When several morphological characteristics fail to come together to clearly identify a certain snake as a specific species or subspecies, definitely start thinking intergrade specimen. While there are always a few abnormal specimens in any given population that won't conform to the standard morphology of a given species, these are usually pretty rare and can usually be weeded out by looking at a series of characters. This is because it usually isn't numerous discrepancies in these types of cases. Intergrade specimens will usually show several characters of each of the parent species, but this is not the case every single time, and that is one of the big problems with identifying hybridized offspring. As Tim said, intergrade specimens can cause some pretty big identification problems, especially if two very similar species are hybridized. And Tim, good luck finding any brain cells up there. Thanks,



Kelly

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