It's extremely difficult to tell with so many North American rats. Whether you subscribe to the whole three species thing or not, there is a ton of overlap between the species, localities, subspecies, whatever you want to call them. They did all evolve from the same species anyway, and there is no real geographic barrier between them, since they both climb and swim, and aren't separated by huge areas.
I was unaware that Texas rats are keeled, as I don't have any Texas rats. I know my Everglades are lightly keeled, so, maybe it's a southern thing, too, and not just a Western thing?


I was just randomly looking through pictures last night, and I did find a snake that looks quite a bit like him. Not sure if these will work, so I'll post the link to the pic, too- .
http://www.rci-enr.net/neo-slither/pictures/YA/4874.jpg
I did a bit of sleuth work, and found that it's a black x Everglades cross.
Maybe this is some of the background, with some of that back-breeding going on. I could very easily believe someone bred one of these with an albino black rat, and then offspring were bred with black rats. Even one generation of the Everglades in there, 5 or 6 generations back would give that orange to him, and would explain the keeled scales.


thanks,
Ronnie Nocera

[ Hide Replies ]

• ID this snake - Redmoon, Wed Mar 12 23:22:29 2008
• RE: ID this snake - tspuckler, Thu Mar 13 07:10:40 2008
• RE: ID this snake - Redmoon, Thu Mar 13 12:06:50 2008
• RE: ID this snake - draybar, Thu Mar 13 15:36:53 2008
• RE: ID this snake - DMong, Thu Mar 13 16:43:10 2008
• thanks for responses . . . - Redmoon, Thu Mar 13 23:14:12 2008
• RE: thanks for responses . . . - tbrock, Fri Mar 14 06:54:24 2008
• yes, exactly........... - DMong, Fri Mar 14 08:33:02 2008
• yeah! . . . - Redmoon, Fri Mar 14 09:23:07 2008
• RE: yeah! . . . - DMong, Fri Mar 14 09:37:53 2008
• RE: thanks for responses . . . - DMong, Fri Mar 14 09:20:59 2008
• RE: thanks for responses . . . - Redmoon, Fri Mar 14 10:17:53 2008
• RE: thanks for responses . . . - DMong, Fri Mar 14 12:53:09 2008
• RE: thanks for responses . . . - hermanbronsgeest, Fri Mar 14 14:54:13 2008
• In all honesty............ - DMong, Fri Mar 14 16:11:39 2008
• I concur, as well . . . - Redmoon, Fri Mar 14 17:02:18 2008
• Exactly! - tbrock, Fri Mar 14 18:06:24 2008
• RE: ID this snake - tbrock, Thu Mar 13 17:44:01 2008
• RE: ID this snake - blueselaphe, Thu Mar 13 18:40:15 2008