Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm curious who else has noticed different subspecies requiring or even preferring different care and what those differences were.

A common example that most are aware of is that blacks and Andeans prefer cooler temps.

I currently have the following subspecies set up in a virtually identical manner... pueblans, andeans, blacks, stuart's, blanchard's, sinaloans, nelsons, and conant's... in plastic tubs with aspen bedding, tight humid hide with moist sphagnum, water dish, warm side of about 82 and cool side of about 70-73.

most of my animals are new or newish lines F1s and F2s and/or have line info and/or locality info. so they are basically pure examples of each subspecies and not mixed up mutts.

things I've noticed...
pueblans want no part of their humid hide... never in there. sorta makes sense as I understand they are from a very dry climate.

stuarts are always in their humid hide... they seem to like it wet.

sinaloans, nelsons, and conants are much more active than the others... always on the go and moving around day and night it seems.

Andeans and blacks obviously not wanting heat... never on the warm side even after a meal. in fact, I don't even have heat available to my adult blacks and plan to do the same when my young Andeans and blacks move up to bigger caging.

blanchards doesn't seem to ever hide. much more of a percher... just sits on top of the hide watching things all day.

black milks seem to like moving everything around the cage and piling it all up in a corner. not sure if maybe it's some sort of nesting/denning behavior or just a consequence of them pushing around.

conants and blanchards seem to be much more visual hunters/eaters. they like f/t mice dragged around and shaken about to really get into chasing and "killing". my male blanchards simply will not eat unless he gets to a. chase the mouse, b. strikes and bites the mouse in a way that the face of the mouse ends up in his mouth on the first bite, and c. I shake the mouse for 10 to 15 seconds after he wraps up.

anyone else have any observations of differences between subspecies?

Nice post, Aaron. And yes, I've noticed differences too.

I kept Sinaloans, Nelsons and Pueblans. As much as they are similar, I have seen a noticeable difference in behavior between Pueblans and Sinaloans/Nelsons. Like you mentioned, Sinaloans are on the move, especially at dusk. I almost feel bad, they seem like they need huge cages just to get that energy out by letting them crawl, though we all know they do great in "normal" sized cages. Pueblans on the other hand seem incredibly content in more commonly-sized cages, or even smaller cages. The babies I produced (Puebs) would feed regularly in a deli-cup, but not always in a relatively larger cage, say a 10 gal. My baby Sinaloans on the other hand would gladly feed while in a 10gal tank. In fact, it almost seemed like they preferred it. Sinaloans are a much more "get out there and hunt" snake. And they are communal as all heck.

Here is a Pueblan using a "leaner" rock against a heat pad, a setup I used for some mtn kings. I tried this years ago, kind of neat to see a milk do the same thing.

Thanks for the input.

I'm really enjoying attempting to get a handle of the behavioral differences between the different ssp. I think many people think all milks are the same, but who can blame them when so many in the hobby really are just a melting pot of stuff. it'll be interesting to see if the differences I notice hold true as I get more experience with different animals as I'm only working with pairs for the most part now.

I like that leaner rock idea. I think I'm going to try that out of a few things.