Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I live in the area of Nashville, TN. I've been told there are "chicken snakes" around, but from what I've read on the web that seems to be a name given to just about anything, most particularly rat snakes.

This one doesn't look like any picture I've found of a rat snake of any type, except possibly a juvenile black rat. Somehow I just can't think of a 5' long North American snake as being a "juvenile"! So, anyone got any ideas?

This is actually the second one of these that I've caught in the last two weeks - after having seen none in the seven years I've lived here. The first one was in my back yard and was about 47" long. This one I almost ran over in the road. I swerved to avoid it, but it's so long that I was SURE I must have clipped it's head or tail. I'm glad to say I didn't, and the snake is alive and well, though as yet unidentified.

all I get is a red X.
:Mark
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Surrender Dorothy!

crimsonking.piczo.com/

Well, maybe you can help me out - I have a local JPG that I was trying to embed. I pasted the path and filename into the "image URL" line, but you can see how well that worked... What am I missing?

Well dangit, the image didn't get attached, and the forum software doesn't seem to allow for edits and deletions. Let me figure this out...

the image URL section on the screen to post messages needs to be a URL on the internet rather than one on your hard drive. If you go up to the top of the page and click on the photos tab you will be brought to a page where you can upload your photos for free to kingsnake. When you do that you will be able to select the photo from a list at the bottom of the screen as you post a message. I hope that helps!

That did it. Thanks! Now that you can see it, can you ID the thing?

Definitely a rat snake. The exact subspecies may be debateable but I'd say black rat.
:Mark
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Surrender Dorothy!

crimsonking.piczo.com/

Really, a black rat? All the pics I saw of black rats that weren't actually all black said that the coloration was juvie. But like I said, at 5' long it's hard to think of it as a juvenile!

It's definitely a climber. I had it wrapped around my neck and it stretched a good 18" or so straight up towards the light on the ceiling, and seemed more interested in coiling around my arms and neck than most other snakes I've caught. By the time I caught the it it had finished crossing the road and was in someone's yard; the birds in the tree a few feet away were going ballistic as the snake headed towards it, so I have the distinct impression they thought it was a climber too.

I'd question it being a black rat too. I'd feel more comfortable calling it a Gray Ratsnake, Pantherophis somethingorother spiloides. I've heard grays called chickensnakes too so that would make sense as well.

Somebody straighten me out on the current nomenclature please. I know it was E. obsoleta spilodes and then all that work was done splitting up the species with E. obsoleta to the southwest and E. alleghaniensis to the northeast. Tennessee is kind of in the middle so I don't know which end of the spectrum it ended up getting... Anyway, after all of that the genus changed too but that shouldn't reflect at all on the particular question I have at the moment

Well I knew some would question that. That's why I posted it.
You tell me what ratsnake is in TN these days??
TX rat looks, black and gray range. Several different names these days.
It's a ratsnake.
I guess.
:Mark
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Surrender Dorothy!

crimsonking.piczo.com/

If you had just posted the picture & not mentioned where it was found, I (& most others here) would have told you it is a Texas ratsnake. Strange looks for either a gray or a black, the only two that "should" be found in your area.

Your perception is correct. They are among the best climbers of any snake on earth. They can climb a pine tree gripping nothing but the bark on the trunk or climb a stuccoed block wall. The birds will react like that to any snake that size, but in this case, they have reason to fear this one. They will prey upon anything in a bird's nest..eggs, young, or adults. The vast majority of their diet, however, is rodents, making them an extremely beneficial snake.

~~Greg~~
http://venomoussnakesfl.com/index.htm

I see what you mean about the Texas thing, especially after looking at these pictures www.texassnakes.net/TexasRat.htm. Judging strictly by them I'd have to go with the Texas rat ID too.

And speaking of climbing, how about that third picture of the snake next to the window? That's impressive!

That's actually a pretty typical middle Tennessee ratsnake (I live in Clarksville, just to the northwest of Nashville); the amount of yellow, gray, and black is pretty variable even in snakes from the same locality.

Under the old color-based taxonomy, we called rats like that Elaphe obsoleta spiloides (Gray Ratsnake); only the much darker rats from further east in the state were considered E. o. obsoleta (Black Ratsnake). Under the new (Burbrink) taxonomy all Tennessee ratsnakes are Elaphe (Pantherophis) spiloides (Central Ratsnake).

So certain literature has elevated spiloides to the level of species? Interesting...

Well,....in the Nashville area, there are two Ratsnakes indigenous to the area, the Black Ratsnake, and the Gray Ratsnake.

