Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a cribo that I obtained as a rescue so I had zero information about his past. How do you tell a blacktail from a unicolor? He is "uniform" in color, the tail is slightly darker but is not even close to black. The tail seems to get a little lighter as he grows as well. Besides color alone, is there some other physical identification of the sub-species?

Thanks

Ken

Scale counts and such overlap so much between the two subspecies as to be virtually useless.

A good Blacktail will actually have a black tail which will get darker, if anything, with age. There are some uni x melanurus intergrades that are sold as Blacktails (commonly called "Browntails". A unicolor will begin life with a dark tail which will lighten with age until the snake is pretty much uniform in color front to back. Unicolors, in my experience anyway, tend to be somewhat harder to find.
-----
We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children. Ralph Waldo Emerson

ntxt