Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I came across this male tx rat snake a few weeks back near my house in rural east texas (N of tyler / W of longview)

He has a very dark dorsal coloration that almost completely washes out his pattern with very little red in between the scales for around here. The checked pattern on his stomach is very "washed out" and on his back are these two snow white spots. They are the exact same shade of white as under his chin.

is this scarring?
or some kind of leucistic trait?

the scales look fine up close. you will notice there is alot of red wash around some of them. A few are half white and half blackish red.

Not for certain, but the misshappen scales around the spots indicates scarring to me. Very interesting snake regardless.

-that snake would make some sweet-looking albinos...

Just curious, is it an adult, or subadult? The white looks like scarring, but the overall color is odd.

Sorry it took me so long to reply I got side tracked this weekend

I'd say its a sub adult, possibly old enough to breed. I didn't measure it's length but I'd say he's close to 4 feet. He weighs a hair over 300g......I say that in comparison to my 900g 6+ footer.

I changed my ftp files today so the pic in my original post is prolly screwed up.
Here's a new pic and a url for my tx rat pics if you want to compare.

That container is 14" wide. He needs to be fattened up too

tx rat pics
he's tx rat male 003