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A Black king from S. Az.

From 18 miles east of the real black king are these semi black kings. Now if you look in Hubbs book, he calls these black kings. The poor boy is so naïve.

This one was taken 7 miles northwest of the pure black king. this little area has these banded blackish kings, and is surrounded by splendida types.

This one is another blackish banded from aprox 60 miles northwest of those others. Its from a small higher elevation population that's surrounded by normal Yuma king types
Its funny but these dark banded types are the Az version of grease kings.
All the above are naturally occurring, all the above are in small pockets. And all the above and a million more color types occur in a small area on the range map of CAL KINGS. A map by Brian Hubbs, in fact, he somehow thinks they are continuous like his little maps, unfortunately, hes wrong. They occur in pockets of genetically isolated kings. Don't make me post more, as I only have a few hundred more pics. Oh yea, those grease king types also occur 150 miles north of these. Dang kingsnakes!

These are all from the area between the grease and Blackking in S.Az. These do not come from splendida habitat.
Splendida are grassland kings here, and when they are in grasslands, they are normal splendida. No other morph. The areas bordering grasslands, can be a little silly as you can see.
What we do not see is, these areas historically were grasslands, in the not so distant past. We can go on and on about this, but simply put, it is what it is, currently. hahahahahahaha and that's about to change.

Well Hubbs book is pretty darn good even with a few mistakes (he mislabeled almost all of my Florida morphs in his book). But his book is one of the greatest works I have ever seen to date.

The real question I have here is.. EXPLAIN HOW DEM GREASE KINGS GOT WHERE THEY ARE? That is the real question.. splain dat Lucy?
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FR quote:
"Doing the same things over and over expecting to learn something else, is the definition of insanity"

Rainer, stop with the accents, I will get started and they will boot us off here.
Grease king patterns are a favorable phenotype under certain conditions.
If you look at SoCal, there are many variables of black kings that are coastal, from LAX up to the central valley. I have some pics. It works.
Here in Az. there are conditions where it works, so its expressed. Its all about survival.

post like these make me think trying to label these things in certain areas can never be done. what is what? what is a desert/black/cal and what is a morph and what is an intergrade and what is a result of natural line breeding?

seems like you could find nearly any possible appearance within a few miles of each other. instead of saying this is a cal/mbk/splindida it would almost be better to say this is a king from such and such coordinates. at least then we would be dealing with fact and not opinion.

Its not a snake problem, its a human problem, most of these snakes were named by convienence. That is, one was found and it was named, etc etc. There is no one type. The types that were named were arbitrary. It just as well could have been the intermediates were the species and the species are the intermediates.
The names are just something to start with, they are not all powerful. This goes for captive morphs, they are simply names, the animals, are what they are, not matter what we call them.
For instance, they keep changing scientific names, but the animals are still the same. It really doesn't matter.
The part I had big fights with Hubbsy about is, He uses the word intergrade. Which is totally wrong. Kings color and patterns are based on phenotypic pressures.(S factor) and are almost never a product of intergration. To intergrade, one type must be pure and then breed to another type of pure, the offspring would be intergrades.
With kings, they carry(genotype) a wide range of genetic possibilities and express what works locally and on a timely basis.
Besides, we have no concept of what they looked like when they migrated across the states. Most likely, the habitat was consistent and so was color and pattern. As climate changed, they became isolated and changed to fit the local S factors. Of course their is more, but that's it in a nutshell.

Interesting observations, Frank. Do have any pictures of those LAX black kings?
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I do sir, will post some soon.

Please do. That would be very interesting.
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Sorry for the crappy pic but its a scan from a slide that was taken so many years ago. Oh maybe 1972 or 3. Well before Albinos.
This pic is the genesis of high whites and high yellows. This pairings offspring was later paired with Newporter types, and high yellow was expressed. This pair produced dark and lite animals, both had individuals of reduced pattern. The black and white king was w/c in calif city area. The black individual came from my long time friend the late Ted Davis. We both worked at Hermosa Reptile, and he also worked at Mother Natures.
He collected those Black(dark brown) animals, at a site next to(in) LAX. He gave me one and also gave Ernie Wagner one. Which is a really funny story. I do not know what became of Ernies.
I have slides somewhere, but this crappy pic is all I could find on my computer.

WOW! You are old.

I love old pics like that. In 1972 I was only 13 and my parents had to drive me to snake hunt or I took the bus to the Palisades where we always looked for the elusive SM mountain Pulchras.

Actually I rode my bike most of the time.
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FR quote:
"Doing the same things over and over expecting to learn something else, is the definition of insanity"

Hahahahahaha When I was 13, I lived in Buena Park and wrote a bike herping, all over. Brea, the beach areas, even Corona and Elsinore. Even up 39 to the SanGabs. Which is why I know the lower areas pretty well. At that age, our, my two best friends, parents, would drop us off at the ranger station where the SG river crossed the road, we would hike up to the Bear Canyon wilderness area. We would meet Ricks Dad at the ranger station, two or three weeks later. Of course I and we, found my first Z's and SB boas, patchnose, tons of helleri, etc etc. We lived off the land. Once I was a bit hungry and attempted to kill and eat a bighorn sheep. hahahahahahaha I lost. A great time to be a kid.

Hahahahahaha When I was 13, I lived in Buena Park and wrote a bike herping, all over. Brea, the beach areas, even Corona and Elsinore. Even up 39 to the SanGabs. Which is why I know the lower areas pretty well. At that age, our, my two best friends, parents, would drop us off at the ranger station where the SG river crossed the road, we would hike up to the Bear Canyon wilderness area. We would meet Ricks Dad at the ranger station, two or three weeks later. Of course I and we, found my first Z's and SB boas, patchnose, tons of helleri, etc etc. We lived off the land. Once I was a bit hungry and attempted to kill and eat a bighorn sheep. hahahahahahaha I lost. A great time to be a kid.

