Posted by:
Stefan-A
at Thu Apr 24 12:34:14 2008 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by Stefan-A ]
To be honest, I'm not at all convinced that's a ribbon.
- The lateral stripe is in the second and third scale rows, the ribbons have it in the third and fourth.
- There are the black markings on the supralabials, which ribbon snakes specifically lack.
- There's the small white bar in front of the eye, that really stands out on the ribbon snakes. The head's coloration should have a lot more contrast than that, if it was a ribbon.
The least conclusive piece of "evidence" against it being a ribbon, is that it is willing to take pinkies. It's usually not something that ribbons will do without a lot of "training". Was it easy or hard to get it to take pinkies?
But it's very similar to the ribbon snakes otherwise, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that it's a hybrid. Any chance it could be a Texas garter snake (T. sirtalis annectens)? Where was it caught? The lateral stripes rule out the plains garter and the ribbons and the dorsal stripe color rules out practically all other species. The Texas garter, which does have a dorsal stripe with that color, has the lateral stripe in that exact scale row. ----- 0.1 Thamnophis sirtalis parietalis (CB'05)
0.2 Thamnophis elegans vagrans (CB'07)
0.1 Thamnophis sirtalis tetrataenia (CB'07)
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