Awesome snake!

The distinctions between black rats and grays have never been clear to me. Obviously the jet black Atlantic slope snakes are black rats, but where does anyone get off calling a darkish but well-patterned gray snake a black rat? Yet that is what those populations all across the heartland are called despite their clinal fade into the more traditionally-colored gray rats of the coastal plain. If the intergrade zone covers hundreds of miles, you're probably not dealing with valid subspecies.

My $0.02.

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