Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've really gotten hooked on the Mexican baird rat snake. The gray head is really great in contrast to the body color of this population.

Well, well! Nice pic! Do you mind if I use this one for my presentation on bairdi?
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...and I think to myself, "What a wonderful world."

I've noticed that trait before, but yours is more obvious. I had a normal corn snake once that had this bright orange and yellow body but a grey head. It seems most lindheimeri (or whatever they call it now) have a grey head as well, even the ones with the bright orange ground color. Even with Bogertophis, I have found a suboc that had a yellow body but a solid grey head. It seems to be a rat snake thing. That's a good looking bairds, not for the head, but for the body color.

What happens is that a lot of North American rat snakes go through a pattern and color change up until they are 3 years old with some taking almost 5 years to complete. The Mexican Baird has crossbars on its dorsal side and a stripe on its head. The head and body have the same ground color which is gray. The snake goes through a color and pattern change. The crossbars change to 4 stripes and the stripe on the head fades until it disappears completely. The scale edges and underneath ground color of the body changes to the orange or burnt orange color you see. The head does not go through a scale color change. So the head remains the original ground color of the baby (gray) with the stripe that was there as a hatchlings disappearing so you get the patternless/stripeless head. This works similar for many of the North American rat snakes. The yellow rat snake changes from a patterned body and stripe on the head to stripped body and patternless head.

Here's one of my '03 baby yellows I produced this year. I'll post a pic of the parent on a response post.

Terry Parks

Notice the stripe on the head of the baby has disappeared on the parent. The pattern on the body of the baby is now stripes.

Terry Parks