Reptile88
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I'm thinking it's one of the milksnakes. What specific one is it though?
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What's the biggest snake that looks like the coral snake?
- Thread starter Reptile88
- Start date
Socratic Monologue
Well-known member
The non-melanistic locales of L. micropholis, or the 'Honduran' line of L. abnorma, are the largest of the tricolor Lampropeltis.
Reptile88
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Is there any way to narrow it down to a specific one, or is it too close to call?
Socratic Monologue
Well-known member
Well, a person could try to find if there are any record lengths documented. Since any individual snake is going to grow to +/- 20% of average, does a couple inches matter?
I believe that the Andean milk snake (Lampropeltis triangulum andesiana) can get in excess of 6 ft. long. The black milk snake (Lampropeltis triangulum gaigeae) is probably the largest of the milk snakes, maybe as much as 7 ft. long, but it won't usually retain the brighter coloration of the youngsters, and likely not what you are looking for.
Socratic Monologue
Well-known member
Just FYI, both L.t. andesiana and L. t. gaigeae are lumped into L. micropholis now.
https://reptile-database.reptarium....opholis&search_param=((genus='lampropeltis'))
https://reptile-database.reptarium....opholis&search_param=((genus='lampropeltis'))
That will likely change sooner or later. Seems to me that a while back all the neotropical milk snakes were grouped under Lampropeltis polyzona.
Used to be that the incentive to use the Latin names was because using common names was too confusing.
When I lived in Maryland a LONG time ago, I knew a guy who was hell bent to try to determine a new subspecies of the timber rattlesnake and was literally splitting scales in that pursuit. Not sure if he was ever successful, but he sure was trying hard. Ah, Herb Harris was his name. Took a while to bring that memory up to the surface. I met him at the Maryland Herpetological Society. He took me on probably my first official snake hunt that wasn't my mom driving me there. Yeah it was a LONG time ago. Anyway, we went to western Maryland looking for timber rattlesnakes, of all things. I remember there was a bunch of us in that outing, and we all spread out in a clearing in a small valley after parking the cars. In the center of this clearing in full sunlight was a moderately sized piece of tin. Everyone knew that there couldn't possibly be anything underneath it, so they all just walked right past it. Except me. What did I know? I flipped it over and yelled out "TIMBER!!" when I saw that gorgeous animal underneath. Man, did everyone come running then!
Anyway sorry about going off on a tangent. Odd things will trigger memories for me.
But anyway, I will still stick with the subspecies naming because it does seem useful to help identify what a person is talking about. People are changing the Latin names way too often for me, and to be perfectly honest, I just think people are trying too hard to shove an analog world into a digital filing system.
Socratic Monologue
Well-known member
I did specify "the non-melanistic locales of L. micropholis", which means L.t.micropholis (Ecuadorian) and L.t.andesiana (Andean), but that's admittedly a funny way to have to put things.
I agree that subspecies are really useful for hobby purposes. I kind of miss the old taxonomy of rosy boas, too, for the same reason. All the more motivation to keep locales pure -- so we know what animal we're talking about.
I like the 'analogue world' comment. Back in my academic days, I thought a fair amount about the idea of 'carving nature at its joints' and whether that is at all possible (I'm pretty sure it is not). The idea first comes up in Plato's Phaedrus (I had to look this up just now, but I shouldn't be surprised he had Socrates say it first), and it turns out the issue is still with us.
I agree that subspecies are really useful for hobby purposes. I kind of miss the old taxonomy of rosy boas, too, for the same reason. All the more motivation to keep locales pure -- so we know what animal we're talking about.
I like the 'analogue world' comment. Back in my academic days, I thought a fair amount about the idea of 'carving nature at its joints' and whether that is at all possible (I'm pretty sure it is not). The idea first comes up in Plato's Phaedrus (I had to look this up just now, but I shouldn't be surprised he had Socrates say it first), and it turns out the issue is still with us.
What they did with the North American rat snakes is ridiculous.
Speaking of the neotropical milk snakes, how many of you remember when the amelanistic neotropical milk snake was first identified as being L. polyzona, and then magically became an amelanistic L. hondurensis?
In a similar vein, when the amelanistic L. nelsoni showed up, suddenly a LOT of Sinaloan Milks started becoming "identified" as Nelson's Milks, amelanistic or not. Which, of course, became a knot that will never become untangled. Just as *true* IDs of the neotropical milk snakes, which were a tangled mess from the start, got to be an even worse mess.
Speaking of the amelanistic Nelson's Milk Snakes, they were first produced by Doug Moody. I remember speaking to him about them, and he told me that the parents that produced them had only produced normal colored babies for the first several years he bred them. Then suddenly a few amelanistics were produced without warning. Odd things can happen, apparently.
