Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Seeking photos of Black Ratsnakes local to eastern KS and the Ozark region of AR & MO. Captive or in the wild.

Also, if you live in that region, I'd love to hear from you. I'm doing research on the specimens from that region that often have brown eyes and "diamondback" side patterns. (To me they look more like dome-shaped bee hives.)

I've already seen these:

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e209/ilherps/MO summer 05/EPV0047.jpg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stillusesfilm/2521792862/

This is such a helpful forum!

Ameron
Portland/Vancouver

0.1 Black Rat Snake

The Black Ratsnake shows a tremendous amount of variability throughout it's natural range. For each photo of a locality specific animal superficially resembling your specimen, there will be dozens of others from other locations. It would be close to impossible to reliably determine the locality of your specimen this way. And who ever suggested that your specimen is locality specific to begin with? Given the fact that you got it from a pet store?

I understand what you say, and you make good points.

I was trying to trace a possible origin of ancestors. Sometimes this can be possible. Examples:

Very dark specimens often tend to be from Eastern mountains.
Red-blotched specimens tend to be from the western range.

Very black specimens are by no means limited to the eastern part of it's range, nor are specimens like yours limited to the Ozark region. Another factor that significantly complicates your search, therefore demands some careful consideration, is that most captive Black Ratsnakes probably are of mixed origin. I'm certainly not suggesting that this includes your specimen, but if it can ever be traced back to a certain locale, it would have been worth mentioning when it still was on sale, wouldn't it?

Sorry, first of all. I've never posted photos before, and only recently got a digital camera, but can describe a few. Typically, they can be very black in KS, MO, and AR, but can have varying amounts of red, white, or both. Oftentimes, captive born offspring,(especially F1's) don't get as dark as their founder stock, so I wouldn,t be surprised if yours came from black adults. I have actually gotten blacker F2's. I've seen the reddish eyes in different parts of their range, sometimes even on very dark specimens. A lot of the ones in the west can have very dark eyes. If you check out snakesofarkansas.com, their photo gallery has some nice pics, with county info. There is also some sites with nice pics of eastern specimens. I can't recall what they are, but snakesandfrogs.com or something similar rings a bell.
I hope this helps you out. Take care.

Alan,

In time, I will plan to post more photos of mine on this forum.