Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Does anyone here have info. or pictures of a milk snake x scarlet king hybrid? (that occurs in the wild). I recall hearing about this unique tri-color that is supposedly found in western South Carolina (mountains) but was unable to find anything when I did a search.

Sound familiar?

Thanks...

Tim
Sarasota, Florida

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i'm not over weight i'm under tall

Actually, the Eastern Milksnake, and Scarlet Kingsnake are BOTH milksnakes belonging to the same genus Lampropeltis. However they are both very different from one another in size, pattern, and build, especially the head region with the Scarlet King(elapsoides) having a very narrow pointed snout for burrowing and foraging in leaf litter compared to the Eastern Milk(triangulum). There are also some meristical scale count differences as well.

The snake you are referring to is commonly known as a Coastal Plains Milksnake, it is NOT a hybrid animal, but rather it is thought to be a natural "intergrade" of the two subspecies in several small isolated pockets where their ranges overlap. Temporalis is formerly known to science as "L.t.temporalis" as Charlie has already mentioned below.

Temporalis was once thought to be a separate subspecies in the scientific community, but has been removed from this subspecific classification for quite some time, however these snakes seem to be more than just simple intergrades, as elapsoides is NOT generally known to exchange geneflow with any other subspecies of milksnake. These snakes(temporalis) seem to have become their own entity, and are a very distinct, furthermore these small snakes seem to breed true to their own race even where there are large numbers of Easterns and Scarlets within the same area.

Oddly enough, I don't know of anyone, nor have ever read of anyone successfully crossing an Eastern x Scarlet to produce the alleged intergrade known as temporalis. This seems like it should be easy enough,...especially with all the ridiculous crossing and hybridizing of animals in the hobby today. These snakes do indeed seem to reserve breeding only amongst their own kind for whatever reason. Maybe a long time ago, probably many thousands of years they were derived from two separate subspecies intergrading, but they seem to be their own little anomoly altogether. Another thing that is very odd, is the fact that temporalis is only known from several small isolated locales within the eastern U.S., and not scattered evenly throughout where the two snakes meet naturally.

Whatever science once thought of temporalis' origin, todays hobbyists are still very interested in breeding these pretty little snakes, and keeping their locality specific bloodlines as pure as possible. Temporalis is indeed a uniquely distict animal, and is a very revered animal to many in the hobby.

Below is a Calvert County, Maryland temporalis I used to have a pair of years ago.

best regards, ~Doug

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"Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!"

I meant to say that they are BOTH in the same genus AND species(Lampropeltis triangulum)....triangulum being the species of which there are twenty-five milksnakes, twenty-six including the very note-worthy race known as temporalis.

~Doug
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"Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!"

Doug,

Thanks a bunch -- I sincerely appreciate the quality input and that really clears things up re: this "mystery snake" I had heard about (lol). I assumed from Charlie's "response" that temporalis was the answer to my question and, in doing a Google search, I did find the Coastal Plains Milksnake (but still didn't know if it was "the one" since the mountains in western South Carolina are not exactly "coastal plains"!). Additionally, the information I found was about one from New Jersey so that also steered me away from the SC locale (I included the link to the page I found -- in addition to the CP Milksnake, there are a few other nice herp pictures).

Nice snake you had -- if I do get up to that area of S. Carolina again, I will most certainly poke around to see if I can find one of these beauties.

Thanks again,

Tim
New Jersey Coastal Plains Milksnake (middle of page)

Here is a link to a page that Tony D. created from several good sources of literature, that goes on to explain a little better some of the very same key points I mentioned regarding temporalis.

Oh,..BTW, many of the guys that frequent this milksnake forum also have some hypomelanistic(greatly reduced black pigment)temporalis, as well as several other localities of normal temporalis from the southeast portion of the country that you'd probably find very interesting. It shouldn't be too long before they chime in with some cool pics of their animals too.

Link

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"Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!"

I think the snake you are talking about was from SW South Carolina was an assumed integrade with sysplia (red milk) though it could just have been a local varient.

As for eastern milk X scarlet king crosses it has been done by several breeders (myself included) and the offspring look exactly like coastal plains milks

Wow!....

Tony, I wasn't really aware of anyone breeding the two in captivity, but always wondered why I never saw any of this man-made combination since it is so often wondered about their being the actual natural participants that comprise temporalis.

I can't really say that I'm a big fan of producing that particular cross, as I can see a strong likelyhood of them being offered in the hobby as such by some, or being mistaken for the "real thing" by some, etc...know what I mean?....that certainly wouldn't go over too well with many. I'm sure YOU would not do this, but I can certainly see how it would happen as they became introduced into the hobby. It's just like the way anything else's genetics gets "leached" into the snakes in the hobby. I'm sure you will agree,....honest representation of offspring only goes so far in this hobby, and it realistically ends as soon as the animal(s) leaves the original breeders table,....after that ANYTHING's possible, especially when you multiply each offsprings potential of creating more by many folds.

