like to take refuge in barns, capitalizing on the warmth and food they may provide. And where the furry critters go, their opportunistic eaters follow.

According to Persons, the name

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