I bought a pair of amelanistic "Honduran" milk snakes from Louie Porras back when they were first being produced. Unfortunately, the year the female was big enough to breed, she wound up dying during brumation. So ended any future plans I had on buying relatively high dollar animals. That one hurt.
In a similar vein, when the amelanistic L. nelsoni showed up, suddenly a LOT of Sinaloan Milks started becoming "identified" as Nelson's Milks, amelanistic or not. Which, of course, became a knot that will never become untangled. Just as *true* IDs of the neotropical milk snakes, which were a tangled mess from the start, got to be an even worse mess.
Speaking of the amelanistic Nelson's Milk Snakes, they were first produced by Doug Moody. I remember speaking to him about them, and he told me that the parents that produced them had only produced normal colored babies for the first several years he bred them. Then suddenly a few amelanistics were produced without warning. Odd things can happen, apparently.
I bought a pair of amelanistic "Honduran" milk snakes from Louie Porras back when they were first being produced. Unfortunately, the year the female was big enough to breed, she wound up dying during brumation. So ended any future plans I had on buying relatively high dollar animals. That one hurt.
Socratic Monologue
Well-known member
At least Nelsons and Sinaloans are now the same species (L. polyzona). If I'm interpreting the switcharoo story correctly, it sounds like any given hobby line hondo stands a good chance of being an interspecific hybrid.
Another reason why locale-specific lines are good for captive stocks -- they have one more criterion by which their species can be confirmed.
Another reason why locale-specific lines are good for captive stocks -- they have one more criterion by which their species can be confirmed.
Even locality info will be a gray area. I have had this discussion before in reference to "Okeetee" corn snakes.
Who determines where the border of any locality is located? Once that is established, suppose an animal is capture 2 feet outside of that line, headed away from the locality? Then on the other hand, suppose a similar animal is captured 2 feet outside that line, heading TOWARDS the locality?
As an aside, one of the big problems with the neotropical milk snakes was that the exportation points changed often. One country would be more lax than others, so all specimens collected throughout several countries would be funneled through that exportation point. So, saying a milk snake came from Guatemala, would not really express any realistic locality information at all. Then the next year, Costa Rica might be the preferred shipping point.
Wholesalers would often search through all the imports, and put labels on the milk snakes based merely on what they looked like and what they thought they could get the highest dollar for. No one really know where the actual capture points were for such animals. Everything was just guesswork. People who actually collected those animals at specific localities were very few and far between. At least as best as I understand the circumstances....
Who determines where the border of any locality is located? Once that is established, suppose an animal is capture 2 feet outside of that line, headed away from the locality? Then on the other hand, suppose a similar animal is captured 2 feet outside that line, heading TOWARDS the locality?
As an aside, one of the big problems with the neotropical milk snakes was that the exportation points changed often. One country would be more lax than others, so all specimens collected throughout several countries would be funneled through that exportation point. So, saying a milk snake came from Guatemala, would not really express any realistic locality information at all. Then the next year, Costa Rica might be the preferred shipping point.
Wholesalers would often search through all the imports, and put labels on the milk snakes based merely on what they looked like and what they thought they could get the highest dollar for. No one really know where the actual capture points were for such animals. Everything was just guesswork. People who actually collected those animals at specific localities were very few and far between. At least as best as I understand the circumstances....
Socratic Monologue
Well-known member
Good points, and I agree with your implicit evaluation. Seriously and sincerely, you should write a (print) book about all these bits about earlier days; even if it turns out to be rambling recollection it would be very valuable to future keepers. 
With some species -- some of the dart frogs, I'm thinking of, especially the mimic species -- there is both locality info based on actual collection point (publicly this information is quite general in the ways you mention, but presumably is precisely known), and an empirical knowledge of the geographical variance in pattern types, including known pattern intergrade areas, based on published research.
These are animals that were collected and exported for breeding by the collector, which is a very different situation than one in which WC animals enter the hobby market -- that's a matter for a different discussion, perhaps, but at least tangentially related and certainly equally important.
In any event, some locality info is better than none. For example, rosy boas were mostly kept pure to "locale" or former subspecies. And regardless of the specificity of each so-called "locale", that certainly helped minimize the number of interspecific rosy hybrids in captive stocks now that there are two species. Though unfortunately there's a fair amount of intentional hybridization of rosies going on lately, at least that's theoretically possible to track in a way that simply breeding any old L. trivirgata together would not have been.
Knowing some details of the sorts of export shenanigans that you mention helps us better understand what our captive stocks actually are or are not, too.
