Bull Snake or Gopher Snake

[Jadie.Glitch]

I almost hijacked another thread because I saw someone on there with a snake in blue phase. She was asking what her snake is and everyone was saying "gopher snake"... well mine look exactly like that snake when they're blue so I was assuming that this whole time I was wrong in calling mine a bullsnake, when in actuality it's a gopher snake. Then Tricksterpup gave me some links to his snakes, and mine actually looks REALLY simliar to Hydra (only mine is a juvenial)...

You can also check out this link for my Bull Snake here. Hydra

Here is my link for my Sonoran Gopher, Selu


Now my Pacific Gophers. Coyote and Ishi. Coyote is the normal while Ishi is the stripe.

so to clear things up I am posting pics of mine... can you tell me if mine is a bullsnake or a gopher snake please!!

 

[tricksterpup]

You never really answered the question though. Is this a wild caught or breeder? Did you buy this at a shop?

 

[Allison]

I would guess Bull. He is very good looking!

 

[RobbiesCornField]

I could be wrong on this, but from what I've heard, the terms Bullsnake and Gophersnake are pretty much interchangeable depending on which part of the country you live in.

 

[Tula_Montage]

Thats a gopher Exactly the same head shape and saddle pattern as my wee albino lad.

Bulls also tend to have very different colouration down their bodies ie lighter head and neck to very dark tail.

 

[Jadie.Glitch]

You never really answered the question though. Is this a wild caught or breeder? Did you buy this at a shop?

Oh, I'm sorry... I guess I didn't realize that your post from the other thread was a question, lolz. I read them too quickly I guess.

Answer: Yes, I caught my snake in the wild. She was crossing the road and I jumped out and 'napped the little hateling :3.

 

[tricksterpup]

Oh, I'm sorry... I guess I didn't realize that your post from the other thread was a question, lolz. I read them too quickly I guess.

Answer: Yes, I caught my snake in the wild. She was crossing the road and I jumped out and 'napped the little hateling :3.

Then this is a Gopher snake, and not a Bull snake.

 

[airenlow]

I could be wrong on this, but from what I've heard, the terms Bullsnake and Gophersnake are pretty much interchangeable depending on which part of the country you live in.

I honestly thought they were the same thing too...I just didn't have the guts to post it yesterday. I thought it was like grizzlies and brown bears, it all depends on where they are located. You learn something new ever day!

 

[sarcare]

There is a difference between grizzlies and brown bears too. Sometimes animals go locally by a name that actually applies to a different species, like some people call corn snakes red rat snakes, even though they aren't actually rat snakes.

 

[Jadie.Glitch]

Then this is a Gopher snake, and not a Bull snake.

Okay, so you're telling me that because it was wild caught in this "region" that it is a gopher snake instead of a bullsnake? That because it was picked up in this part of Oregon that it somehow changes the creature that it is? But if I bought it from a breeder in this area that had wild caught the parents and they tell me that this is a bullsnake, that now it becomes a bullsnake because I didn't catch it myself? Well, everyone in this "region" calls them bullsnakes, wild caught or not (we go by what they actually look like), so that is what I am sticking with.

I appreciate your help, but I humbly declare that you may be wrong. oke:

Look at this site:
http://www.californiaherps.com/snakes/pages/p.c.catenifer.html

It states:

Family | Colubridae | Colubrids
Genus | Pituophis | Bullsnakes, Gopher Snakes, and Pinesnakes
Species | catenifer | Gopher Snake
Subspecies | catenifer | Pacific Gopher Snake


It says that the genus can be referred to as "bullsnakes", so my original statement in the previous thread was correct in saying that the names bullsnakes and gopher snakes are interchangeable.

 

[tom e]

In common usage they are interchangeable. But a western fence swift is a western fence swift, even if WE always call them bluebellies. You won't find them as such in any scientific books.

We don't have any of the snakes that are truly bull snakes on our coast. It just happens to be confusing that our 'nickname' for gophers is often bullsnake, which is the true name of another snake already. Make sense? Gets even more tricky when the animals look pretty similar too.
I totally relate, I've heard the same name for our local gophers as well, though more often when I was younger..

 

[tom e]

It states:

Family | Colubridae | Colubrids
Genus | Pituophis | Bullsnakes, Gopher Snakes, and Pinesnakes
Species | catenifer | Gopher Snake
Subspecies | catenifer | Pacific Gopher Snake


It says that the genus can be referred to as "bullsnakes", so my original statement in the previous thread was correct in saying that the names bullsnakes and gopher snakes are interchangeable.

Actually your quote here answers it best for you. What they mean is that inside the genus Pituophis are the three species. Not that they are interchangeable names. All bullsnakes, pine snakes, and gopher snakes are pits, not every pit is all three: bull snakes, pine snakes and gopher snakes. You get more specific when you get to the Species (Catenifer) now you are only talking gopher snakes, that's why it only has gopher snakes after it there on the second line, the species line.

 

[tyflier]

Bullsnakes and gophersnakes are different species in the same family. Yes...they look similar. And yes...people often refer to gophersnakes as bullsnakes. But they are, in fact, wrong in doing so.

If you look on that website you posted...californiaherps.com...you'll notice that of the subspecies of Pituophis in California, none of them is listed as a bullsnake. That's because they are all gophersnakes. Gophers, Pines, and Bulls are all in the same family, but different species. There are even different subspecies of each...

What you have there is a gophersnake. Probably a Pacific, but it could also be a very dark Great Basin. I'm not exactly sure of what is in your area, so I can't really be much more specific.

It is, however, correctly a gophersnake...

