Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I firmly believe they are. Different species? Yes...probably. Different Genus? No Way.

I think the genetics SHOULD be (as Wolfgang proposed)
-Drymarchon corais corais (yt cribo)
-Drymarchon melanurus (central american subs...rubiudus, unicolor, orizibensis, erebennnus etc)
-Drymarchon couperi (eastern)

In my humble opinion, there are far too many differences for corais to be the same species as the rest of the Dry's...but too many similarities for them NOT to be in the Drymarchon genus.

Differences:
-slash under the eye missing,
-attitude. (as wc at least)
- head size slightly smaller in comparison, but only in young animals. Mature adults exhibit the massive Dry. skull
- breeding is more likely triggered by rainy season oncome rather than "winter"
- lay more, smaller eggs than couperi and erebennus, but may be similar to melanurus and unicolor, which I have not bred. Help here Dan F?
-newborn neonates are similar in length, but slimmer, than erebennus and couperi

Similarites:

-Adult size, (yt's seem to be larger on average as mature adults than the rest...although melanurus and unicolor are not at all far behind)
-shape and girth as mature adults
-large scales
-strength (sorry Carl, I can't agree with you here...you need to wait until a large specimen gets loose and try to fight you for it's freedom. They are every bit as strong as a reticulated python of the same size. I'm not exaggerating)
-method of subduing prey and infinate prey variation
- largely terrestrial and diurnal
-Texture of eggs (i.e. the calcium deposits)

To echo what Doug said...those eggs were the clincher. Who could look at the eggs in the pic I posted and argue they are from a Drymarchon?

I would agree with almost everything Dean said...I would, however, place the Tx with the Eastern...Then the "Mexican" group, Uni's, BT, and maybe the rubidus( I say maybe, because structurally they are more similar to couperi/errebennus...Life habits, "personalities" etc more like Uni&BT)...YT's should definetly be separate species...Of the 4 I have now, only one, a male, "looks" like a Dry...I have 2 females as big as him and they still have small heads...

As Dean points out the YT has smaller eggs, but so do the BT's and Uni's...Haven't bred rubidus successfully yet..I'm not sure what to make of that observation...

I still stand by the "strength" statement for now...Maybe when I have 4 of them over 7' I'll change my mind...Deanno's animals definitely have the "Dry" head shape!!! And I assume the strength to go with it...

Another thing to consider....As late as the 60's, couperi were found in Texas, La, Ms, etc...I am not at all sure that couperi and errebennus did not have overlapping ranges on the mid to upper TX coast...It just doesn't make sense to me...The habitat is identical from Florida thru Central America along the coastal areas...Where does that fit in the overall scheme of things?? The certainly would breed, if they did overlap...

Sorry, I probably raised more questions than I intended And I certainly am not a "scale counter"...

How about just some more opinions on my species groupings???
-----
Carl W Gossett
Garage Door Herps
Monument,Colorado...northern territory of the Great Republic of Texas

...Indigo snake on record was taken in Wayne County in November of 1939. It was a 6 1/2' male and is in the collection of the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science in Jackson. Wayne County is the fourth county north of the Gulf Coast and borders Alabama. No records exist west of there and they have never been recorded in Louisiana. It is possible that both Easterns and Texans moved northward out of Mexico independantly of each other. The Gulf of Mexico was much smaller in Pleistocene times. Easterns may have moved north from "Yucatan" into southern "Florida." Texans may have come north through what we now know as mainland Mexico, i.e., Veracruz, Tamaulipas, etc.

Can't agree on habitats being similar along the Gulf Coast from Florida through Central America, though. Cheers, TV

Speaking of Mississippi,

There is only ONE record in the state ????!!! I had no idea.

Have any of the animals that Dr. Speake released in MS ever been seen again?

Are they now considered extripated in MS ?

Yeah, they're gone. Every once in awhile a citizen reports a big black snake and calls it an Indigo for lack of a better name. Speake made two releases 25 years ago; one legal and one illegal. All newborns in Stone and Marion Counties. None were ever seen again.