Sounds like an awesome way to grow up. You also had much better access to reptile habitat than I did. Gosh you caught Patchnose and boas,,, OMGosh! Things that were only in my dreams back then. Just shows how many light years you are ahead of anybody else I know.
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FR quote:
"Doing the same things over and over expecting to learn something else, is the definition of insanity"

I think our parents thought we were Bear bait or something. Yes we herped all over. In high school, after a summer wrestling tourney, we hopped a train to texas and hunted Texas and New Mex and Az. The cops booted us out of El paso. hahahahahahahaha By 1970, I herped coast to coast three times. Goins, blairs, Scarlet kings, eastern kings, speckleds, even a gravid eastern king in that little strip of Alabama, right on the gulf. Then Mexico then the world. hahahahahahaha Been to Australia 14 times. No kings there, the small pythons are a bit like kings with how they live. It made them easy to find. It was funny, Anthill pythons were suppose to be rare. Hmmmmmmmm not. Just go when its cold a and flip, they were everywhere. Anyway, not ahead, just old and actually did it.

in 72 my parents were in highschool lol!

however when I was 13 i thought I was hot stuff and going to take the reptile world by storm because I was producing kings and corns, fearless at hand catching texas rats and western coachwhips and was the only person under 30 in the local herp society... how naive I was.

I bred my first kings in,,,,,,,,,,,,,, wait,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, wait,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, oh I remember now, 1964 and have bred them ever since and have a gravid female now. A friend told me once(Eugene Bissett) He said, Frank I know why your so good at this stuff. I looked at him and made a face. He said, FR, your too dumb to know when to quit. I laughed my arse off. He was right!

That is good enough, Frank. That's really cool you have pictures that old. I was born in late 72. That CA city king is exactly how I imagined it. Hubbs should see this. He thinks the ones that look like this in that area (North LA Co. and Southern Kern Co.) are from released captives. I call those Black kings Whittier aberrant. That's the only place I know of them being found and about 4 have turned up since 2000 in that same area. They are a rare find now days and maybe even back then. Thanks for the pic!
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Hubbs(the kingsnake god) and I, do not agree on a lot of things. I have known him since he was a kid. He first came to Az. in a convertible with a surf board, thinking folks would not know he was snake hunting. Dude, there's no water here, he stuck out like a sore thumb.
What's funny is, kingsnakes do not stay the same. They constantly migrate, color and pattern wise. For instance, what folks call newporters now, are not the same as a newporter when I was young. Not completely different, but different.

Hubbs and I are friends, but dude???????????? hahahahahahahahaha I will say this, he stayed at it. Which is all you can ask. His books are only good, not great, but then hes just a young guy.

Where's your books, Frank?

Since it's doubtful anyone will have the chance to sit down and pick your brain for weeks on end, books would be the next best thing.

I feel like you've got a lot of knowledge that would benifit nearly all keepers and it should be available. I know i've learned more on the forum the past couple months then I have from any 5 king snake books.

Since it's doubtful anyone will have the chance to sit down and pick your brain for weeks on end, books would be the next best thing.

even better they can come here and pick his brain.
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FR quote:
"Doing the same things over and over expecting to learn something else, is the definition of insanity"

Hmmmmmmmmmmm good question, I am tooooooooooo radical to write books. I want to make people FIGHT. Seriously, to sell books is to placate people. That's not my bag. U know walk a line to not upset anyone, dude that's not me. Also, as a long term field herper, and being kinda long in the tooth. Field information has only shown to HARM animals, not help them. The more people know, the more wild animals are abused. Roger Conant taught me that. I found an undescribed gecko(they're still that way) and he say, if you describe it, all that will happen is abuse, by science, by private, etc etc. He said, sooner or later, they will be found and abused. So each day they are not known is a good day.
About captive stuff, hmmmmmmmm I took the approach that helping a few people really well(here) is better then barely helping a whole lot of people(books) a tiny bit. As you may have noticed. It takes more then one reply or paragraph to start folks to think. Most have no many prejudices(preconceived notions) and poor internet recipe(for the masses) information to make a book useful. ALso my good friend is a herp book publisher and says, there is no money in books and a lot of work. Information is going digital, like what we are doing here. He tells me, that pet shop
(paperbacks) books make money, but real books cost to much and very few buy them. I think if there is a book, its more about the culture of keeping and how its changing. Best wishes

particularly the culture of keeping in the western states. There was a bit of a herp revolution and it was centered in the west. I think Ross is working on something like that.
All this stuff you see now, sprung from commercialization of captive bred herps, and that indeed came about in SoCal(the hollyweird effect of setting fashions) By giving snakes value, it supported products, magazines, etc etc etc, reptile shows did not occur when snakes had no value.
Albino kings were what started that revolution. And only because I learned a valuable lesson. I use to give snakes away, and most died and died quickly. So when I started hatching Albino cals, I swear to not ever give them away and to put a really high price on them. I did not care about the money so much, I was interested in all the natural Cal king morphs and set out to make albinos in all of them and I did. And holy moly, it made me a lot of money too. I did the right thing, but for the wrong reasons, hahahahahahahahahahahaha. Others Actually put it all together, by building and controlling markets. That built a value that helped all the species we see today. Value is the strongest conservation tool the animals have, as well. A TWOFER, I like twofers, but not as much as threefers

You're right. Those albinos were amazing enough on their own, but I'm sure having a high price tag along with them really made them appealing.
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"He first came to Az. in a convertible with a surf board, thinking folks would not know he was snake hunting. Dude, there's no water here, he stuck out like a sore thumb."

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