>>I'm a corn snake "folk" lol and I still believe emoryi to be a sub species of corn.
>>But, the killer part is, we will never know how many of our creams, rootbeers, cinnamons and whatever came from emoryi, intermontana or meahllmorum.
>>A lot of people, especially corn people like me, didn't realize there were the separations.
>>Unfortunately they were all emoryis or simply great plains rat snakes to us.
>>It is also unfortunate that I don't have any more information concerning mine other then the simple fact they were sold to me as emoryis.
>>Of course with all the changes in taxonomy going on you never know what the hell you have any longer.
>>look at the obsoletas. Now there is what? Eastern, Midland and Western or something like that? and I don't even know if they are still obsoleta.
>>and then of course we still have all the pantherophis stuff going on.
>>So how do we actually differentiate bewteen emoryi, intermontana and meahllmorum?
>>You seem to have examples of each, is there any way you could post comparison pics?
>>Like a shot with all three together and a little bit of explination as to the differences?
>>I know that is a big request but you seem to be the person most
>>capable of explaining those differences.
>>by the way..still got that big male meahllmorum?
>>And a follow up to that question...If I were to breed it to a cinnamon would I still call the hypo hatchlings cinnamons or be more specific and list them as hypo/emoryi/meahllmorum
>>(cinnamon toast maybe...lol)
>>
>>
>>-----
>>Corn snakes and rat snakes..No one can have just one.
>>"Resistance is futile"
>>Jimmy Johnson
>>(Draybar)
>> Draybars Snakes
>>
>>_____


Let's see if I can follow all that.

Jimmy, Emory's have always been Great Plains rats to me too, up until a few years ago. Now with the Pantherophis classification, and also the choice of guttatus or emoryi or slowinskii as the species, we have lots of confusion with the scientific names and taxonomy. However, the snake is what it is, and all these GPR's are different according to their localities and habitats. There's a lot more variability than what I have at this time, but I'll try to show some with a little explanation. Sorry I can't put them all in one photo.

This is a neonate Great Plains ratsnake, Pantherophis guttatus emoryi, from Kansas stock, that I almost bought last year...

This is what I'd call an Emory's rat now. They occupy the Great Plains down to northern Texas, then intergrade with meahllmorum in central and western Texas. Emory's rats seem to give way to Slowinski's corns in s.e. Oklahoma and the corns in Arkansas may also be slowinskii. More needs to be done on those. The corns in MO and IL need more work too, imo.

Next pic is my male Brazos Island ratsnake, when very young. Brazos Island is on the coast of Texas very near the Rio Grande and Mexico. This form is classed as P. g. meahllmorum, but a lot is going on with the coastal forms and genes from slowinskii could be filtering down into them...

Toby's huge males from Nueces Co. are from a little further north than my B. I. rats, but are still meahllmorum. They could have some influence from slowinskii, however. These rats get to a huge size, as Toby pointed out, easily topping 1,000 grams.

The next pic is also a meahllmorum, a very young female from Duval Co, TX. You can see she is much lighter in color and has a somewhat aberrant pattern...

The meahllmorum from west of the coast live in desert scrub habitat. I call them thornscrub rats. My guess is that's the reason for the differences from the coastal meahllmorum.

Another view of a B. I. ratsnake, showing venter which tends to have much less spotting than emoryi, but can have lots of spotting too...

The main differences bt emoryi and meahllmorum and slowinskii, etc, are usually given in ventral scale counts, number of blotches, and other things you can count or look at, but I think you should look at overall size and color/pattern to help with i.d.

An intermontana, P. g. intermontana, if you recognize this subspecies, is usually easily distinguished from normal emoryi by it's small size (up to 36 inches), it's large number of narrow blotches, and sometimes it's color/pattern. Here's another pic of one of mine...

There are also other western plains ratsnakes that are not from the isolated range of intermontana which are also different from emoryi.

I don't happen to have any Slowinski's corns on the web at this time, so can't show those, but I will say they resemble corns much more than emoryi, in spite of having coloration similar to emoryi. There's a lot of variation in Slowinski's corns too, as the habitat changes from OK to TX to LA, etc. Some of the examples of corns from coastal TX could be intergrades bt. Slowinski's corns and thornscrub rats. Here's a DOR meahllmorum from Refugio Co, TX, that looks like an intergrade bt meahllmorum and slowinskii...


This is a look at the venter of the same snake...

Notice the increase in number of spots or blotches on the venter. It was a gravid female too. Wish I could have found her alive.

I stopped at Toby Brock's in June and took a few pics of his collection. Here's his big female from Nueces Co, TX...

You can see she has an intermediate number of ventral spots. These meahllmorum are awesome ratsnakes, especially if you like large corns.

Here's another pic of my rootbeer corn, Jimmy. He's a cross bt a generic hypo corn and a Brazos Island rat...

I call him a thornscrub/corn cross (hypo het). Cinnamons from him I would just call cinnamons, if he was bred to a cinnamon of unknown locality.

I do plan on sending the above snake to you, Jimmy, pretty soon. I wish I had a female to breed him to. I hope he makes some nice babies.

Terry
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Ratsnake Haven...researching ratsnakes since 1988

Ratsnake Haven Group...an information providing list site.

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