Coral Groundsnake
Tierrera coral
(Atractus elaps)

Harmless

That's what I was hoping but then I read there were 60 different types of the coral and saw some that looked like this. Thanks for responding.

I thought all corals have red next to yellow but this does not?

The venomous one in the USA does ... "red with yellow, kill a fellow" is the rhyme.

This is a "coral groundsnake" not a relative of the venomous ones.

I wouldn’t trust any color pattern from the USA to hold true anywhere else - I looked up snakes of Ecuador (and you have a lot of them!)

Yes indeed we have a lot of them. This snake picture doesn't really give the true color. Is has the most beautiful orange instead of red. One of the builders killed it. The second picture is when it was dead for 24 hours. My vet is looking into what it is as well. thanks for everyone's input.

This is not a "coralsnake" in that it is not a venomous elapid snake like our US "Coralsnakes".

The red next to yellow "rule"

1. only works in the US, except that it only works some of the time in some areas of the US. Some harmless snakes are red/yellow/black and have the red-against -yellow patterns.

2. only works some of the time in the US. Coralsnakes, like all other living species, are variable. I have seen coralsnakes that were almost solid black, had no black pigment at all, or had no yellow bands at all.

Color is only reliable for identification if you don't mind being wrong some of the time, and in that case what's the point of the rule?