Interestingly, I have two postcards from Mr. Charles N. Peay, Sr., describing a "blue indigo" he captured and released near his home in Ackerman, Mississippi. This is in the north-central part of the state and far outside of the Longleaf Pine Belt. He describes it as seven feet long and states that "they sure do have a pretty head swell". He released it but other than finding a "7 ft Chicken snake", he has been unable to recapture it. He does state "But I will do My Best, as I never Give up." That was 17 October 1977.

The late Bill Turcotte was the former head of the old Mississippi Dept. of Fish & Game and a highly skilled naturalist. He collected a large specimen in Perry County (7' )back in the 50's, and gave it to his daughter as a pet. They housed it in a closet at the family home for some years until it ultimately escaped. Around the same time he observed another Indigo Snake consuming a 3' Eastern Diamondback at the same location. He was drawn to the scene by the noise at which time the Indigo withdrew with his catch into a tortoise burrow.

Check out the report of the discovery of the first Black Pinesnake in Wright & Wright and let us know what your take on Lodings remarks are. If you haven't read it, you may find it interesting. Cheers, Terry

in the summer of 2001, (I was with Mike Sisson of the Jackson Museum of nat. science)

We met a f&w officer who swore he saw an indigo earlier that summer. He was aware of the Speake releases and said they were very near where he saw the "huge, 7' black snake" Of course that was very exciting. HE said he knew it was an indigo b/c of the "rust color" under the chin.

A visitor asked what it was, and he told him it was an indigo and it "was ok to pick it up because indigos were not aggressive"

when the visitor went to pick it up...it "coiled and let out a hiss like you would not believe"

Of course that was the big let down to us.
I didn't say anything to the officer, but obviously it was a black pine.

I have seen a pic of a eastern indigo threatening with its mouth agape and neck flattened vertically.It was'nt coiled up though.
Tom

Indigos do a little hiss when they are nervous like a quick "shh-shh-shh"...but it's not very loud.

This guy got animated and described this coiled up LOUD and PROLONGED hissing. He even mentioned that the snake held it's ground and continued to hiss as they walked away.It was classic pine snake behavior. and black pines are native to the region...

funny you should ask dean cause i just remarked to dt that my uni eggs are huge compared to my bt eggs....bigger by perhaps 25%. uni eggs are more elliptical too, not as round as bt eggs. and the hatchlings of both are not exactly husky either....almost delicate looking requiring no more than a couple pinks as a meal at first. somewhere along the line they catch up though sizewise to other dryjoys, demonstrating monsterous appetites and the ability to eat twice a week [fairly large meals] w/out effort. there is an 02 here now that can and does eat fair sized small rats weekly! granted, he was given special attention from the git-go but he is astonishingly large for his age and will certainlyn be a record breaker one day....as far as bites go, i was just recently mauled by a smallish wc yt and meant to post about it but never got around to it. i have NEVER been bitten up like that in my life! this thing just went savage, inflicting a dozen or more shots on me while i struggled to re-gain control of the little bast--d. the ka-ka hit the fan though when he worked his way up my arm and started on my fingers. i could feel him hitting bone but it was the pressure he was putting out that was unreal! it was kinda like i was being stapled for 8/10 seconds at a time. he was really, really angry! this was all from a skinny 3.5' fresh import. imagine if he had been a full grown, hefty, load bearing adult in that frame of mind, i would have lost the tip of my finger.....maybe more. since then [2 weeks ago], he has calmed down a lot and has begun adjusting nicely, settling into 'the routine' but notice was served as to what these things are capable of when still stressed out.

I too think that the Texas and Eastern ought to remain seperate subspecies of each other. I've had some texas indigos that looked very similar to easterns and some texas indigos that had alot of characteristics of bt....I'm sure you have seen them...the blond headed texas indigos! Maybe blonds do have more fun!!!

Dan P.