Reptile & Amphibian Forums

The question - Can any describe the specifics between a Russian rat and Korean rat (scale counts,etc.)and is there any current literature on sperating the subspecies?

Second, Mars was a nice show. It's always great to see uncommon species but also reminded me that there are so many more species that will hopefully be represented in more collections (I didn't see any coxi, rhynos, situla- which I was looking for, or moellendorffi)

I picked up a male albino climachophora (to mix up my bloodlines and I PRAY they are combatable)

And a pair of albino Korean ratsnakes (one pictured) which is what lead to my original question.

And the plug is for Larry at Prairieland Herpetoculture who is truely a genuine great guy!

OOPs That's compatable, not combatable

Tom -

Someone, I think it was Helfenberger, '01, split schrencki and anomala into two species. But the latest work, Utiger et al., states the differences bt. the two don't warrant separate specific status. I guess we'll be going back to subspecies level for these two in Elaphe schrencki, either right away or in the near future. That's all I know on that.

I agree that schrencki and anomala are too much alike to split into separate species. Anomala has a slightly higher scale count I believe and may attain slightly larger proportions, but not much, imo. There's a lot they have in common, including being almost identical at birth. There are slight differences, like schrencki being more black normally. The main way to tell them apart is by behavior, imo. Anomala is much more shy.

Those albino Koreans are a pretty neat looking snake. I saw them at Daytona, I think. Anyway, nice looking. Good luck with them in the future. As far as those other Asians go, most people just don't know what they're missing...LOL.

TC

np

Why are you hoping the albino male is compatible? Are climas another species with two different loci for amelanism? I've never looked into the albinos because a) I couldn't even find a pair of normals in my country when I was buying and b) why would you want an albino when you could have blue and green snakes? These guys are by far my favourite (even as I leak blood all over the keyboard from feeding them) and I love the Kunishiri strain as is....

I agree that the colors on regular climacs are fantastic, but I also love the whites and yellows of the albinos which is why I'll always keep a colony of albinos, hets and normals.

I'm sure that the albinos are compatible, however when I think of Hypo's in Guttata's that are not, or boas that have two different strains, and I don't want to be the one to find an incompatable gene ( :

Yes yes, I can understand that I bought myself two very lovely and very black baby black ratsnakes this spring that came from an albino x albino breeding... the owners found out the hard way about two different strains of amelanism!

Your albino is very pretty (don't get me wrong on that) I guess I'm just a big fan of the colour blue... their behaviour is really what makes them my favourite snakes, it's not much like the north am lampropeltines except for their feeding response.