Nice seeing you again at Daytona too, Joe.



Well, there is only "one" book source so far(Systematics and Natural History of the American Milksnake) that all the other books get their information from. It was comprised of a total of 560 animals from Latin America(excluding annulata) that were studied, 53 were of hondurensis in different parts of their range.



The point you yourself mentioned about several of them looking very similar is exactly the point I was trying to get across. Williams' data was very precise explaining the differences, including large sections pertaining to intergrade specimens as well, and WHY he thought they were intergrades, by them having two or more characteristics from other subspecies in one sample specimen.



Many photo's where accurate, but some were not at all, with some animals having way different ring counts than they were supposed to be for that particular given subspecies. Bill Lamar provided a good number of these photo's, and some were not good examples at all of the snakes that were being discribed and represented by Williams text, but the TEXT data itself was very accurately written. This could have been due to getting the book into publication faster and not wanting to insult Lamar in the process too, I don't know.



My friend Scott Ballard even had a photo of an absolutely "text-book" example of stuarti in Markel's book that was incorrectly labeled as "micropholis", so this certainly only adds tons of confusion to this already confusing issue we all see regarding this.



Fact is, when any of these classic examples are intergraded, it makes for a whole lot of head scratching to most of us(me definitely included).



One thing I can safely say though, is that of all of Latin America, and ALL the snakes that have ever came from there into the hobby, certainly these cannot ALL be hondurensis, this just wouldn't seem logical. There are lots of snakes out there that have visual characteristics of different subspecies in them, and this should not come as any big surprise at all, because as you just said(and I agree) there are several that are very similar. So going from just that one statement alone, one can logically conclude that there is very likely other involvement in some of these in the hobby.....NOT ALL, but a good number, that is all I'm saying here.



If I see a snake with 33 RBR(red body rings), some black bands touching, very thin inner white/yellow bands, lots of distict red scale tipping, and a broad strait across nose band, I would be looking at an "abnorma", and not a hondurensis. That's about all I can say about that. Sure they can vary, and do, but only to a certain point realistically.



Anyone can feel free to call some of them whatever they choose to(and often do), but there are some differences within subspecies. I'm certainly not saying that I can accurately identify all of them out there, because I cannot, but I CAN distinguish most of the good examples, and as I said before, when two or more subspecies are involved, it becomes virtually impossible to discern.



Another good example for the sake of argument would be....is a Cosala Sinaloan the same as a nelsoni?....a definite NO is the answer to that. I think most would certainly agree. I have posted detailed explanations about the identifying characteristics of both those before two, and the difference between the two classic forms is like comparing night to day.



Anyway, I'm not trying to tell anyone that what "they" have is one thing or the other, I'm just trying to point out that there are differences, and that sometimes it can get real cloudy.



anyway, this topic comes up from time to time, and I don't always mention anything about it, but I(and Phil) were just trying to help the poster out in identifying the snake, that's all.





take care!, ~Doug
-----
"Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!"

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