This one is a striped/abberrant Ruthveni. The father of this snake was a wild caught, originally owned by a well know breeder who is now deceased. The mother was a captive born from a different well known breeder who obtained his stock before the albino gene was discovered in Ruthveni. This is significant because hybridization of Ruthven's was not common until after the albinos came about.
As I said the father of this snake was wild caught. Since there are not too many Mexican reptiles for which this can still be said, some of you may be wanting some more details. I had occasion to speak with the original owner of my snake's wild-caught father several years ago. At the time I was not in possesion of the wc snake but it was owned by a friend who later gave it to me. My conversation with the original owner did focus on wild caught Mexican Lampropeltis and in particular, whether he had any and if they were locality. I was told that yes, he did have SOME wild caught Ruthveni from Amealco. Unfortunatly I did not go so far as to ask him to clarify whether ALL of his Ruthveni were from Amaelco. So unfortunatly it is not possible for me to say that my snakes wc father was actually from Amaelco or whether it represnted another locality, whether it was bred to any other locality or what. Since obviously SOME pure Amealco Ruthveni existed at one time, I would be interested in hearing whether there is anyone with claims to possession of pure Amealco Ruthveni and what there COMPLETE basis is for such claims.
It may be of intrest to some that both an albino gene and a striped/abberrant gene have shown up in Jalisco Milks(Lampropeltis triangulum arcifera). These Jaliscos came from Tapalpa and were identified by the original scientists and they entered both zoos and hobbyist collections as Jalisco Milks. Now these have since been determined to have been misidentified. These snakes, once commonly known in the pet trade as Jalisco Milks, have now been correctly identified as Ruthveni. At the time of the original misidentification, Ruthveni was not even known to occur in Tapalpa so it is somewhat understandable for this error to have taken place. In fact the only true Jalisco Milks to ever get into the hobby are the snakes that are known as Lake Chapala Milks. Here is a captive born pair, they are quite different from any known Ruthveni, including the Tapalpas and Amaelcos. Band count is lower and the white bands are narrower in relation to the red and black bands than in Ruthveni. No albinism or striped/abberrancies are known from the Lake Chapala Milks.
Now back to the original owner of the wild caught snake. This well known breeder also had the misidentified "Jalicso Milks" and I have to wonder if at some point he may have produced a striped/abberrant out of them and eventually realized that they were in fact Ruthveni. He may have then crossed them into the albino Ruthveni because he did not market his snakes as locality and it would not have been dishonest. They would still be Ruthveni regardless of the locality. This is only one possible explanation for why both albinism and striped/abberrancies have shown up in Ruthveni and in the Tapalpa snakes which were originally mislabeled as Jalisco Milks.
