I read the sex ratio bit in Chris Mattison's "The Encyclopedia of snakes".



Here's the passage : "Apart from population numbers, it is interesting to look at the proportion of males and females within a population. The flowerpot snake is a female-only species can be ignored here. Otherwise, male and female snakes would be expected to occur in equal numbers at hatching (or birthed in viviparous snakes). Since they are usually of similar size, there is no advantage in producing a higher proportion of one sex over another. This appears to be the case in all the species that have been studied, with just a few known exceptions. Four of these species involve species in which males predominate: the copperhead (in which there are twice as many males at birth as there are females), the four-striped rat snake, the Australian tiger snake, and the gopher snake. It is difficult to offer an explanation for these figures. The fifth exception is that of the Japanese Rat Snake, in which females predominate at hatching. Again, it is hard to explain why this should be so and the possibility of small sample sizes producing a false picture should not be discounted."



And I know it was a bad scan, I was really trying to induce as little stress as I could when I did it......I'll try to get another shot on here soon.

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