So my question would be at what point would you consider there ever being any Black Rat influence in a Yellow Ratsnake?. Perhaps when they were solid jet Black?. C'mon man, using that logic, the snakes in West Virginia and Ohio(or anywhere else in the center of their known range are pure Yellow Rats too then.

Heck, for that matter why bother with any range maps at all then if their phenotype makes no difference in distinguishing them from one another?. Also, if a Yellow ratsnake only had 6.25% Black Rat influnce in it's lineage, it would still be an intergrade. Are you telling me you can distinguish these minute percentages of subspecific influence in all these ratsnakes?

This is starting to get beyond ridiculous if you ask me. It is quite obvious to me that you find it quite impossible for there to be ANY Black Rat influence in the animals from that locale, so continuing much further is pretty useless in my opinion. I will just wait for Jim to post some Black Rat pics he has seen 15 miles west of there in Marion County. However, I am guessing that you will probably see these as being nothing more than melanistic "Yellow Ratsnakes"..LOL!

I would not put so much faith in the outer ranges of maps to be quite honest. I have many range maps too, but I certainly don't think every line drawn on them is "gospel" fact.


~Doug
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

my website -serpentinespecialties.webs.com

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