With some species -- some of the dart frogs, I'm thinking of, especially the mimic species -- there is both locality info based on actual collection point (publicly this information is quite general in the ways you mention, but presumably is precisely known), and an empirical knowledge of the geographical variance in pattern types, including known pattern intergrade areas, based on published research.
These are animals that were collected and exported for breeding by the collector, which is a very different situation than one in which WC animals enter the hobby market -- that's a matter for a different discussion, perhaps, but at least tangentially related and certainly equally important.
In any event, some locality info is better than none. For example, rosy boas were mostly kept pure to "locale" or former subspecies. And regardless of the specificity of each so-called "locale", that certainly helped minimize the number of interspecific rosy hybrids in captive stocks now that there are two species. Though unfortunately there's a fair amount of intentional hybridization of rosies going on lately, at least that's theoretically possible to track in a way that simply breeding any old L. trivirgata together would not have been.
Knowing some details of the sorts of export shenanigans that you mention helps us better understand what our captive stocks actually are or are not, too.
Whenever there is money involved, there will be gray areas when it comes to "truth".
To give you an example, which some people really REALLY hate to hear when I tell this tale, there is the issue of locality data for some gray banded king snakes.
Years ago, at one of the reptile shows in Tampa, FL, I had hatched out quite a batch of gray banded king snakes. Man was I excited about that! And man did that wear off quickly when every one of them proved to be a royal pain in the butt to get feeding on pinky mice. So when this Tampa show rolled around (in the Fall, obviously) I had had enough of those darn varmints and just wanted to get rid of them. I put a really good price on them at the show, stating plainly that they were pains in the butt. Two day show and none of them were moving. I had another vendor stop by my table, and told me that if I would cut him a deal at the end of the show, he would take every one from me. So end of show comes around, and I still had them all. 40 or so of them, if I remember correctly. I did NOT want to take them back home with me!
So I look up that other vendor and we cut a deal. While we were counting them out and exchanging money, he got a bit casual with me. Probably too much, all things considered. Mentioned that he just loved buying baby gray bands that time of year, because he just plans on a trip out to the Big Bend area of Texas, rents a motel room out there, and sells them all, calling them wild caught with locality data for each of them. Said he makes a killing that way. No telling how often he had done that, but obviously that wasn't a one time situation.
So how many people bought such animals with fake locality data for them? How many people resold them or even the offspring of them making the same locality claims?
As for me, I got out of gray banded kings at that time. Matter of fact, I still have the domain name GRAYBANDS.COM that I need to sell off at some point. It is certainly something that I will NEVER use.
Anyway, going back even further, and this is just hearsay, I was told of one of the big tri-colored king/milk snake breeders of the day who lived in an area where he could keep all of his stock in outdoor pits. None were segregated in any way, and animals were grouped via size, and not so much species or subspecies, so they were free to breed among themselves however the spirit moved them. Anyone working with the tri-colors knows how readily they will interbreed, so the information relayed to me doesn't seem all that far fetched. Anyway, when the eggs were hatched out, the babies were segregated by appearance and then labelled as what they most reasonably resembled, and then sold that way. There was no way to really tell what exactly they were. And the people receiving them had no clue about what they were really getting.
I really don't want to mention the guy's name, as it is a different world today, and although it probably seemed like a real good idea at the time, in today's climate, well, not so much. If for no other reason than the chaos that comes to mind thinking about the positive ID of so many animals that were likely founder stock for a lot of subsequent breeders and how that all had to percolate down through the subsequent generations. I am sure many people had surprises hatch out for them that had no logical reason, at least as best THEY knew.
As for corn snakes, hell, I know I had been lied to by people I trusted, and THINK I had been lied to by even more people who I trusted somewhat less. I tried to filter out all of the animals that SEEMED to me to be obvious hybrids, but heck, it got to the point where any new genetic strain that came out invariably got called as a hybrid. Heck, the Caramel line came from a wild caught female that I picked out of a bunch of wild caughts from a mom and pop pet shop in Cape Coral, Florida. The Lavender line (which I originally called "Mocha" came from a wild caught female that I personally caught in Murdock, Florida. The "Cinder Corns" (which I preferred calling "Ashy Corns") came from a gravid female that I traded from a guy in a Birmingham reptile show who lived in the Keys and swore it was one he caught himself there locally. But to this day some people will still believe they are hybrids in one way or another. I know there are more, but you catch my drift.
Of course, when you see hybrids between such wildly different colubrids as California kings and corn snakes, Honduran milks and Cal Kings, then gopher snakes and all what else thrown into the mix, eventually you have to come to the conclusion that a *TRUE* ID on many of these animals is something most people will probably never really know. So you reach the tipping point of either not caring and enjoying them anyway for what they are, or getting out of working with them rather than lose your sanity over those kinds of details. Heck, I nearly lost my marbles over just the genetic line we call "Hypomelanism" in the corn snakes. At one point I believe I had five different distinct lines of them I was working with. And none of them could be told apart visually.