As this range map also suggests, I'd say from the looks of it that it has some intergrade lineage of BOTH Ratsnakes, although it does seem to have some visual traits also found in the Texas Ratsnake(lighter yellowish background). But unless this was an escaped animal, or a product of a released/escapee snake at one time that mated with one from the area and had offspring, of which your animal is the result of, it would be way too far away to have any natural influence from the Texas Rat.

I can say for a fact that it has a good percentage of Black Rat in it's genetic lineage, and very likely Gray as well,...but beyond that, it's impossible to say.

best regards, ~Doug

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

BTW Dmong, as I've been browsing the forums I'd noticed someone with "~ Doug" in their sigs, but didn't make the connection with you - my name happens also to be Doug (but without the leading tilde). Doug, meet Doug! But I digress...

In my 7 years in this house I've caught two or three garters and a gorgeous baby eastern milk snake, but those have been scattered across the years. This one I caught about two weeks after catching another slightly smaller one (about 48" where this one's a solid 5'), which makes this variety downright common in my book. That's my way of saying I doubt this one is an escapee (because as the Highlander would say "there can be only one", right?), but there's no reason why it couldn't be a hybrid offspring of an escapee and a local gray or black rat.

On a side note, how much would you expect one of these guys to travel? I could let it go under my back deck, but then there's my own lawnmower and driveway to consider. My neighbors on one side have dogs that run in the fenced back yard, and NONE of my neighbors are particularly snake-savvy if you catch my drift.

There's an empty plot across the street that's three lots wide, heavily wooded with a creek through it (rat snake paradise, I would think!), but it has houses on both ends. I'd prefer to release the snake there, but not if it's likely to wander into the yards of ignorant people who have lawnmowers and a fear of snakes...

LOL!,...that's pretty interesting that your name is also Doug, so with that said,....glad to meet ya!..LOL!

Yes, I know what you mean about releasing it and wondering if it will eventually meet up with a deadly problem of some kind, namely ignorant humans, and/or their cars,....and even the dogs they own. I once captured a very small Gopher Tortoise in my back yard in central Florida, and thought I would do it a big favor by placing it far outside my fenced yard in some nearby wooded lots. Well, a couple days later, I saw one of our Miniature Wire-haired Dachshunds dilligently chewing on something, and would NOT come to me no matter how mad I got while calling it's name. Well, as I walked closer to the dog to see why it was ignoring me, I had a horrible thought come over me as the item the dog was chewing became more visible. It was the very same young Tortoise that I thought I was doing the "big favor" for a few days earlier.....I had a terrible heart-sunk feeling when I discovered this, as the young Tortoise's intestines were all exposed from being chewed by the dog,..it was still quite alive too which made me feel even worse than I already did. I quickly did what was best for the animal, and swiftly put it out of it's misery. So the moral of this story is, bad things can happen at any time when humans and their pets are in close proximity of wild animals. If it was me, and I was going to release it, I would try to find a similar, but more remote area to release it in, as like you mentioned, it could easily meet up with a shovel, a dog, a lawnmower, car, etc...

anyway, you get the idea!..LOL!

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

A study that I believe was conducted partly in Tennessee back in 1999 or 2000 by S. J. Mullin, W.H.N. Gutzke, G.D. Zenitsky, and R.J. Cooper observed home ranges of ratsnakes up to 13.4 hectares (33 acres) though the average was much lower. The snakes in Vermont seem to move a bit farther and conduct something of an annual loop but no radio telemetry studies have been done here. Ratsnakes have pretty high natality rates (returning to the same den year after year to hibernate) so I would not be surprised if displaced animals will wander for extended periods of time looking for familiar ground. I don't even know if Tennessee ratsnakes even den though -- it might be warm enough down there for them to avoid it.

Not ratsnake but many people believe that Wood Turtles can actually "home" in on their habitat and if they are displaced even miles can make their way back. I doubt they can home like a pigeon but they definitely wander very long distances in the search for familiar land. Wood Turtles have very good spacial memory so as soon as they find land that they recognize they then go directly where they want to from there. I don't know how long a very far displaced individual will roam before giving up and settling in on the new habitat and there are certainly many species that are perfectly content wherever they are dropped off as long as there is suitable habitat. Ratsnakes in TN might go either way depending on how critical natal den sites are but I would never move one out of its home range in VT for fear it would wander great distances, become stressed, and then die in the winter.

It sounds like you are in a fairly developed area so it seems amazing to me that the snake hasn't been killed already. I try to make a habit out of letting things go exactly where I find them since they got there safely enough the first time and know how to get back to the rest of their home range but the wood lot might be its best shot. I guess it's your call, I just wanted to give you some food for thought.