I certainly hope you don't think that I'm trying to give you a morals lesson here by ANY means, but we both know how the dynamics of this hobby works, and how things progress.I'm sure you know what I'm talking about, and probably have very similar views. Many of us "milk-heads" seem to be much more aware of crosses, hybrids, and certain man-made intergrades that have potential to throw wrenches into things than many other folks in the hobby. One thing that can't be denied is that many snakes that are bought, will be bred to something,...the question is to what?, and so on, and so on.........

One of my favorite analogies that makes an extremely valid point is....."you can't take them back once they're out there". I think many would agree that it's a statement that's hard to argue with.

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

StretchX and I did these years ago in the early 90's as a test. A small clutch was produced and only one hatched which did not survive my early attempts to raise these things so I, we, never moved any of these out to the hobby. That is not to say that others have not.

This is just my opinion but collection records or data if you will for temporalis was quite sketchy in the pre Internet days when things were harder to verify. When I seriously began building my collection there was not enough verifiable locality stock that was additionally unrelated to truly justify keeping them separate. For my part I was simply looking to make sure I wasn't buying indirect siblings and even this was hard to prove out. (I define indirect siblings as the following: Breeder A produces 2.2 animals and sells one pair to breeder B and breeder C. Offspring produced by breeders B & C would be indirect siblings. My preference would always be to cross a pair from breeder B OR C with an unrelated line than to cross breed pairs from breeder B AND C).

Others of course felt differently and have maintained stocks along locality lines and have done a lot of additional collecting (a very slow process for temporalis)to beef up existing captive stocks. Given that good records are now kept I think there is plenty room for locality, generic and morph stocks.

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

But with so few people collecting new blood and so few people successfully breeding...it has lead to an over-representation of individual lineages. New bloodlines are needed Tony or your line(s)themselves will be basically the same as the line-breeding/locality breeding you started in a very short time,no? I havent seen babies available from new lines in YEARS.

"New bloodlines are needed Tony"

I actually have several lines going and continue to outcross to lines that I know or at least strongly believe are not represented in my colonies. I acknowledge and appreciate the efforts of those that are collecting new blood. Also I've never inferred that I was single handedly trying to preserve the captive gene pool of coastal plains milk snakes through my efforts. There are plenty of guys out there with larger more diverse collections than mine. Still for a while it seemed that I was nearly if not the last man standing with this hypo line. I'm not deluded enough to think that if I hadn't done what I'd done hypos would have disapeared from the hobbey but I'm pretty sure they would be far less available than they are now had I not acted to improve fecundity.

Probably plenty of validity to that as well, and congratulations on helping perpetuate more of those cool little critters onto vending tables, and collections throughout!

~Doug

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"Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!"

That's right,....there's a very limited stock of most, if not ALL the localities, but what can ya really do?,.....since there ain't a bunch to diversify from different animals from the known locality lines. All you can really do is hope to buy some offspring of whoever is lucky enough to get some new W/C animal(s). Otherwise, as mentioned before though, it ends up in fairly short order that a small given group of temporalis breeders all have basically the same genetics once again!..LOL!.....oh well,..I guess you can only play with what you're dealt,...right?..LOL!.......it's the same thing with some other stuff as well.....arghh!

~Doug
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"Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!"

Hmmmn... actually at first I did assume you meant just what Tony suggested. A possible syspila (red milk) intergrade. The southern extent of the Appalachians has/does produce some interesting milks. For instance, in north eastern AL, there are integrade zones between reds and easterns right along side of pockets of what appears to be pure eastern milks. It's possible due to geographic isolation that some of these relict populations could just have found their specific niche. I can attest to having found 'red' eastern milks in extreme south-western NC as well... making the mounatins of SC not too far a stretch. Though I have also seen dark... if you will 'ugly' easterns in western SC. I also vaguely remember running across a file photo of an animal described as a temporalis from the western part of the state -- though just kinda smirked it off. I've talked with some and the distinction seems to have a direct correlation to elevation. Being that more of the reddish animals I've seen or heard of come from at least the foothills of the range. Personally I rememebr seeing them as a kid... at about 3500 feet of elevation. Now does it make them a natural intergrade or just a different phenotypic representation of a very widespread and adaptive snake... lol... dunno on that one. Given the circumstances I'd say both are viable possibilites until samples are established and tested.
Ok after the rambling... here are a couple temporalis shots... NJ to MD and onto NC.

Chris