>>Welcome.
>>
>>Sue I'd say that this site is pretty friendly. The on-line herp world is definitely a mixed bag and you never know who'll show up but this site has a pretty mellow group. The censors keep it from getting too heated. It's nice to have folks from all over. And some of my favorite ratsnakes are from Europe (I picked up a pair of german longissima a few years back). Feel free to chime in whenever you like. Haven't seen too many of the gals writing in lately but there are a few with some excellent ratsnakes.
>>
>>Best regards
>>John

John there was no way I was implying it not to be a friendly forum far from it, you guys are great

Thankyou for sharing your photo's they are brilliant, have you found them easy to rear ?

I kept longissimus a few years back for a while, but never had any luck with breeding them, the female would always produce infertile eggs, but I do have a story to share about them which might be of interest and that is about a population of these in Wales in the UK.

During the mid sixties at the Welsh Mountain Zoo , a gravid female escaped into the grounds of the zoo (or another story says a group of these escaped) In the early seventies hatchlings were spotted in the zoo grounds at first they were assumed to be our native grass snake because of the yellow collar on there neck, but were positively ID'd as Aescalapians. Over the next 30 years more have been spotted both adult and young. So it seems we have a thriving population here, they have also been observed outside of the zoo grounds.
There was a study under taken lead by Wolfgang Wuster of Bangor University (I believe the paper is available on his website).

Another paper you might find interesting asuming you havn't already read it is:
Action Plan for the Conservation of the Aesculapian Snake(Zamenis longissimus) in Europe

http://www.coe.int/t/e/cultural_co-operation/environment/nature_and_biological_diversity/nature_protection/sc26_inf19_en.pdf

Thanks for your warm welcome
Sue x
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The Ratsnake Foundation Online Society

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