Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Ok,how can you tell the difference between a luecistic texas rat and a luecistic black rat, i hope this question isn't to silly but i am not to good with knowing much about luecistics so please guys/gals be nice to me ok....and also does anyone have any pics of adult luecistic texas and/or black rats that they might be willing to share with me? i bought a luecistic black rat at a show about 3-4 months ago she is still young but eats like a hog and i was just wanting to see a pick of an adult to give me an idea of what she may look like as an adult.

I'd think it would be very difficult to say for sure whether it was texas or black rat. You could try scale counts but the count ranges are widely ovelapping for these two subspecies.
John

Black rats tend to be larger in length and girth as adults, but it probably would be difficult to tell babies apart. The Joliffs had a pic of one of their leucistic breeders in the classifieds very recently-you could probably still find it.

I looked up the scale counts, and all of the P. obsoleta sp. seem to have the same scale count, so that won't help you. I would guess that the trait came from a Texas Rat Snake. Leucistic Texas Rats are well documented. There are reports of a Leucistic Black Rat being found in M.D., but who knows, it could have been someone's pet that got loose. In the wild, these snakes are very rare, and usually they get eaten early in their lives because they stick out like sore thumbs.