Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I would love to see some of the larger emoryi's out there. Here is my meahllmorum although not a monster he is the largest I have.

-----
www.elmgrovereptiles.com

Here ya go! Here are some photos of my big Nueces County meahllies.

First is the big male from south Corpus Christi. I deleted the photo I had of me holding him for size reference, but I'll try to get another soon. He was 59.94 inches and over 1100 grams at last measurement several months ago.

Next is the old western Nueces male which was a little over 58 inches long and close to a kilogram at last measurement.

Here is the female from south Corpus Christi which weighed in at around 850 grams and was 54 inches long at last measurement.

Here is a pair from the 2004 clutch from a pairing of the old western Nueces male and the big south Corpus female. The first is the female, which measured 32.5 inches in December '06, before brumation. The second photo is the male, at around 35 inches and close to 200 grams before brumation. I expect these guys to get pretty big, like their parents.

Thanks for looking! -Toby

I'm all for being accurate, but how did you possibly come up with the figure of 59.94" for a length?.....is that from that "snake measurer" program or something?....I'm just curious to know how anything, or anyone could be that accurate in measuring a live animal, and say that it's 6/100 of an inch away from being 5ft.long!LOL....know what I mean?.....unless the snake was dead, it would be impossible to measure it to that degree of accuracy, and even then.....extremely dificult!

Please understand, I'm not trying to give you a hard time, I'm just having trouble with that crazy figure!LOL

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

LOL! I generally call him five feet too, Doug, and yes that figure is from the serpwidgets snake measurer program. I measured him using two different photos and re-measured a few times, and that was the most conservative figure I came up with. He actually may have grown since then too, since this was last summer when I measured him and he does not seem to be an old animal and may be in his prime. So, yeah he's a five footer!

-Toby

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

Very nice snakes, and pics as well!.....good job!
Doug
-----
Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!

np

He looks to be of a pretty good size to me. Do you have a length or weight on him? Nice looking meahlly too, BTW. He looks a lot like many here in Nueces and Kleberg Counties.

-Toby

Thanks, He is the only snake I havn't measured yet butI don't think he is quite as big as your males. I am 5-10 so I don't think he is as close to 60 inches as yours are. Not sure of the weight. You have some great looking meahlly's. I just wish that more people on the east coast where into them!!

Toby has some very nice meahllies and the Nueces county ones are the largest emoryi I know of. My Brazos Island stock are only around 500 grams, so far.

Terry

>>Thanks, He is the only snake I havn't measured yet butI don't think he is quite as big as your males. I am 5-10 so I don't think he is as close to 60 inches as yours are. Not sure of the weight. You have some great looking meahlly's. I just wish that more people on the east coast where into them!!

-----
Ratsnake Haven...researching ratsnakes since 1988

Ratsnake Haven Group...an information providing list site.

Your B.I. meahllies are still pretty young, aren't they Terry? They might eventually get to a pretty large size too, although I know that's not exactly what you are looking for in them.

-Toby

Ha, ha, you're right, Toby. They are pretty young and I don't want them to get that big. Hopefully, the B. I. population doesn't get as large, but I assume they will get close. Captive strains don't always reflect the wild pops accurately, however. They might get larger in the wild, or the captives might, if they live much longer, eat better, etc. Mine were rather slow starters, but are going strong now. I'm trying to get the female in prime for breeding this season. She should be up to 600 grams in no time.

TC

>>Your B.I. meahllies are still pretty young, aren't they Terry? They might eventually get to a pretty large size too, although I know that's not exactly what you are looking for in them.
>>
>>-Toby

Best of luck with those B.I. rats Terry! I think my 3.5 yr old w. Nueces female is probably close to or over 600 grams by now, as she was over 500 before brumation. I need to get some new weights soon.

-Toby

Thanks and maybe more people will get into meahllmorum over there, in the future. I think that there might be lots of unknown meahllmorum in the hobby going as Great Plains rat snakes. I also think it is likely that some captive bred lines of GP rats have some meahllmorum blood.

-Toby

I wouldn't be surprised if there is a lot a meahhly blood in the Great Plains lines out there. A lot of people don't know what meahllmorum are and if you are not into locale animals they you just think you are breeding great plains to great plains. That's why I am hesitant about breeding mine to a known locale meahlly and calling the offspring meahllmorum with out being able to say what locale mine is from.

I would prefer to acquire definit locale pairs to do that. That is why I contacted you a few months ago about availability of hatchlings this year.

Have you heard of any wc amel meahlly's yet? They are bound to pop up sooner or later.

Quote:
That's why I am hesitant about breeding mine to a known locale meahlly and calling the offspring meahllmorum with out being able to say what locale mine is from.

I understand what you are saying, but I remember studying closeups of that snake, and I still say that everything about it says meahllmorum. Coloration, blotches (size, shape, transverse split), head and eye shape all say meahllmorum. I am not an expert and these are my own observations and opinions based on seeing many specimens in the field.