To give you an example, which some people really REALLY hate to hear when I tell this tale, there is the issue of locality data for some gray banded king snakes.
Years ago, at one of the reptile shows in Tampa, FL, I had hatched out quite a batch of gray banded king snakes. Man was I excited about that! And man did that wear off quickly when every one of them proved to be a royal pain in the butt to get feeding on pinky mice. So when this Tampa show rolled around (in the Fall, obviously) I had had enough of those darn varmints and just wanted to get rid of them. I put a really good price on them at the show, stating plainly that they were pains in the butt. Two day show and none of them were moving. I had another vendor stop by my table, and told me that if I would cut him a deal at the end of the show, he would take every one from me. So end of show comes around, and I still had them all. 40 or so of them, if I remember correctly. I did NOT want to take them back home with me!
So I look up that other vendor and we cut a deal. While we were counting them out and exchanging money, he got a bit casual with me. Probably too much, all things considered. Mentioned that he just loved buying baby gray bands that time of year, because he just plans on a trip out to the Big Bend area of Texas, rents a motel room out there, and sells them all, calling them wild caught with locality data for each of them. Said he makes a killing that way. No telling how often he had done that, but obviously that wasn't a one time situation.
So how many people bought such animals with fake locality data for them? How many people resold them or even the offspring of them making the same locality claims?
As for me, I got out of gray banded kings at that time. Matter of fact, I still have the domain name GRAYBANDS.COM that I need to sell off at some point. It is certainly something that I will NEVER use.
Anyway, going back even further, and this is just hearsay, I was told of one of the big tri-colored king/milk snake breeders of the day who lived in an area where he could keep all of his stock in outdoor pits. None were segregated in any way, and animals were grouped via size, and not so much species or subspecies, so they were free to breed among themselves however the spirit moved them. Anyone working with the tri-colors knows how readily they will interbreed, so the information relayed to me doesn't seem all that far fetched. Anyway, when the eggs were hatched out, the babies were segregated by appearance and then labelled as what they most reasonably resembled, and then sold that way. There was no way to really tell what exactly they were. And the people receiving them had no clue about what they were really getting.
I really don't want to mention the guy's name, as it is a different world today, and although it probably seemed like a real good idea at the time, in today's climate, well, not so much. If for no other reason than the chaos that comes to mind thinking about the positive ID of so many animals that were likely founder stock for a lot of subsequent breeders and how that all had to percolate down through the subsequent generations. I am sure many people had surprises hatch out for them that had no logical reason, at least as best THEY knew.
As for corn snakes, hell, I know I had been lied to by people I trusted, and THINK I had been lied to by even more people who I trusted somewhat less. I tried to filter out all of the animals that SEEMED to me to be obvious hybrids, but heck, it got to the point where any new genetic strain that came out invariably got called as a hybrid. Heck, the Caramel line came from a wild caught female that I picked out of a bunch of wild caughts from a mom and pop pet shop in Cape Coral, Florida. The Lavender line (which I originally called "Mocha" came from a wild caught female that I personally caught in Murdock, Florida. The "Cinder Corns" (which I preferred calling "Ashy Corns") came from a gravid female that I traded from a guy in a Birmingham reptile show who lived in the Keys and swore it was one he caught himself there locally. But to this day some people will still believe they are hybrids in one way or another. I know there are more, but you catch my drift.
Of course, when you see hybrids between such wildly different colubrids as California kings and corn snakes, Honduran milks and Cal Kings, then gopher snakes and all what else thrown into the mix, eventually you have to come to the conclusion that a *TRUE* ID on many of these animals is something most people will probably never really know. So you reach the tipping point of either not caring and enjoying them anyway for what they are, or getting out of working with them rather than lose your sanity over those kinds of details. Heck, I nearly lost my marbles over just the genetic line we call "Hypomelanism" in the corn snakes. At one point I believe I had five different distinct lines of them I was working with. And none of them could be told apart visually.
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Socratic Monologue
Well-known member
Good stuff.
It isn't too hard to find locale rosy boas for sale that after a bit of conversation turn out to be some version of 'I wasn't sure but I looked at some photos and some guy on FB told me it might be locale x'. Happens enough on that other classified site; of the handful of sellers I've informed of obvious misidentifications, about half couldn't care less.
It isn't too hard to find locale rosy boas for sale that after a bit of conversation turn out to be some version of 'I wasn't sure but I looked at some photos and some guy on FB told me it might be locale x'. Happens enough on that other classified site; of the handful of sellers I've informed of obvious misidentifications, about half couldn't care less.
