Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi---Can anyone tell me what kind of milk snakes these two are? They were both adopted (at different times) from my animal shelter. I don't know any history on either.

Thank you!
sonja

This one is Sienna

And this one is Chester

This one is a Sinaloan Milksnake(Lampropeltis t. sinaloae) with slight hint of "nelsoni" in it's lineage(wider arching black bands)....................................................Doug
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Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!

That looks to be a rather strangely speckled Pueblan Milksnake(Lampropeltis t. campbelli)..........................Doug
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Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!

I agree with Doug, except the second snake looks to me like a pure nelsoni or one with slight sinaloae influence. the triads are much closer together (narrower red bands) than i associate with a classic sinaloan...

Brad Chambers

I know what you're sayin'!LOL, this is one of those "either-or calls",...as a matter of fact, Most "nelsoni" on the market contain lineage from "sinaloae" back when nobody had enough nelsoni to pump-out all the albinos. So they used the very closely related Sinaloan.
This photo is an example of one of(if not the best) example I've ever seen!. It was acquired before any albinos were available, and very few normals for that matter.
It has the "textbook" large incomplete "notch" on the first black ring also, this is as pure as they come!
I agree,.... the other snake is probably not what taxonomists would call an ideal representative of probably either subspecies.
In any case it's a great looking snake either way!

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Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!

this looks like a pueblan with lots of speckling... which i have not seen before..

Shannon would have a better opinion though..

~ Mike Russo

I would say that all that speckling is from old scares.He said it was from a rescue or shelter or something and they are probably old burns or cat claw scares that have heeled up and the scales always come back black.I have seen this a couple times.

Shannon

I have to agree with Shannon on this one. It's hard to tell for definite but from the picture the black infiltration almost looks like scaring of some sort. Can you provide a close-up image?
Nathan Wells