Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey, thanks for the replies & comments about my last posting. We all appreciate sincere praise when it’s earned, and it’s been awhile since I’ve had any kudos. It’s fun to share my hobby with you online folks – even if I don’t get to see your faces. I’ve rarely met friends or partners who shared an interest in reptiles, and landlords have often been highly critical or even intolerant.

My family & current housemate are tolerant of my reptile companions, and even appreciate them at times. My mom in particular has come a long way. I’ll never forget catching her in my room one day after school, talking to my pet anole and caressing the glass next to him. She had a strong bias initially, and opposed letting me keep a lizard in the house.

My digital camera is a basic model, and I have not yet mastered technique of eliminating glare from glass, even when I don’t use flash, so forgive me for poor quality. I will see what I can do as I have better opportunities to photograph my snake.

(Incidentally, I only kept the former Owner’s chosen name of “Buddy” as a nickname. I’m thinking of naming him Blaze. I’m still giddy over my first red snake.)

Please chime in with your Nelson’s stories & photos. Bonus points for anyone who has seen one in the wild, or recently visited their native regions of Jalisco or Michoacán.

Ameron
Portland/Vancouver

(Cold snap alert! We are now 26 degrees Fahrenheit, 20 degrees colder than normal. Snow is coming down fast, with 3-4 inches already, in a region where it rarely snows.)

1.0 Boa constrictor imperator (Hog Island)
1.0 Lampropeltis triangulum nelsoni
1.0 Agrionemys horsfieldii kazakhstanica

Flicker link below shows vivarium & snake photos.

Link

thats a really nice setup. you probably have the most spoiled milk of all time.

I have a pair of nelsons that are kept in boaphile tubs at the moment. they are only yearlings and will be placed in cages rather than tubs once they hit the 3' mark.

I have a normal het amel and an amel from Jimmy Tintle and they are fantastic. They might be able to produce T animals too... i'm not sure if the T gene has been completely worked out (i've read several different explinations on how it works), but if it is a simple recesive, then i'll get T , amel, and normal babies at some point.

Nelsons are great snakes! They are also very communal. If you keep some together, they will pile up under a hide and be very considerate of one another. Same with Sinaloans. Frankly, I cannot always tell much difference between the two other than amount of black on the bands.

Years ago I was in Nayarit near the coast. I believe this is an area where sinalonae and nelsoni ranges meet, could be wrong. I saw a road kill. Pattern wise, it did not look like sinaloans in the hobby, nor quite like nelsons. It had more bands, and the black was thick like nelsons compared to sinaloans. I saw a locality nelsoni once, and its body shape was a bit less lengthy - more stout.

The hobby has what it has, probably snakes from very few actual localities, so we do not see the wider range of looks from wild snakes. Also, who knows who bred what to what back then. Early importers of these snakes did not always know the exact area they came from.

Sinaloans occupy drier habitat in the north end of their range where the really hi-red/low black individuals are, and go into sub-tropical in the south. Nelsoni shoot inland and begin to get very dark with more black than red in some localities.

Personality-wise, nelsons/sinaloans can get like cornsnakes, just really easy-going captives that do not musk you or bite, maybe a tad active when held, but still pretty darn calm for a milksnake.

Thanks for this info!

Yes, your experience and comments are very interesting, and quite helpful for us amateur Naturalists.

1. Very interesting that you saw more banding in Nayarit.
2. Very interesting that you saw inland snakes get darker with more black.

Comments like your are the Bonanza I was hoping for, since I have little experience with Milks.

Many thanks!

I believe it works like this:
Lowland animals tend towards bright colors and less banding. Highland animals tend towards more black and more bands. I have heard this with nelsoni for sure. The brightest sinaloans are low elevation, low moisture areas.

After reading your description of the slightly different description, and darker bands found inland, I did more Internet research, focusing on photos. I wanted to see any examples of darker, wider bands.

Then I began finding “hits” on photos of Jalisco milk snakes, found just to the east of Nelson’s. Usually, Jalisco snakes have bands of fairly uniform width, looking like common Milk snakes. However, I found a photo of one having very wide, black bands. I found another photo of a Jalisco that was almost all black, with only patches of red. (I double checked to see if it was a Black Milk mislabeled, it was not.)

I found no examples of Nelson’s Milks have very wide black bands, and none that were almost black in color.

I’m wondering if the snakes that you saw that matched neither Sinaloans nor Nelson’s traits were either intergrades with a Jalisco, or a Jalisco from adjacent regions to the east?

Ameron
Portland/Vancouver

1.0 Boa constrictor imperator (Hog Island)
1.0 Lampropeltis triangulum nelsoni
1.0 Agrionemys horsfieldii kazakhstanica

Flicker link below shows my 55-gallon vivarium & snake photos.
Link

I think I was too close to the coast for it to be a Jalisco. But you are correct - the pattern did resemble Jalisco pics I have seen but still likely within the upper bandcount of nelsons.

Milk snake research is new to me, and as with many other reptiles species, recent taxonomy changes don’t make researching any easier. I welcome most taxonomy changes; the clean-up was needed. I still don’t accept the Mexican Sunbeam snake as being a true New World python, however. I agree to disagree.

What I’m seeing is a heavy overlap of species, much intergradation, and possibly new species not yet classified, such as Lake Chapala Milks. In all that mix, no wonder it’s difficult to identify a snake from any given region. Plus, many species are similar, such as a Nelson’s or a Sinaloan.

Thanks for the interest & replies, they were helpful and I enjoyed the interaction. There are few Herpers in my area, and they don’t tend to mingle much aside from annual Reptile Expositions. (One day, I really *should* move to a warmer climate.) I keep trying…