Reptile & Amphibian Forums

A few days ago I read the transcript of the chat with Don Soderberg from South Mountain Reptiles (hopefully he'll chime in), and he mentioned that what he was waiting for was the "hypermelanistic or fully melanistic" corn snake. Then I started thinking, if there was such a thing - say someone found one - would anyone be able to tell it apart from a black rat snake? Or, in scenario two, let's say one popped up in a corn snake clutch this season - would anyone believe that it was a corn and not a black rat? Even if it retained a some red and yellow, there are people who, rather than claiming black rats and corns integrade, insist that wild black rats with red or yellow only prove that black rats are highly variable.

Any opinions, ideas?

At first glance you'd think they would be similar, but I think the body type would be different enough to tell them apart. My 3' black rat is much more slender than any of my corns at 3' and the head shape is different. It wouldn't be obvious, but I think people who have experience with both could tell them apart.

Very interesting post. I love it when someone post something that really gets you to thinking. You have got to wonder what Mother Nature is cooking up right now that we havent discovered. Im sure the Hypermelanistic will pop up some day. I am also sure when it does the doubters will far outnumber the believers.
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1,0 snow
1,0 amel
1,0 texas corn
1,0 aney stripe motley
0,1 normal
0,1 charcoal
0,1 motley
1,1 oketee
0,1 tx rat
1,0 diadem
4,5 ball python
1,1 dumerils boa
1,1 columbian red tail boa
1,1 green iguana
1,0 leopard gecko
1,2 dogs
freezer full of mice & rats

Part of the reason I bring it up is that I remember several people on the rat snake board claiming they didn't believe that there really existed a certain black rat morph (I think it was leucistic, but I don't recall at this point). They claimed it was really a Texas rat being passed off as a black rat, or that it was the result of a breeding project designed to bring the Texas rat leucistic gene to o. obsoletus. Something like that, anyway.

Last fall I had an o. obsoletus and a g. guttatus that were roughly the same age and almost the same size. The guttatus has started to grow faster than the obsoletus, but when they were nearly equal, I remember thinking to myself that it would be really difficult to tell them apart if it weren't for the color.

I guess there would be differences of some kind, but I still wonder whether it would be accepted.