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black rat snake or black corn snake?

cornbreadandmilk

cornbreadandmilk

Non-registered User
every spring baby rat snake run into my house i caught 6 in two weeks last year and i stepped on one in my kitchen floor real late one night when i got up to get a drink! i felt really bad but i couldnt see at all in there, well ive only seen one this year. this was before i decided to get back into snakes so it would be an awesome problem to have right now. i was looking on reptmart today and i notice that their picture for black rat snakes is different than what i was catching.

i was catching 9 -10" snakes colored just like this i figured they would grow more black with age and there colors would diffuse(reptmart list this as black corn snake)
sn3157065.jpg


this is what reptmart list as a black rat snake baby
sn3156974.jpg


so am i right to assume they were baby black rat snakes as i have never seen a corn snake in my area
 
I'm sure they were baby black rats. They do look a lot like anery corns when first born. Our black rats in NC tend to grow up almost jet black. In other areas they do hold on to the pattern a lil bit. I just caught 3 this past week. Hardly any pattern on them, but they are all adults.
 
Black rat snakes have the contrasty dorsal saddle patterns just like corn snakes do, but only as hatchlings. It eventually will disappear into the mostly black looking adults you see. Its likely you were seeing black rat snakes, but you never know! Take a picture! :)
 
There isn't any question at all that you were DEFINITELY seeing boldly-patterned juvenile Black Ratsnakes, and not cornsnakes.


~Doug
 
DMong said:
There isn't any question at all that you were DEFINITELY seeing boldly-patterned juvenile Black Ratsnakes, and not cornsnakes.


~Doug
Click to expand...

Agreed, they look like anery corns but what are the odds of 6 wild hatched anery corns that enter your house while you've never seen a normal corn in your area? Unless your neighbors breed with 2 anery corns and throw the offspring in your house, lol. :bang:
 
atmox said:
Agreed, they look like anery corns but what are the odds of 6 wild hatched anery corns that enter your house while you've never seen a normal corn in your area? Unless your neighbors breed with 2 anery corns and throw the offspring in your house, lol. :bang:
Click to expand...


HAHAA!!!,......funny stuff! :cheers:


~Doug
 
Nanci said:
That reptmart black rat looks like a black racer to me, in the eyes.
Click to expand...

A little I guess. But only because it is very young and hasn't grown into it's big eyes yet..LOL!!!

That individual is a textbook juvenile Black Rat (P. obsoletus) example though. ;)



~Doug
 
There's a gravel road here in Columbia that runs around a large section
of farmland dotted with marshy ponds. There's little population around it,
only one business, and when you get nearer to the city, the road
turns back into pavement, but there's still a large section of this HUGE
farm, along with a private school and the water treatment plant. It runs
about a 2.5 mile loop, but the gravel road part of it has produce Hundreds
of snake sightings for me over the past 3 years. Mostly Black Ratsnakes
that I've stopped and picked up and set off in the grass to get them out
of harm's way (goes without saying that there have also been a large
amount of DORs too). . . . I want to make a trip around there late one
evening near sunset to see what comes out at night. All of the sightings
I've seen are during the daytime, and have been mostly Black Rats and
Black Racers. Have seen though (still get upset when thinging about it)
a large 4 foot + Eastern King that was freshly killed last year. That thing
had the most beautiful and vivid marking of any King I had ever seen.
Unfortunately, it had been run over within 15-20 minutes before I got there.

Anyway,
Last week I made a quick round through that area, and I happened upon
this:

BlackRat6911A.jpg


BlackRat6911B.jpg


BlackRat6911C.jpg


Excuse the lack of detail in the snake. The only thing I had available was
my cell phone, so I got these pictures. This beauty was almost 4' long
and still had very vivid juvenile markings that are hard to see in these pics,
but were very distinct. This thing sat perfectly still while I snapped the
pictures, and then I picked it up. It got "flighty" but still didn't seem to
be aggressive. I sat it on the side of the road and it took off quickly for some
rocks in a drainage ditch on the side. I've seen smaller black Rats on that
same road with none of the Juvenile marks. This one still had them and
very well defined.
 
