Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This is kind of a complecated question. So many American snakes have many subspieces, for example the common kingsnake; eastern king, desert king, calafornia king etc. i know that a species is defined by being able to breed and create fertile ofspring. Does that mean that i could breed a desert kingsnake and a calafornia kingsnake together? or a black rat snake with a yellow rat snake? it might seem stupid but i wanna know

For example, where the range of the black rat and the yellow rat overlaps, an intergrade called the "greenish rat" is found. D

>>This is kind of a complecated question. So many American snakes have many subspieces, for example the common kingsnake; eastern king, desert king, calafornia king etc. i know that a species is defined by being able to breed and create fertile ofspring. Does that mean that i could breed a desert kingsnake and a calafornia kingsnake together? or a black rat snake with a yellow rat snake? it might seem stupid but i wanna know

Actually, the king snakes, milk snakes, rat snakes, corn snake, and gopher/pine/bull snakes can all breed and produce fertile offspring with each other, and they aren't even in the same genus.

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MY COLLECTION:
1.0 '04 Columbian BCI
0.1 '05 Blood Python
0.0.1 Hypo Sonoran BCI
0.2 Ball Pythons

MY WISHLIST:
A Northern Blue-Tongue Skink
1.1 Brazilian Rainbow Boas
1.1 Hogg Island Boas
1.0 Salmon BCI
0.2 Columbian BCI
1.1 Sumatran Short-Tail Pythons
1.1 Borneo Short-Tail Pythons
1.1 Suriname BCC
1.2 Spotted Pythons
2.4 African House Snakes
2.4 Bearded Dragons
1.2 Rankins Dragons
2.6 Crested Geckos
2 ferrets

>>i know that a species is defined by being able to breed and create fertile ofspring.

Actually, this is a common misconception. It has nothing to do with what defines a species. While all the members of a species are capable of reproducing (given proper sex matching in the case of most animals), many species are capable of reproducing with related species and producing fertile young.
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What goes up must come down...unless it exceeds escape velocity.

>>This is kind of a complecated question.

It is far more complicated than you know!

Species were historically defined as members of the group of animals that could produce viable offspring, but that species concept (the Biological Species Concept) has long since been thrown out by most biologists since it doesn't work. Some animals of clearly different species hybridize and some species actually arise from such hybridizations (i.e. parthenogenetic Whiptail lizards).

If you want to know how complicated it is (and how vehemently people argue about it!) try doing a good search for "species concepts". It is a hotly contested issue among scientists and non-scientists alike.

That said, most subspecies can readily interbreed. Black and Yellow Rats do so on the atlantic coast and Cal Kings and Desert Kings do so in AZ (actually you can find 3 way mixes between Cal/Desert/Mexican black kings).
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Chris Harrison
San Antonio, Texas

That's not AT ALL an accurate statement of the biological species concept. And the biological species concept certainly has not been thrown out. To the contrary it remains the dominant concept.

The concept simply stated is that a species is a group of interbreeding natural populations that are reproductively isolated from other groups.