Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I went ahead and got that Prairie Kingsnake - here are some late night photos of it - I hope to get some better ones in the daylight.

Will he ever calm down and wrap around my fingers and just be held like my corn and rat snakes?

I may be mistaken, but that really looks like either a Corn or an Eastern Milk rather than a Prarie King. In either case, it is a cool looking snake. Congrats.

You are mistaken. It's a Prarie King. Like all colubrids, it should calm down as it gets older.

OK, went and Googled the pics and I agree. Sure is close though in appearance.

It's definitely not a corn but I can't argue the potential for being the eastern milksnake - I don't know enough about that. Like I said though - the pics were taken at night (and my digital camera is crappy) - I'll post some with my LSR taken in the daylight and they will be much better!

The weird thing is that all of the pictures I have found online show my snake look like the South Florida Mole Kingsnake, which I find REALLY hard to believe because of how rare they are - I'm not getting one at Petco in Memphis. This picture on the link below looks EXACTLY like mine, down to the color differentiation on its back and stomach!

You have a regular old prarie kingsnake. Prarie kings and mole kings belong to the same species, lampropeltis calligaster. That's why they look alike. They are different subspecies. A prarie king is l. calligaster calligaster, a mole king is l. calligaster rhombomaculata, and a south Florida mole king is l. calligaster occipitolineata. Why don't you do a google image search for "prarie kingsnake"?

I did Google them - plus I have books - and all the Prairie Kingsnakes they show look different (very light, very faded, more tan with non-distinctive saddles/markings) - that's why I asked the question. Out of all the websites, I only found one that had a picture of a plain old Prairie Kingsnake that looked like mine - mine looked EXACTLY like the pictures I saw of the FL kingsnake. I ask because I'm curious if maybe mine will "fade" as it gets older and look like the other Prairies - I don't really care what kind it is - I just love it's colors!

Yes he will. He wont calm down as fast as your corn did but he will calm down and no problem holding him.

They are the most nervous while in the tank after they are out they calm down. Not the first few weeks but intime they do.

It's good to see some calligasters. Love em.
Sam

Congrats! Wow! Just a little guy.

reako45