Reptile & Amphibian Forums

A preview of a very few wild gophers from my area. Enjoy

Wouldn't want to miss a black and white striper. Again, I have many many more pics of all manner of odd gophers, I just cannot remember where the pics are. hahahahahahahahaha too many files of wild stuff. Cheers

Nice pics Frank! That bright orange snake looks Cape gopher, man they're quit variable in your parts. They also look quite fat in your neighborhood, could it be all the escapee feeder rodents? They must love you. lol
Nate

Actually the uglist and skinnyist ones are from right across from my mouse room. hahahahahaha its true.

The ones with large red blotches are from along the border. They are much different there.

My exact area has a split between normals and "hypos" You know, like the Mt. Hopkins one posted below. I use to wonder why they were so different in one area. Even to a point of when I found them breeding(and I did) or paired up(and I did) they were paired up with ones like themselves. But those numbers were so small, it could have easily been luck.

Since that time, the yellow ones are now rare.

There have also been years where finding a normal gopher was rare. One year, I found something like 15 or 18 stripers to partially stripers, IN A ROW. That was about the second year of our drought.(if that means anything)

The point to this series is, most HERE do not understand wild snakes and the use of the word Phenotype. They call something normal and that becomes the phenotype. Which is very naive.

These animals and all reptiles that I know of, have a fairly wide range of phenotypic patterns and colors. What exactly expresses the width and extremes of their phenotypic range, is another question altogether.

All the animals above and MORE are within the phenotypic range of gophers in my area(within 60 miles). The truth is, a far far greater range then I showed.

The understanding here gets real mucked up. Take the Mt. Hopkins, that animal in no way represents gophers from there. I have seen dozens of dozens from there and yes, you can find individuals like that(if your lucky or persistant) But most from there are NOT like that animal. Cheers

Thanks for hunting down some new (to us) pics of some highly variated gophers! That (near) patternless takes the cake but I really like the dark freckled head on that other one in there!
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Todd Hughes

Very nice animals. I dig that pattern on striped one, is that a road kill?

Jason

number 1 was hit right in front of us and died in our hands. Number 10 is very much patterned like Number 1, but is black and white an obviously an adult. Its dorsal spots started about 1/3 the way down its back. Unfortunately, I did not get better pics. All I cared about was the cactus spines in his neck. Got me!

What is kinda odd is, my partner and I, did not give a hoot about all this type of stuff, we are working on other things and these things just pop up. So after a while, I started taking pics. It turns out, pattern abberancies are somewhat common, see them all the time. Even hybrids are not all that uncommon. But what the heck, you have to look to see them. Cheers

just think what is out there that no human ever sees.
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Herp Conservation Unlimited
Mexicana Group Directory
Photography by Joseph E. Forks

Yea, I remember sitting around the devils river thinking, man there is an alterna(in those hills) that makes all known alternas look bad. hahahahahahahahahahahaha and there is.

Of course, I was thinking that while sitting in the river waiting or it to cool off. hahahahahahaha Cheers