Reptile & Amphibian Forums

In my opinion the three rarest morphs in order of rarest first are 1. Bloodred I have only seen one at the San Diego Zoo and that was 20 years ago. 2. Striped phaise I only know of two and one is dead. 3.unicolor I am working on granite and zipper shown below.

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"Life without risk is to merely exist."

The last sentence should have looked like this.

3.unicolor.

I am working on granite and zipper shown below.
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"Life without risk is to merely exist."

Good luck wioth the poject. I'm sure it'll be a hit.

I'd have to put albino blonde as a tie on that list. There is only one also.
Simply Subocs

Do you have a picture of the Albino Blonde, sounds cool.
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"Life without risk is to merely exist."

yeah...I do and you'll see it soon...I'll either post it here or on my site... : )

Later!

Dusty
Simply Subocs

I thought Trumbower had some of those?
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"Life without risk is to merely exist."

I'm not aware of Craig having any. He has albinos from the South Mountain line...but no one has produced albino blondes from that line yet.

Dusty
Simply Subocs

He had tripple het adults about three years ago so I assumed he had some. He had Blonde X Silver X Albino Adults. By mentioning rare I was not refering to created morphs but ones that randomly surface hence striped, unicolor and Bloodred. I guess I could include black and white but there are now more than one.
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"Life without risk is to merely exist."

Unicolor was created in captivity by Richard Trant...pure luck from "normal blondes"

That is why I included unicolor on my list.
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"Life without risk is to merely exist."

Craig's triple hets (albino x silver blondes) are '03's...they are siblings to my snakes and are the same age as mine...we'll both be breeding them for the first time this year.

Have any of you good folks seen any pictures of the "steel grey" subocs of the Franklin Mountains near ElPaso?
Every modern field guide refers to these animals, but I've never seen even a picture of one!
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Regards, Bill McGighan

I think they looked like Blonde axanthic this is suposed to be one.

Bogertophis subocularis

http://aolsearch.aol.com/aol/redir?src=websearch&requestId=93ac221b2a5f6002&clickedItemRank=1&userQuery=Franklin Trans Pecos Ratsnake&clickedItemURN=http://www.centralpets.com/animals/reptiles/snakes/snk2882.html&title=Reptiles and Amphibians » Snakes » Rat Snake - Trans Pecos Main Page
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"Life without risk is to merely exist."

You will have to paste all that into your browser.
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"Life without risk is to merely exist."

The Franklin Mtn. "Grays" were described in 1963 by Bob Dellis, then of the San Antonio Zoo.
They aren't completely axanthic or silver like the silver blondes we have in captivity. They are H-patterned "normals" with reduced yellow...but NOT absent yellow. Essentially they are hypoxanthic.
They have also popped up elsewhere in the wild. I have some whose parents came from Crockett County near Pandale. I'll post pictures up next week of some of my hypoxanthics when mid-terms are over.
They have also popped up in the Christmas Mtns. Aaron Mattson has a nice grayish female from that area...we are not sure of her genetics...very pretty snake though.
Here are a couple of pics of a legally wild-caught gray male that I borrowed from Aaron...also Christmas Mts.

Dusty

Simply Subocs

Two points...

Axanthic blondes are completely different from wild grays from El Paso. They are not axanthic like the Mark Bell axanthics.
And there are NO blonde patterned snakes anywhere near El Paso...many, many miles away.
Blondes come typically come from between Terlingua and Lajitas...way south at the Southern end of Big Bend...and sometimes from Hwy 118.

I thik it was Michael Price but I am not sure that told me that the first Axanthic found were Blonde Phaise. Do you know if this is true? Who found the first ones? Not Franklin strain just normal axanthic if their is such a thing.
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"Life without risk is to merely exist."

That's correct...the first axanthics were blonde patterned. But they weren't found..Mark Bell bred some blondes together and they appeared by luck in his incubator.
That is why the "normal" silvers are more rare...because they had to come from double hets (silver blonde x normal).
...Which is wierder than the normal way that most double recessive traits appear...in any snake species.

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Regards, Bill McGighan

Have any of you good folks seen any pictures of the "Durango Rat Snake" variant (briefly was amplinotus ssp) of Mexico?
The only likeness of this animal that I've seen is the drawing in Ray Staszko's and Jerry G Walls' book, Rat Snakes - A Hobbyist's Guide to Elaphe and Kin.
I understand that the type specimen of this animal is in the University of Illinois Museum of Natural History.

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Regards, Bill McGighan

I have seen pictures of amplinotus and yes they do look different to me. They had a dark thick black H's on their backs and did look different. I do not remember where I found the pics though.
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"Life without risk is to merely exist."

I believe the type specimen is somewhere in TX. I have pictures of that pickled specimen somewhere in my archives. There is a debate as to whether or not it is an actual ssp. Several "subocs" from TX also have had that same basic phenotype.

Wow, Yes,
I'd like to see pics if you can find them.

see also:
http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/cbd/collections/AmphReptColln/herp_links/Prim__Types.pdf

I found a suboc in the mid ninties that looks like amplinotus on Boy Scout Road. Didn't have a camera with me. She's still there as far as I know.
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Regards, Bill McGighan

There are some FINE subocs that come off that road from time to time.

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Regards, Bill McGighan