Reptile & Amphibian Forums

just thought id share a pic of a local blackrat caught in va today on the road not bad for a little guy

Here in WV, the only road snakes I've seen were dead. I wish I could be lucky enough to come up on some of the gorgeous black rats I've seen killed before other people

all the black rats are gray rats. The coloration is less darker, but you can see the petterning more. The next one I find I'll get a pic of. I do have a juvie I found on the road a week ago. I'll get a pic of him for a comparison. Mind you gray rats and black rats are the same speices and same subspecies.
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14 Leopard Geckos 5.9.0
1 Leopard Gecko egg cookin...took mold off (dimpling now)
2 Tokay Geckos 2.0.0
1 Graybanded Kingsnake 1.0.0 (on vacation in my house)
1 Baird's Rat Snake (Thanks Vadoni!) 1.0.0
1 Gray Ratsnake 0.0.1
2 Dekay's Snake 0.0.2
1.0 Ambystoma tigrinum nebulosum
1.1 Green Tree Frogs (H. cinerea)
0.0.1 Gray Tree Frog (H versicolor)
1.0 Bird-Voiced Tree Frog

Virginia Black Ratsnakes are not the same subspecies as the Gray Ratsnake. Black Ratsnakes are Elaphe (Pantherophis) obsoleta obsoleta. Gray Ratsnakes are Elaphe (Pantherophis) obsoleta spiloides. There is also the Yellow Ratsnake, the Everglades Ratsnake and the Texas Ratsnake. They are all the same species but not the same subspecies.

There is a debate that uses mtDNA to show that these five subspecies are not related in the way that they are now classified. The proponents of this system would eliminate all of the subspecies and group the snakes by geographical location. By this proposal, the Virginia Ratsnake that was in the picture would be called Elaphe alleghaniensis because it was found east of the Appalachian Mountains and the Apalachicola River. A Gray Ratsnake would be called Elaphe spiloides if it were found west of the Appalachian Mountains and the Apalachicola River, and at the same time, east of the Mississippi River. By this system of classification a Black Ratsnake found in Indiana would be the same species as a Gray Ratsnake found in Indiana. Most Texas Ratsnakes, because they are found west of the Mississippi River, would be named Elaphe obsoleta. Elaphe bairdi would be in a clade of its own. By this naming system, to tell what type of Black Ratsnake you had, you would need to know where it was found in the United States.

For information on this naming system see the following:

SYSTEMATICS OF THE EASTERN RATSNAKE COMPLEX (ELAPHE OBSOLETA)
by Frank T. Burbrink
Herpetological Monographs: Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 1–53.

MITOCHONDRIAL DNA PHYLOGEOGRAPHY OF THE POLYTYPIC NORTH
AMERICAN RAT SNAKE (ELAPHE OBSOLETA): A CRITIQUE OF THE
SUBSPECIES CONCEPT
by FRANK T. BURBRINK, ROBIN LAWSON, AND JOSEPH B. SLOWINSKI
Evolution, 54(6), 2000, pp. 2107–2118
SYSTEMATICS OF THE EASTERN RATSNAKE COMPLEX (ELAPHE OBSOLETA)

Not 20 minutes ago, my mom pulled into our driveway and started honking the horn. She yelled something about a snake when I opened the window so I sprinted down to where she had stopped. There in our driveway was what I presumed to be a courting pair of wild black rats. Each of them was easily 4 feet long and quite thick. My dad pulled in right after I got there and we all stood around watching them sit motionless against each other. After a few minutes one moved off into the bushes and the other one followed with a little prodding. Both were nice and black, but I could still see some traces of white from the "female's" juvenile pattern. I just wish I'd taken the camera down with me. I know males have been known to initiate combat with one another, but from the position they were in, I think they had been courting.

It is east to tell if they are mating. Just the tails will intertwine, and the male will often bite and hold the female behind the head. These are plenty of pictures of snakes mating in this forum. In unconfined areas, the snakes will be stretched out and the male will be on top of the female.

Since you saw only two snakes, the odds are that these snakes were mating.

Glad that you got a chance to see them.

Well they were somewhat spooked by the time I got there. Tails weren't locked yet, so I assume they had just started courting when we disturbed them. It was cool to see though-I'm all for more little black rats on our property.