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Hey everyone, I have this beautiful hognose snake I am trying to identify...it was found in NC...I think it is an eastern hog but I am not sure. Is there a definitive way to distinguish between Easterns, Westerns, and Southerns? Thanks, Lance

- I can take more pics if neccessary...

It looks like a southern to me, but i am not positive.
all i have to say is that snake is gorgeous and one of the nicest hognose i have ever seen

np.

it is a eastern for sure!its a very very nice red phase that is showing its color very soon for its size.want to sale it?it may poss. go to a orange as a adult.

wow! so its an Eastern for sure!? Thats cool! I don't know if I am going to keep him yet or not... I haven't decided...I don't know much about pricing hogs as far as color goes...but I have never seen one at any show that bright before so I will more than likely hold on to him. Unless the right offer comes by after I have done some researching on hogs. Thanks, lance

i have never seen a eastern at any show.i would give on less then a bill for that one.i have had a adult that was red and orange that went thru some hands before i got it for $35,it died .they can be found in lots of colors,yellow,red,orange,tan,gray,brown,and solid black.and more poss!!!i live in kentucky and love it!i'm hoping to get some albino/het westerns next year from a breeding loan.e-mail me @ leehafley@yahoo.com and i can show you a very cool native morph(not a hog).

Is there a definitive way to distinguish between Easterns, Westerns, and Southerns?

That is definitely an eastern. One of the easiest ways to tell them apart is the shape of the rostral scale (the hog nose scale). Easterns have a rostral that is more triangular in cross section whereas southerns, westerns, and mexicans have a more scoop-like upturned rostral.

Here is a western hog rostral -

I don't have a decent pic of an eastern's rostral.

Westerns and Southerns are more "spotted" looking while easterns tend to have more irregular jagged blotches on their surface.

You can also tell them apart by their abdominal coloration. To be honest, they are so easy to distinguish by rostral shape and pattern, I don't know if I remember this correctly, but here goes -
- Westerns have a lot of black on their bellies and under their tails.
- Easterns typically have light bellies and are darker under the tail.
- Southerns are uniformly light underneath.
Check a field guide to be sure about that last character.

But your snake is definitely an eastern.

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Chris Harrison
San Antonio, TX

>>Easterns have a rostral that is more triangular in cross section whereas southerns, westerns, and mexicans have a more scoop-like upturned rostral.

>>>>Easterns have a rostral that is more triangular in cross section whereas southerns, westerns, and mexicans have a more scoop-like upturned rostral.

I'm doing something wrong. So, are you saying that you buy into the species status of kennerlyi?

Shane

So, are you saying that you buy into the species status of kennerlyi?

Absolutely. These two species are parapatric. They don't occur in the same areas and where they come together they don't appear to intergrade at all.
I didn't use to believe this until I lived right at the zone of contact in El Paso. You could draw a line on a map through western Texas/Southern NM where they come together and one side they are good nasicus and on the other they are good kennerlyi. I have found both species just a few miles apart. I also looked a quite a few museum specimens from the zone of contact.

Do they ever hybridize? Probably, but like Elaphe obsoleta and bairdii, most individuals in the contact zone are clearly differentiable. This suggests they aren't interbreeding.
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Chris Harrison
San Antonio, TX

Interesting thoughts. Perhaps gloydi shouldn't have been sunk into a typical nasicus, rather, it should have been given species status.
Shane

kenneryli and nasicus were both identifiable "morphs" that did not appear to intergrade where they came together. But the characters used to distinguish them hold true.

gloydi, on the other hand, was a subspecies that was so weakly defined that many snakes within its range didn't have the "diagnostic characteristics" and some snakes outside of the range of the taxon had gloydi characteristics. This was noticed by Platt in the 1960s, but no one did anything about it until Curtis E. sunk it recently.
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Chris Harrison
San Antonio, TX

Thanks for representing the issue well, Chris (and Hi by the way, long time no see).

The gloydi issue remains somewhat complicated because it still has some issues. The description of H. n. gloydi was clearly based on clinal characters and so technically H. nasicus could have been divided in many places based on ventral scale counts and still come out statistically different. This is the nature of how a cline works. However, I will say that the relative isolation of the "gloydi" population leaves me a little baffled. I did a small project where I projected population distribution using GIS and this is what I came up for Heterodon nasicus. (The URL below shows a picture of a maximum distribution estimate).

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~curteck/pics/fig13d.gif

For the complete report on this small project I did and how I did it go to...

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~curteck/hognoseGIS.PDF

(This work is unpublished but I am working on writing it up in the future.)

Anyway, I believe that the river corriders in Texas may be serving as a dispersal corridor between the old "gloydi" population and the main population but I don't know if this is truly the case since there are no specimens from that area even though there is some anectodal evidence they can be found there.

So the isolation of that population seems to indicate that at least they are on their own "evolutionary trajectory" but this is likely a recent event and so it will be difficult to see any changes in morphology or the DNA (some of this work has been done already).

Basically, in the light of poor use of characteristics to define gloydi and the lack of any other suitable morphological or genetic characters (many were looked at in my thesis) the subspecies was sunk and subsumed into H. nasicus. So I am left a little unsatisfied in the end with it all but that is because there is just simply not enough information at this time to make a definitive judgement about gloydi except that based on the characters used to describe it.. it is no good.

I am happier with the H. kennerlyi situation. Recently Smith, Chizar and myself made the decision to go ahead and elevate kennerlyi to its own species. Originally I was a little nervous about this but the azygous scale characteristic was too obvious to ignore. Unlike ventral scale counts, azygous scales show a definitive pattern between H. nasicus and H. kennerly that changes over a very short distance. My original thought was that this could be a step cline or represent secondary contact but there are very very few integrade-like individuals present and within the populations of nasicus and kennerly there seems to be no definitive pattern as to geographic differences (something you would expect if this character was clinal in nature). The pattern only really exists in the zone of parapatry between the two species. Some recent genetic patterns also show a difference as well (unpublished). There is still some debate over the biogeography but I think that will get hammered out soon as well.

Anyway, I'm working to get my master's thesis in PDF format so that you can download it but it isn't up at the moment. I'll let you know when it is up.

Curtis Eckerman
cmeckerman@dmacc.edu

great find. where in NC did you find it? Ive never found one here.

ep
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Occupants not paying rent:
1.1.5 balls
2.1.8 corns(candy cane, creamsicle, ghost, 4 normal,
4 anery )
1 pueblan milk
1 everglades rat
1 cal. king
1 gray band king
1 w. hognose
1 bearded dragon
1 fish
1 mouse
3.3 cats

that is an eastern hognose for sure!that is one of the prettiest ones i have ever seen.i just paid $70.00 for one, not quite as pretty.

I dont need a specific city, but if you could tell me the approximate area where that snake came from. Like the eastern coast, or way out in the western part of the state in the mountains or whatever.
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Tom
TCJ Herps
"The more people I meet, the more I like my snakes"

He/she came from central NC. I am having trouble getting him to eat...i already tried a toad scented pinky...but with no luck....I need some other feeding tricks to try out this afternoon. If anyone has any please let me know. - Lance

Scenting with tuna fish really seems to work, otherwise check out the link.
Click here for the link

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"I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully."
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