if you don't have the ability to take them to a show and don't feel comfortable poping or probing, you could always go to a reptile vet (can be expensive though) or a pet shop (but that can be risky cause you don't really know how much the employee really knows). Size can be a good clue, but won't always be accurate, especially if your snakes are not full grown adults...how old, and how long are they? Keeping them together is probably not the best option, as most snakes are solitary animals and only group up in dens or during mating season. Since these two snakes are not generally aggresive, you might be alright. But they could become agressive towards each other, and if there's enough size difference, one could make a meal of the other. A simple solution could be to take a piece of cardboard and make a barrier right down the middle of the cage, splitting it into two. If they are male and female, these two are similar enough that they will probably breed without any problems. Are they captive breed, or wild caught? If wild caught, they probably won't breed if not put through the wintering phase...if captive breed, they might still require the seasonal change to induce breeding response, but also might not. Many consider them different species, but in reality they probably should be the same, just different subspecies or something. You can look up "corn snake" and probably find 3 or 4 different scientific names being used, so there's not much science being applied to that anyways! There are some on these forums that are strongly opposed to "hybrids", but don't let them deter you away from it if that's what you want to do...just make sure you make it clear that the babies are properly IDed ("common name" crossed with "common name"
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-David

Check out my pet pics at:
http://www.myspace.com/obx_fisherman

1.0 ball python (Pandora - don't ask)
1.0 argentine boa (Prometheus)
0.0.1 colombian boa (Athena)
0.1 hogg island boa (Andromeda)
0.0.1 brazilian rainbow boa (Inara)
1.0 Dumeril's boa (Hannibal)
1.0 kenyan sand boa (Diablo)
0.0.1 normal corn snake(Cypress)
0.1 amel. corn snake (Morgan LaFay) RIP
0.0.2 baby corns (Romulus and Remus)
- 1 normal, 1 ghost
0.0.1 banded cali. kingsnake (Cain)
1.0 tangerine honduran milksnake (Narcissus)
0.0.1 snow corn snake (Valkyrie)
1.1 garden phase amazon tree boas (Pegasus, Lenore)
0.0.1 baby yellow amazon tree boa (affectionately called
Snuggles)
0.0.1 albino san diego gopher snake (maybe Octavian)
0.0.1 sandfish skink (Slick)
0.0.1 fire skink (Phoenix)
1.0 bassett hound/black and tan coonhound mix (Luke)
0.1 Boxer (Zoe)
1.0 bearded dragon (Leonidas)
1.1 ferrets (Ares, Enyo)
1.2 cats (Galahad, Ripley and Sassy)
2.0 rats (Pan, no name yet)

[ Hide Replies ]

• how do you tell if snakes are male or f - noah_hahn2002, Thu Feb 14 15:26:14 2008
• RE: how do you tell if snakes are male or f - justinmatthew, Thu Feb 14 19:19:49 2008
• RE: how do you tell if snakes are male o - anuraanman, Thu Feb 14 20:18:13 2008
• RE: how do you tell if snakes are male or f - superdave1781, Fri Feb 15 11:35:41 2008
• RE: how do you tell if snakes are male o - noah_hahn2002, Fri Feb 15 23:57:56 2008
• RE: how do you tell if snakes are male o - mrkent, Tue Feb 26 09:06:34 2008