Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm posting this pic for SteveG ... been trying to email it to him but that wasn't working. This is a male intergrade pine (lodingi X mugitus) from the Escambia Co. Fla. gene pool (4th or 5th generation). I had this guy out yesterday and a friend who is 6'4" held his tail up even with the top of his head and he still had about 6" of snake on the ground ... he's a big boy ... and I'll bet he could kick any L. getula's butt he wanted!

SteveB

Thanks for the pic. That guy definitely looks more like lodingi than mugitus. Any close ups? Looks like he has some light coloration on his face.

That's a beautiful snake. He is very typical of the intergrades I've seen from that area, although they do cvary a little..some have a little more brown/tan and they do tend to get darker as they get older.

I'll bet he COULD kick any getula's butt...but my guess from the looks of him is that he would just let you do it for him ....he looks like he's had a pretty easy life.

pretty cool snake...I live 2 counties over in Okaloosa... in 15 yrs I have only found one pine and that was a 5.5 ft beautiful southern pine DOR killed (head partially severed-not run over) on a dirt road in Eglin. people around here are mostly ignorant and kill every snake and brag how they killed a rattler or moccassin.... do you live nearby and have any offspring of that beauty?

i meant to say "ignorant about snakes" around here in the panhandle. they love to kill snakes. 2 days ago a nurse brought me a beautiful small red rat freshly killed by the policeman she called to her home to rescue her from the problem snake. she forgot to tell me the snake was dead before i opened the container...so sad...snakes around here hardly have a chance.

Here's a pic of the big boy's head ...it does have some light brown in it. The next post will have a pic of his tail ... it's strongly ringed. His girlfriend has less patterning on her, but still more than my pure "generic" (somewhere in Alabama) lodingi. The intergrades are descende from the original animals collected in 1983 that established the presence of this "morph" in Florida.

And yes ... he's had a great life and would not harm a flea ... even a nasty getula. His girlfriend however ...she's another story!

SteveB

Here's the big guys tail ... pretty strongly banded.

SteveB

Actually, the presence of P.m.lodingi x mugitus in Escambia County was established long before 1983. I remember Dr. Mount (Biology Professor, Auburn University) talking about it in the early 1970's, and I believe that he had a paper on in from around that time, maybe the mid-'70's. It is also mentioned in Dr. Mount's book from 1975, The Reptiles and Amphibians of Alabama. It seems (to my fading memory) that Dan Speake had also examined specimens from that area before the 1970's. I personally saw a couple of specimens from Escambia County in the mid to late '70's, and Tom Yarbrough and I had some conversations about them during that time frame.

That close-up of the face is definitely typical lodingi x mugitus. Once again, very nice animal.

Thanks for the pic!
I have a male about a foot shorter than yours with exactly the same coloration.
I have no idea of the locality...it was raised from an egg laid by a captive-bred parent, that's all I know. I thought it was "pure" lodingi, but now I'm not so sure...

At any rate, that's a nice snake!!

chris

He's gorgeous!

This snake was a pure savage beast in his day. He was 6'4" and was 7 pounds. Nice pine though but he would have been munched on by this King.

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Keith Hillson

Man, what are you doing with a gun in space? - Charles "Chick" Chapple