Reptile & Amphibian Forums

So whats a Yuma king supposed to look like? The ones I posted below are from Casa Grande, AZ. (Between Phoenix & Tucson).
A female was collected and she produced two male axanthics 8 years ago.

I also discovered from talking to the breeder that there are two axanthics in the pic and 4 normals and not one axanthic like I previously posted. After taking a closer look you can see there are two axanthics intertwined on the left side of the pic.. It hard to tell but if you look you can see 6 snakes in the pic. Two axanthics and 4 normals.

A wild-caught gravid female was collected 1990. She was caught near Casa Grande, AZ. (Between Phoenix & Tucson).

She laid five eggs. She never bred again & ended up dying.

The babies were rasied up. 1.4 & bred in ‘93 /-. Two hatched out axanthic & were female.

There is more to this story as the original two axanthic females died but I will save the whole history for a later time. Just wanted to be accurate on what I posted so far.

If I can remember anywhere near correctly, the lite bands are suppose to be 1 1/2 scales rows wide or less.

Also, Casa Grande, is an area with many morphs of kings, from Cali, to yuma, to ones with lite centers on each side of the dark bands. I found those interesting. I found those around the baseball training camp(is it still in use?) Those according to you'sis appear to have splendida influence, but no splendida for miles and miles. Heck, not even close.

As you know, there are no yuma kings except by location, the ones in Yuma are yuma kings. The rest are narrow banded(lite bands) calkings.

I know that is dumb, but its not my fault, I would have kept them valid, the reason is, they are there.

You may be right, in the picture on my computer, shows nothing unusual. But your fla. kings were indeed different.

Please don't think of my opinions on these types of names as important, I am an olde fella and find it wonderous. People naming every little thing or not. Personally when you can get something to breed true, that is, all the way true, then you can name it. But if you cannot, its nothing but a morph or phase, or some such appearance label.

Forgive me, but with mice or dogs or other captive made things, must be line bred true for something over twenty generations to be considered a strain(new name). Maybe we need to set a number, because with all this captive stuff, there needs to be a way to verify it. Cheers FR

I live here in Yuma and have found out herping the different types of California (Yuma)kings here. Some look like the desert kings with the thin bands over the back the gradually get bigger towards the belly. Others have little or no white bands, but the bands can be found on the belly.

My theory is that this is just how the California Kingsnake evolved in this area, due to the openess of the desert and lack of cover (including hardly any biodiversity of plant and animal life) ,the calkings here are the ones that survived predators and evolved with little or almost no white bands, except for on the belly.

I don't really know, I've also heard alot of hearsay about the Yuma kingsnake in this area like;
The Yuma kingsnake is actually an intergrade and not a true calking and 50 years ago the species was released into the wild by some crazy collectors like FR, just kidding FR.

Here's a pic of a LTC 5-6ft Yuma King eating an unlucky sidewinder that was found in my garage. This large Yuma king ended up with someone I don't know, but was very mellow. I have 2 friends that have baby WC Yuma Kings from a couple of years ago, but I don't have pictures of them. And they look the same almost completely black.

The guy who has these was actually trying to breed for brighter yellow bands on the Yumas.

Like I said there is more to the story here and I have it on email but need to clean up to protect the innocent. LOL!

Looks like a desert king from Green Valley with narrow bands, but the bands are much wider apart.

TC