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are there any reliable characteristics to identify ratsnakes?

Really depends on what you define as ratsnakes. There have been a number of revisions, with some Elaphe such as the radiated ratsnakes actually being racers and thus put into a new genus called Coelognathus.

If you'd like a copy of that article, email me and I'll send you the PDF I have of it.

Cheers
B
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so ratsnakes are like a more general category of snakes?then why are they called ratsnakes? doesn't the term constitute a category of snakes sharing some common trait seen in all ratsnakes? how do they categorize ratsnakes as ratsnakes then? so far i've used ratsnakes in all my sentences lol...

The common names of snakes don't always reflect true relationships. People will call any largish colubrid that eats rodents a 'rat snake'. This is why Spilotes is called the 'tiger ratsnake' even though it has no real relationship with anything else that's called a ratsnake. Also, some snakes are called both racers and ratsnakes by different people, like the red mountain racers/bamboo ratsnakes Elaphe porphyera... porpherycea? and stripetailed racers/ beauty ratsnakes E. taeinura.
(I used the old names there)
So something being called a ratsnake doesn't mean its related to other things called ratsnakes. It just means that it might eat rats. Or looks like something that might eat rats.
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Peter: It's OK, I'll handle it. I read a book about something like this.
Brian: Are you sure it was a book? Are you sure it wasn't NOTHING?

ok..thanks a lot..cleared up some ambiguity cause the many ratsnakes that i've seen differs vastly and i just couldn't connect them in any mutual relationship..
thanks again

Elaphe (ratsnakes) was a taxonomical dumping ground for a large group of often utterly unrelated snakes. This was the genus version of what also occured with the 'colubrids' as a whole, which was a dumping ground for anything that wasn't obviously an elapid or viperid. Turns out the 'ratsnakes' don't exist as a natural group and the 'colubrids' are actually a half dozen or so distinct families, some of which are much much more closely related to elapids than to other 'colubrids'.

Cheers
BGF
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