Up here in VT every black rat I've seen has had a white/grayish underside with black or darker gray markings that are sparse toward the head and completely take over toward the tail. I saw one captive ratsnake a number of years ago that was bred in Florida and had more of a pinkish/orange underside background instead of the white/gray.



Anyway, ratsnakes are threatened here and I recently found a DOR specimen in a part of the state that does not have historic records of that species. The belly was very similar to the captive one I saw with an orangish/pink color. Do any of you know how the black ratsnake varies from north to south? Do southern individuals have more colorful bellies? It's possible that if this is a wild snake that isolation from our other populations could explain the different physical appearance but I'm led to believe that it is an escaped (although illegal) pet.

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• Black Ratsnake variations in the wild - anuraanman, Fri Oct 17 21:22:31 2008
• RE: Black Ratsnake variations in the wild - herplover1978, Sat Oct 18 19:05:10 2008
• RE: Black Ratsnake variations in the wild - MikeinOKC, Mon Oct 20 07:23:50 2008
• RE: Black Ratsnake variations in the wild - mattkau, Mon Oct 20 21:53:41 2008