In my experience, at least at lower elevations in TN, most colubrids don't den; they just hole up a few feet under the ground or leaves, kinda like box turtles. Plenty of kings and rats are dug up by contractors working in the winter. Pit vipers seem a little more prone to communal denning here, but even they often just burrow a couple feet under an old stump instead of using a serious den.

It sounds like the consensus is probably that the critter's best bet is probably the wooded lot. I would be inclined to let it go where I found it, but that was in the middle of a road! The snake obviously isn't a total idiot if it's lived long enough to reach this size, but it only has to make the mistake of getting run over once, and I almost did that to it myself.

If rats roam up to 33 acres then the snake could well make it back over to the road, but the woods, the water, etc. would probably give it less incentive to go over that way since it would have to cross multiple wide open residential lawns to get there, and I'm sure food is plentiful down there. Personally, I'd like to have it in my back yard for mole control, but I don't imagine it would be too effective with them since they live under the ground.

As far as winters are concerned, it can definitely get cold in the winters here, with sub-freezing temperatures being common for short stretches of a few days at a time. But there must be plenty of opportunities for denning in that lot with all the trees, underbrush and geological features, especially since someone who THOUGHT they were going to develop there cut down a lot of trees two summers ago and left piles of them laying around. Well, they finally realized why no one has developed the lot yet after 15 years, and those reasons are the same sort of things that would make it a happy home for any self-respecting snake.

I don't remember if I mentioned this when you posted this map before, but it simply is not accurate for the Tennessee area. I've caught rats all over TN, and I help curate the bulk of Tennessee's herp specimens, so I'm not just talking through my teeth here. I've seen a whole mess of TN ratsnakes!

Ratsnakes with the classic 'black rat' appearance occur throughout the Appalachian portion of TN (approximately the eastern third); however, rats closer to the OP's snake and some with classic gray ratsnake appearance can be found in the lower elevations of east TN, especially in the Ridge and Valley. Solid black snakes don't occur in Middle and West Tennessee; we have varying shades of gray, brown, and yellow snakes throughout the western two-thirds, though snakes in the Memphis area tend to be rather pale. You can find snakes like the OP's across all 400 miles from the Mississippi to the Blue Ridge (essentially the entire range of Burbrink's E. spiloides).

Also, I see no evidence of yellow ratsnake influence in southeast Tennessee; snakes there look like the gray rats elsewhere in the state. That same range extension is shown in the Peterson guide; I don't know what its basis is. As I mentioned, snakes with yellow coloration are common throughout the state; I don't think it has anything to do with the yellow rats of the Atlantic slope. Striping also occurs occasionally, but it is much less regular than in the eastern populations and is clearly derived from the typical blotched pattern.

Yes, we had a discussion a while back about the range map's accuracy in the Tennessee area. Since I don't live, or do any herping in that area, and can't verify any of the map's content from that area personally, it could very well have some definite inaccuracies in that region, and certainly even some other areas as well, as any lines drawn by any author are basically gotten from another source, and those sources can always be incomplete, or just plain wrong altogether.

But all that aside, the animal originally posted about is still what it is,....as the area mentioned is absolutely Black and Gray Rat territory, and certainlt not Texas Rat, etc...

But yes, I'm not disputing that there can't be a problem with portions of the map. As a matter of fact, I'd tend to agree with the absents of the Yellow Rat in the area you mentioned as well from other info I've gathered in the past.

BTW, do you have a better, more accurate range map for the Northern Ratsnake complex that you could post to better illustrate their distribution?

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

Unfortunately, I don't know of any such map, and I don't know enough about the animals' distribution in other areas to draw one. It would be nice to have some kind of quantitative study of the color patterns in different parts of the range of this and other broad-ranging snakes, but it's just not the sort of thing that funding is available for. I think the existing range maps are largely based on impressions and guesswork, since the distinctions between the subspecies are not clear-cut and are often invisible in preserved specimens. Oh well!

Yeah,....I know what you mean, and agree whole-heartedly!

Like we both know, the whole complex is pretty problematic in regards to definition, they just sort of wander from area to area throughout the country making color and pattern changes as they go, and breeding with everything in between as well!,......unless the animal is right in the very middle of a well documented territory, any given snake can look totally different from another one in the very same area!, and have at least SOME geneflow from any other neighboring obsoleta.

Like you said, ...oh well,....what can ya do!

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

gray X black, looks intermediate.
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