Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I went out last night in the Christmas and along river road. I saw six night snakes on meth (really hyper), one glossy, two atrox, one ground snake, two subocs, and three DOR night snakes.

The strange thing was that the first suboc was a large and very gravid female (really wanted to bag and pose here for some daylight pics, but decided my amusement wasn't worth stressing her), and the second was a neonate with a very fresh ambilical scar. Do you think the unusual weather contributed to this wide variation in laying/hatching times, or is this not unusual at all?

A lot of suboc eggs are laid very late in the year . . . I've had some hatch as late as November (from wc gravid females). My guess is that in the wild, such babies hatch and immediately go into hibernation, then come out in the spring and look like "newly hatched babies" - the umbilical scar will be visible until the snake sheds a couple of times. So, my guess is that your "newly hatched baby" hatched really late in the season last fall, and probably hasn't been too successful finding food this "spring".

Troy

>>A lot of suboc eggs are laid very late in the year . . . I've had some hatch as late as November (from wc gravid females). My guess is that in the wild, such babies hatch and immediately go into hibernation, then come out in the spring and look like "newly hatched babies" - the umbilical scar will be visible until the snake sheds a couple of times. So, my guess is that your "newly hatched baby" hatched really late in the season last fall, and probably hasn't been too successful finding food this "spring".
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>>Troy

I've seen the hibernated hatchlings before and agree that is fairly common. However, this is mid-June and that umbilical scar was very fresh (still bloody and large, looked like he hadn't even been through his first shed.)

I could be wrong. According to my wife, that happens a lot. LOL

That seems kind of unlikely. In order to be hatching now, the eggs would have had to be laid sometime in mid-March. Doesn't seem likely that subocs would be active in March, even in the Bend since it is still getting very cold at night then.

I have seen lots of runt/hatchling looking subocs in May when roadhunting first starts in El Paso/Hudspeth/Culberson counties. In fact, if you found a suboc before June in that area, it was generally a tiny one. Adults don't really start moving until June. Many of them look near death when you find them as well since, in normal years, it hasn't rained since October or November.

Mid-June is late, but not unheard of IMHO. It is more likely than a fresh hatchling.
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Chris Harrison
San Antonio, Texas

From most of the reports I've read and people I've talked to, the over-wintering of hatchlings until spring seems to be the consensus, though obviously not proven. To tie into Troy's comment, I've also heard of other people who have caught gravid females as late as August (at higher elevations), and the clutches usually don't pip until Nov/Dec.

DR
Suboc.com

There is good data to suggest that some turtle species overwinter in the nest. They hatch, but remain in the nest until spring.

Since most subocularis breed in late June or July, lay eggs in August and even September and hatch as late as November, do they leave their "nest" area after hatching? I don't recall ever finding a hatchling bogey in the fall. Yet in the spring and early summer, "hatchling" size subocs are quite common.

Anyone ever find a hatchling suboc in October or November?
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Chris Harrison
San Antonio, Texas

>>There is good data to suggest that some turtle species overwinter in the nest. They hatch, but remain in the nest until spring.

Yeah, I believe that some Painted Turtles actually have an anti-freeze in their blood that allows the hatchlings to freeze without damaging/rupturing the cells. They can freeze for up to 10 days without killing them.

It'd be cool to see if Bogeys do something similar, though I doubt it.

I believe that it was in fact a hatchling. Max chided me into hibernating Sub-oc eggs and it worked. If they are laid far enough underground at 55F they are in suspended animation until the weather warms um back up. I kept 2 eggs going for six months from my black and whites. I ended up drowning them by accident but the eggs were alive and viable for six months. I have no doubt whatsoever that the snake found was a hatchling.

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"Life without risk is to merely exist."

Just a little more anecdotal information to add into the mix...

Many years ago... sometime in the late 80's I collected what turned out to be a gravid female suboc (she showed no overt signs of being gravid when she was collected in very late summer/early fall). She later laid a clutch of eggs that I incubated at slightly more than room temperature. They pipped on December 23rd. I also have a friend who hatched a captive-bred clutch on Christmas morning.

Take it for what it's worth...

PS. In May of 1994 I caught an alterna on the river road that for all purposes looked to be gravid. I took her home, set her up in a nest box and was surprised to find out she wasn't gravid at all. She passed seven (if my memory serves me correctly) fairly large eggs in her feces. They had surface granulations typical of Bogertophis and Masticophis eggs and they were complete with pip scars. She had apparently stumbled upon a recently hatched clutch of what in mid-May were probably Masticophis eggs (I still have them around here somewhere in a jar of 55% ETOH) and eaten them. Crazy.

Imagine your suprise if your greyband passed live masticophis through it's system. You really would have been scratching your head!
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"Life without risk is to merely exist."

the latest I've had eggs hatch from a w/c suboc was 11/29.
Owing to the numbers of obvious neonates I've found in March and April I have long theorized that they might actually brumate in the egg, then hatch in the spring. I'd heard that someone did a study on this in the 90's but haven't been able to find a paper on it.

However, a fresh hatchling at this time of year would be very unusual. Subocs tend to mate a bit later than most of the colubrids in the range. Also their incubation time of 11 weeks or so is longer than most.

JH

Wish I had gotten a decent photo showing the fresh looking umbi scar, or even just taken time to observe it more closely. I was parked in a bad spot and handled it very briefly.

In the face of mounting observations and opinions, I'm leaning toward it being a VERY late hatch from last year (or early this year from eggs laid last year) with late emergence from the nest and no hunting success.