Reptile & Amphibian Forums

hello,

This is the snake of a friend of mine.
He bought the snake with the name elaphe schrenckii schrenckii.
But i don't think it is. It looks to me like a morph of the cornsnake.

Can someone tell me if this is a schrenckii, and if not what kind of snake this is?

Thanks,

Rinus

You would either call that elaphe schrenckei anomala or just elaphe anomala. Some recent authors have raised it to species level status. I've attached a photo of one of my schrencki
Regards
John

Thanks for the information.
I didn't know there was a subspecies of the schrencki.
I'm sill learning

BTW Nice picture

You're welcome! And thanks for the compliment.
I think because of the use of anomala as a specific name and because the very different coloration between the two forms it would be easy to miss the link. According to Schulz's map (page 238 of his monograph) E. s. schrencki is mostly found in Russia and the farthest north in China, while E. s. anomala is the form in the rest of China nd Korea. It's interesting that anomala seems to retain a close approximation to the juvenile coloration while schrencki undergoes a very large change. Possibly anomala is the ancestral appearance of the species and schrencki is a mutation or selection that better adapts the snake to the colder environment up north. Here's a photo of the juvenile appearance of the offspring of my E. s. schrencki

Regards
John

>>hello,
>>
>>This is the snake of a friend of mine.
>>He bought the snake with the name elaphe schrenckii schrenckii.
>>But i don't think it is. It looks to me like a morph of the cornsnake.
>>
>>Can someone tell me if this is a schrenckii, and if not what kind of snake this is?
>>
>>
>>Thanks,
>>
>>Rinus
>>

Looks like an Elaphe anomala (Amur rat snake) to me. I've got three, one on the classifieds right now. They're pretty neat.
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