Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My friend's aunt found this snake dead on the road near their house. The neighbor said it was a rattler but it does not have rattles.... A dude I work with said it looked like a gophersnake?

Where are you located, that would help to provide a more accurate answer.

>>My friend's aunt found this snake dead on the road near their house. The neighbor said it was a rattler but it does not have rattles.... A dude I work with said it looked like a gophersnake?
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1.1 Pituophis lineaticollis lineaticollis
1.1 Black Pine
1.2 Still Water Hypos
0.0.1 Possibly stillwater x Red Bull
1.2 N. Pinesnake
1.0 Eastern Kings
1.1 Black Milksnake
0.0.1 Plains Garter
1.0 Chow Chow(2003 Papi)
0.1 Cat(Shug

Looks like a Louisiana pine to me! Whatever it is major bummer!

That most definitely looks like an LA pine to me. I guess locallity info would be needed to confirm this, but I'm 90% sure.
That's really to bad to see, but at least it would indicate that there is a population in that area.
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Matt Kauffman

...that is almost surely a Louisiana Pine Snake and is a highly endangered species. Posting any location data in an open forum may impact that population.

Please freeze the specimen and turn it over to the USF&G.

Great find, even if dead (very sad). Thanks for posting.
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See all my snakes at SerpenTrack.com

Your concerns are noted but thankfully and realistically unfounded. The known locality for this organism are actually quite small and very easily obtained. I would suggest that attempts by collectors to remove them from the wild would be fruitless.

The biggest threat to this species appears to be a lack of appropriate habitat. Habitat loss and fragmentation through contradictory timber land management, plantation timber tracts, fire supresion, and oil/natural gas harvest......and of course the heavy traffic these industries promote as noted with the poor fellow pictured above.
These is also the age old condition of many inhabitants that the only good snake is a dead snake.

Quite sad to hear story after story of, " we killed on of those....." .

There are some bright spots on the horizon in the form of some more LA pine friendly timber management practices on certain tracts of privately owned lands and captive release programs into suitable landscapes..... lets hope its not too late!

Sneaky John! ...but fun and not a bad little farse.

Well, obviously I'm not "in the know" but I am aware of fairly specific areas which are posted on the web. BUT, rather than open up a possibly newly discovered population to potential poachers it seemed prudent to error on the safe side.

Anyway, I assume those animals in your pic are absolutely known pure? If so, are they cleaner due to captive breeding etc. or are they just clean ruthveni?
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See all my snakes at SerpenTrack.com

yeah, he was a dirty old right out of the woods onto the HWY road kill. Absolutely as pure a ruthveni as one could find. Sadly the wheels of some log truck or snake hating local got him and cut his life short.....

Do you find that generations in captivity "clean" them up?
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See all my snakes at SerpenTrack.com

I really don't have a huge sample size of observations to say yes or no to that hypothesis..... there are probably a number of factors coming into play including relatively small numbers of individuals and limited localities represented in the captive founder pool and yes, probably some captive color/pattern preference bias as well. I for one had an idea of what a "real" ruthveni looked like but I am changing that target as my perspective is widened by exposure to "different" looking individuals.

I wonder how much it would cost for genetic testing and how applicable testing would be for some of the "odd" looking ruthveni out there in collections?

I have a friend who's collection of "ruthveni" would be a great place to start as he has a hodge podge of different looking animals......

Thanks John,
I too as well as many others I'm sure would love to know more about the genetics of the captive population.

I would think you'd know a lot more about this than me but as I understand it, it's too much for the average "joe". BUT, maybe you can get a "ride" along with some University sponsored program?
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See all my snakes at SerpenTrack.com

I posted this snake image and story under an alias in order to see what would transpire. Gotta say I am very impressed with the number of folks that were spot on, (don't know that I would have guessed it correctly)!

We were saddened to see this nice wild male P.ruthveni fall to the wheels of a car. It was actually run over several year ago and has been residing in a freezer ever since. And, of course, no the exact locality won't be posted although it is common knowledge and wouldn't do anyone much good anyway.

In texas this species has full T&E protection and surely is N America's rarest snake!

Thumbs up to those who guessed correctly and I am right there with you if you were confused by the ID.... This animal looks so much different than the animals I have in my collection.

Thanks for playing!

John...my stock came from yours..I think around 2003...and I have often wondered what LA pines look like across their range. I wonder if those towards the west would have more of a bull snake influence while those from the east would have more of a pine snake influence. I did see one in 1984 from south east Texas that a friend had caught and I thought it had more of a pine snake look to it then bull. Interesting subject though.

Dan