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I never answered this question when I first saw it. This is hard to explain, from my experience. First, I believe, any "aggressive" animal, reptile or not, but especially reptiles, are either scared, or hungry, and you have been identified as a possible food source. Snakes don't have a whole lot in the middle. Different species have different ways of displaying fear, but if they feel cornered, they pretty much have three options, either puff up/hiss, try to hide, or strike. If you work with any particular species for awhile, you can get to know it's mannerisms. And if you are the type to be attuned to animal behaviors, it becomes pretty obvious quickly. For example, a scared carpet python will strike, sometimes relentlessly. A scared ball python, by contrast, will try to ball/curl up, and hide. A scared hognose/bull snake will puff up and hiss adamantly, then play dead. So those are completely different ways to show the exact same "emotion" in different snakes.
In different individual animals, I can tell their "mood" just by body language and how they hold their body. It's hard to explain without examples, but, people say that a snake is going to strike if it is coiled in an "S" position. This is certainly true, as this coil is how they set up to project forward. But, plenty of calm snakes can end up in same position, because, well, if that is your body shape, you end up in that position no matter your mood, lol. It has to do with the amount of tension in the body and muscles.
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