With baby snakes, you can gently press on the tail to expose the hemipenes if it is a male- but this is something that only an experienced person shold try, so check with your local snake enthusiast.. . The traditional and most effective way to determine the gender of a snake is to 'probe' it- using special tools, you slip them in the cloaca and see how far they go. Then you use a chart to compare the species and size of snake, and the distance the probe went to figure out the sex.