>>Kudos to Shane and Don for some nice discussion of E. davidi and possible Korean locale. Now here's another asian rat that nobody ever gets to see, Elaphe bella. Schulz has it in his collection (I think) and has a small section on his website (see link).

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>>But that's about it. Utiger indicates that bella might be akin to Euprepiophis but doesn't have any data to prove it.

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>>This snake lives in Vietnam, extreme southcentral China and Myanmar (but it'll always be Burma to me!).

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>>In addition to being rare, inaccessible and unavailable it's a really pretty looking animal.

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>>So let's see if anyone can volunteer anything new about this one. I'll go on record as saying that if any educational or scientific entity provides me with E. bella, in deference to its special status, I promise to use a much higher quality sweater box as housing (definitely no sterilite, possibly a premium rubbermaid!).

>>.

>>K D Schulz' Bushmaster Ratsnake site



Hi



I believe that Frank Burbrink has done some work with this species and has a paper which proposes a new taxon for bella is in press



IN PRESS :- Burbrink, F.T., Lawson, R., How and when did Old World ratsnakes disperse into the New World?

Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution accepted (by Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution) 17 September 2006,



Available on line at www.sciencedirect.com & http://www.ratsnakefoundation.org (members content Feb 2007 reproduced with permission from the author)



The paper also proposes several other taxomic changes concerning 'ratsnakes' and is a very interesting read indeed.
The Ratsnake Foundation

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