Reptile & Amphibian Forums

At the risk of sounding ignorant. That looks like any Eastern I've ever seen. Looks to me like eastern indigos and Texas Indigos are the same. Whats the dogone difference? Looks like my so-called easterns!Please tell me I have'nt been scamed.
Also,... are there any good maps out there wich show the ranges of both species? And why would'nt there be any indigos in Louisiana? Where is the line of demarcation between the two? Does Louisiana have any protective laws in place? Where can I get my hands on more info? I want to know more, more, more!!!
Tony.

Snakeman...

First of all...the ranges do not overlap...not even close. At one time, they obviously did, but not within record.

TX indigos do not occur further east than S.central TX and eastern indigos do not occur further west than Alabama in today's world. Historically, they occurred in S Mississippi and possibly into LA. They are now extripated in these states.

Although the pics look very similar, they do look different in person. TX indigos always seem to look much blacker in photos than they are. They are not nearly as glossy black as easterns.

You'll notice the chin color is actually a golden...not red. and you'll never see an eastern with gold on it.

Collins and Conant describe difference in the facial scales that
differnciate the 2 subspecies...check out the peterson field guide to eastern r & a...but, here's a photo I created to compare.

The snake on the left is a TX indigo I produced, now owned by "old herper", the right pic is one of my breeder easterns.

NOW...to throw a big wrench in this...we had a guy from Texas post recently that he has caught Texans that scale out to be easterns !!!

All the snakes I've seen in captivity scale out properly tough.
No one should be selling TX indigos as easterns to scam someone though...Texans are are least as hard (probably harder) to come by in captivity and are injust as high demand !

O.K. I get it now,...I think.Thank you so much for the info. But I'd still like to get my hands on more info.! Where can I find more publications, articles, and papers written specificly about indigos?! I want to learn!
Those where some great pics! If I ever saw something like that crawling around my property, I'd probably **** my pants and not care!