I love it when they do that "crookedy" thing! First time I saw a snake on a dirt road like that I flew out of my truck "Mr. Snake, Mr. Snake, are you all right???" He was fine...
 
very skinny but nice. I how it finds some food.. I never seen a black rat. I live in s. fl. and see corns skinny like this. My last one was skinny and is now 5ft. and fat.
 
Since the first warm sunny spring day I've been going out every morning and evening looking for black rats. We normally have a few that hang out around our house. I couldn't figure out why I wasn't finding any at all. Then my dad told me he ran over two of them while mowing the lawn! I know he didn't see them in the tall grass but dang. I can't find one and he kills two? What luck I have...
 
On that same road where I posted the pics of the Black Rat Snake a
couple of days ago:

Shot these yesterday. . . . I saw it in the middle of the road, and stopped
to move it out of harm's way. This one didn't want to be messed with. I
had the digial Camera with me this time, and got some closer shots. When
I walked up to it, I was startled for a second. This Black Rat had some
kind of wierd deformity to the head, Especially on the left side
it made it look like a venoumous snake (thought Moccasin
at first glance). When I got close to it, it expanded it's neck (noticable
in the pics here), and it was musking pretty heavily too. Shortly after I
snapped the first picture, this thing reared up like a cobra / black racer
and started crawling off the road. I'm guessing the deformed face/head
left it with imparied vision, and it reared up to see better. Odd looking
head. Old Injury / Birth Defect / Disease ?? . . what do you all think?

BlackRatSnake1.jpg


BlackRatSnake2.jpg


BlackRatSnake3.jpg


BlackRatSnake4.jpg
 
Very cool shots!

I actually don't think the snakes head was deformed, but rather it "seemed" distorted from being agitated by your presence. This can be very typical display behavior of many harmless snakes to help thwart off potential enemies.

That place sure does have it's fine share of snakes,...that's fantastic!



~Doug
 
DMong said:
Very cool shots!

I actually don't think the snakes head was deformed, but rather it "seemed" distorted from being agitated by your presence. This can be very typical display behavior of many harmless snakes to help thwart off potential enemies.

That place sure does have it's fine share of snakes,...that's fantastic!



~Doug
Click to expand...

You could be right, but I've seen a lot of non-venomous snakes Flaten out
their head and neck to seem more "aggresive" or bigger to scare off
preditors or just because their scared / aggrevated. My wild caught corn
does that at times, and will even vibrate her tail rapidly, but I've never seen
it where it appeared like this. . . It appeared to have that large bulge on
just the left side when I first got to where I could see the head clearly, and
then it enlarged the neck and sat up. Even after doing that, you could see
that the left side was more "deformed or enlarged than the right". I know it
didn't want me there because the smell it musky order it was emitting
was strong.
I tend to agree with winged sweetheart here, because this area where this
"loop" of road is, is about 4 miles outside the heart of Columbia. I work
right across the road from Williams Brice Stadium and where the State Fairgrounds
are, and that's just a few blocks down from Downtown and the University
Campus. The company I work for has another building across town, and
my job has me going back and forth between the two plants a couple of
times a day. I make a detour a few times a week to make trip around this
loop. . . It is mainly around a large (guessing corporate) farm, but there's
also a water treatment plant, a private school and one or two small
business' around there. It has several decent size swamp areas around and
a large creek near the highway, so the gravel road part has a lot of nice
"snakey" habitat. I've seen mostly Rat Snakes and Black Racers, but have
seen one big Copperhead, and two dead Eastern Kings and a couple of
Brown Snakes. Still going to make a trip out there near sundown soon to
see what kind of snakes I can see near nightfall.
 
^
Got sidetracked there.
The reason I agree with W/S is because during the fall, the farm has
the crop dusting plane that sprays that area, and I'm guessing the
pesticides aren't real good for the wildlife around there.
 
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