Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Up here in VT every black rat I've seen has had a white/grayish underside with black or darker gray markings that are sparse toward the head and completely take over toward the tail. I saw one captive ratsnake a number of years ago that was bred in Florida and had more of a pinkish/orange underside background instead of the white/gray.

Anyway, ratsnakes are threatened here and I recently found a DOR specimen in a part of the state that does not have historic records of that species. The belly was very similar to the captive one I saw with an orangish/pink color. Do any of you know how the black ratsnake varies from north to south? Do southern individuals have more colorful bellies? It's possible that if this is a wild snake that isolation from our other populations could explain the different physical appearance but I'm led to believe that it is an escaped (although illegal) pet.

I found this one in Oklahoma City, OK.

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1.1 Rosy Boa
0.1 Mexican Rosy Boa
1.0 Coastal Carpet Python
2.1 Miniature Daschund

Yes that looks very like the two black rats I have found in my yard in OKC. As I understand it, the further south and west you go in the black rat range, the more variation you see, ranging from virtually all black in the east to a more patterned look with tans, browns, pinks and even yellows in adult snakes down into Oklahoma and Texas, where the snake tends to be called the Texas rat snake. All in all, it's a varigated species that is surprisingly abundant and adaptible, at least here in Oklahoma. From what I have seen, the closer to full black and the least patterning, the more north and east you are.

That snake is probably an integrade between a black and texas rat snake. Their ranges overlap over much of Oklahoma.
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Matt Kauffman