I have not seen an amel meahllmorum yet, but I'm on the lookout for one. One of the pairings I am trying this Spring is a male orange candycane corn x female western Nueces County meahllmorum, to get the amel trait. I hope to produce creamsicles eventually, and plan on trying to maintain the line as a 50/50 cross. You could breed an amel emoryi to meahllmorum to get the amel blood, if you want to maintain a more pure emoryi cross, which would be considered an intergrade rather than hybrid like the guttatus x meahllmorum cross.

-Toby

What I plan on doing is the reverse of a creamsicle. I am going to try breeding an amel emoryi to a normal corn to produce the reverse of the cream. Maybe it will have a different look, maybe not.

That sounds like a very interesting project, and please keep us posted on your results.

-Toby

>>I have not seen an amel meahllmorum yet,

All of the past WC meahllmorum albinos I have seen were very pale background with light yellow blotches. Much more subdued than the emoryi albinos available.

KJ
-----
KJUN Snakehaven

KJ, wow! So then you have seen wc amel meahllmorum? Are there any in captivity that you are aware of? More info please.

Thanks-
Toby Brock

>>KJ, wow! So then you have seen wc amel meahllmorum? Are there any in captivity that you are aware of? More info please.

I know of at least 2 WC ones and one that was reported as a WC, but was more likely a cremsicle sold to a pet store which the pet store employees claimed was a local WC animal. I never saw that one, but I've been told it was VERY orange aned "creamsicle"-like. I assume that one was NOT an albino meahllmorum since it (reportedly) didn't have the emoryi blotch patterns and coloration of the other albino meahllmorums I saw.

The first albino meahllmorums I've only seen older images of. It dates back to before people really cared.... Before my time of working heavily with emoryi! Bell is rumored to have ended up with this one (or possibly ANOTHER one, but that sounds like too many), but I can't confirm/deny it, AND I've never heard of any making it to market.

The second one was just a few years ago about when Don Soderberg's albinos were just hitting the market in numbers. Beautiful. With the moderation here, I can't say the entire story without running the risk of having the post removed, so (in brief) the owner (a wild collector) had it in VERY poor condition and wanted a phenomenal amount of cash for it. Nobody bought it, and he (supposedly) let it die in those squalid conditions instead of keeping it healthy.

An albino meahllmorum is about all I've got missing from my collection right now that SHOULD exist. Of course, I don't count those black rats that were called anerythristic emoryi as "emoryi" morphs.....lol.
-----
KJUN Snakehaven

>>The first albino meahllmorums I've only seen older images of. It dates back to before people really cared.... Before my time of working heavily with emoryi

KJ, thanks for all the extra info. Would you happen to know what happened to those old photos of albino meahllmorum? I'd be very interested to see them, if they are still in existence. I am sure you are right about the orange albino meahllmorum at the pet store, not being meahllmorum. It is very unfortunate that that guy let that albino meahlly die.

>>An albino meahllmorum is about all I've got missing from my collection right now that SHOULD exist. Of course, I don't count those black rats that were called anerythristic emoryi as "emoryi" morphs.....lol.

I hadn't heard about black rats being passed off as anery emoryi, but that is funny. There's no limit to what people will do to try to scam some money!

-Toby

I have seen quite a few big guttata.

This photo shows a "slowinski" that was over 5 feet, although I don't remember the exact length. I think I have a "snake measurer" photo with the exact size somewhere. If I can find that, I will post it.

In the early 1980s, I found a slowinskii (emoryi back then) that was so big I brought it in to Dr. Jim Dixon so we could measure it.

We anesthetized it to relax it then straightened it out to get a good measurement. 67"! It was just short of 6 feet.

It was a brute and had a personality to match! To this day, I have never seen any form of guttata as big as that snake. I've caught a lot of cornsnakes, slowinskii, emoryii, and meahllmorum. I can assure you, slowinskii are the giants of the family. The regularly exceed 5 feet and have around 2x the body mass of cornsnakes. Those south TX beasts get heavy, but I don't think they average as long.

Both of these snakes were released.
-----
Chris Harrison
San Antonio, Texas

Chris, thanks for the info. That 67 incher is a monster. I didn't realize that the slowinskii could get so big.

According to the field guides, the record corn is 72". That has been passed down since the Conant Field Guide of Eastern snakes. Because emoryi was considered the same species back then, guttata, their maximum length has always been given as 72", also. That's not necessarily an accurate record. I've never seen, or heard of, an emoryi that long. I would like to know what the record for an Emory's ratsnake is, and believe that the Nueces County record should come pretty close. Emory's rats do tend to be shorter than most corn snakes, imo. I wonder what the record weight is for a corn snake, also.

Keep us posted on any new slowinskii you find. Later...

Terry

nice camo's ,they rock dont they, straight from the marines baby, there awesome for herpin

-----
0.0.1 Dusky pygmy rattlesnake
1.0 Amelanistic greatplains ratsnake
0.1 Greatplains ratsnake
0.1 Amelanistic Cornsnake
1.1 Everglades Ratsnake
0.1 Greenish ratsnake
1.1 Speckled kingsnake
1.1 stripeless gartersnake
1.0 onestriped northwestern garter
0.1 Oregon Red sided gartersnake
1.1 anoles
0.0.1 tokay gecko
0.1 graceful chamelion
1.0 green iguana
and a bangin @ss drumset