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I was pretty stoked when I first saw this photo, so I thought I'd share it in a few places. This copperhead was wild caught in NC.

CH

Southeastern Hot Herp Society

>>I was pretty stoked when I first saw this photo, so I thought I'd share it in a few places. This copperhead was wild caught in NC.
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>>CH
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>>Southeastern Hot Herp Society

Now THAT is an interesting copperhead! Wow, is that just some sort of crazy color mutation or is it a natural hybrid? I would ponder that maybe it's an aberrantly patterny anery specimen, but the head is pretty normal from what I can tell in the photo, so I'm guessing that's not it. I guess it's possible for snakes to still be some sort of strange color morph over most of their bodies but leave some parts normal or at least different from the rest. What are your thoughts on what caused the look to this snake?

What an incredible animal - so odd, it looks like some whacked-out hybrid!! What are your thoughts?

There's nothing else from the Agkistrodon genus in that area that copperheads could possibly breed with to produce a hybrid, so it has to be a natural morph.

Broken patterns of all types appear from time to time in nature. Heck, I've even seen a striped Eastern diamondback. There's no telling what occurred to produce to this animal. Maybe a copperhead ate a rat that ate shrooms?

CH

You saw this first hand or just the photo? Head looks out of place on the body to me. Weird.

I have a stack of photos on my desk right now. Here is another of those. Believe me, it's real.

CH

Thanx, that's wild. On that one, the head doesn't look as out of place, almost the same color as the body.

A truly amazing snake! But aside from the copper head, I'm having a hard time accepting that it's as simple as a copperhead with an anomalous pattern. I've never seen anything like it.

Could it be some kind of copperhead/cottonmouth intergrade? Or perhaps a foreign species that somehow managed to find it's way into the wild in NC? Aside from that, and unless there's a toxic waste facility or nuclear power plant nearby, I'm out of ideas! LOL Michaelb

I saw a hybrid of one somewhere on this forum....just a guess...

i once read of an account in herp review, in the eighties, i think, but nothing ever came of the mating. You might find something in Conant and Gloyd's monograph.
Probably a result of continued inbreeding, out breeding, and combinations of those that allowed some recessive allele to be expressed in the phenotype.
Alot of time, 18,000 yrs has passed sinse the last phase of the Wisconsonian(sp?) glaciation.

I would bid major money for that critter if the folks who caught it are reachable and interested, if it is a pattern variant and not a hybrid. The anatomy looks reasonably normal from what I can see in the photo, but a venom sample would be more telling.

I'll pass it on. I don't think you know the guy who owns it, but he's an SHHS member so he knows of you.

CH