 

[tricksterpup]

Okay, so you're telling me that because it was wild caught in this "region" that it is a gopher snake instead of a bullsnake? That because it was picked up in this part of Oregon that it somehow changes the creature that it is? But if I bought it from a breeder in this area that had wild caught the parents and they tell me that this is a bullsnake, that now it becomes a bullsnake because I didn't catch it myself? Well, everyone in this "region" calls them bullsnakes, wild caught or not (we go by what they actually look like), so that is what I am sticking with.

I appreciate your help, but I humbly declare that you may be wrong. oke:

Look at this site:
http://www.californiaherps.com/snakes/pages/p.c.catenifer.html

It states:

Family | Colubridae | Colubrids
Genus | Pituophis | Bullsnakes, Gopher Snakes, and Pinesnakes
Species | catenifer | Gopher Snake
Subspecies | catenifer | Pacific Gopher Snake


It says that the genus can be referred to as "bullsnakes", so my original statement in the previous thread was correct in saying that the names bullsnakes and gopher snakes are interchangeable.

Scientifically they are inter changeable. Where you live in your state there are no bullsnakes, catenifer sayi, in your state the species is catenifer catenifer.

The question I had about it being wild caught compared to being captive bred is an easy one. There is only one species in Oregon as there is only one species in Minnesota. If I found a snake like that it would be a catenifer sayi, the bull snake and not a Gopher. You only have one species in your state the Pacific Gopher.

If it was a captive bred snake, i would almost go with a Bull snake due to its coloration but it hasn't gotten its Adult coloration yet. These snakes are yellowish in background color with a dark pattern. Bull Snakes typically are a tanish background. There is slight color variations on this theme. But then again, if it came from a breeder who didnt know his animals this snake could have been anything and I would need better pictures to identify the animal.

 

[Jadie.Glitch]

Okay well that all makes sense ^_^. I will be be posting a progression thread as Delilah grows and maybe we will see a big change in her and she will look more like the gopher snake pictures that you showed me. Although, I have seen a couple 6 foot versions of my little Delilah around here and they look exactly like her only bigger. Bands across the eyes and everything. From what I have seen the gopher snakes lose those bands when they grow up.

So is it completely impossible that there might be bullsnakes in my area? I mean, I live in HatRock state park and this is the only place I have ever seen the ones that look like this. I've lived in the Hermiston area for 21 years and had never seen anything like them until I moved to HatRock (about 5 miles away from Hermiston and VERY secluded), but they're EVERYWHERE here.

Maybe someone had gotten a few as pets from somewhere else, got tired of them, and released them into the wild and they've been breeding with the native snakes. I don't know, I know this happens all the time but maybe I am reaching by offering up that suggestion, lol ^_^.

Either way, she's a spitfire and if I asked her directly what she was she'd tell me that she's a full-grown viper and to back off :roflmao:!

She's just starting to calm down (after about 3 months) and be a sweetheart, though which is good ^_^.

 

[tricksterpup]

She's just starting to calm down (after about 3 months) and be a sweetheart, though which is good ^_^.

Ok, the odds of it being catenifer sayi is still slim to none. The bullsnake population doesn't cross the Rockies. The odds are that your snake will look like mine? again, maybe slim to none. Mine are California localities so they will look different from their Northern Brethren, or you could have a locality Phase. To many people the Minnesota Bull is almost a Melaninistic version of the bull due to its darker colors. And when you compare them to other bulls from Texas they look different in coloration.

If you look at Ishi. He is a striped Pacific Gopher which comes from the San Francisco Bay area.

 

[KJUN]

Almost everything I've read here is wrong (and no, I did NOT read everything because I got tired of the misinformation). There are more than three species of Pituophis, and you can NOT tell most of them aopart just my head shape, head pattern , blotch count, blotch shape, etc. - not alone, anyway. For the novice, LOCALITY is the best way to ID a Western US Pituophis. Many of them, due to inherent variability, can be almost impossible to separate from a closely related subspecies without detailed morphology (especially scale counts).

Your snake is a gophersnake. It looks like a gophersnake - it doesn't look like a bullsnake at all. It was caught within the range of gophersnakes. Call it a Blue zwinkle or a bullsnake - it is STILL a gophersnake when you turn the lights out at night. Look at a range map to be sure of the identification if you really want to know what subspecies it is. Bullsnakes and all of the US gophersnakes are the same species (catenifer), but they are separate subspecies. Calling a Pituophis in Oregon a "bullsnake" is like calling a Texas ratsnake a chickensnake: it is nothing more than another ignorant, misleading, common name. Period.

 

[Jadie.Glitch]

Thanks for all the help guys. I suppose even if I stuck to the fact that Delilah is a "bullsnake" (which I don't anymore), her genus would STILL lead back to her being a gopher snake anyway. So a gopher snake she is ^_^. I'll change my signature to reflect that in a few minutes. My next question is this (and I may be creating a new thread for it if I don't get many answers here):

I was planning on doing a cornsnake x gophersnake hybrid in the next couple of years (crossing my nice Okeetee with Delilah) but I happened to notice that some people don't trust cornsnake breeders who do "hybrids" to be giving them quality cornsnakes. They could just be selling them the "more cornsnake looking" hybrids, and thus muddying up the gene pool. I had never even CONSIDERED doing this... it just seems so dishonest. Should I be worried about my little project ruining my future cornsnake breeding reputation??

 

[tyflier]

Some people like hybrids, some don't. All you can do is breed what you want to breed, and be honest about everything you sell. If it's a hybrid or intergrade...be honest, and know down to the percentage what the animals are. Maintain your integrity and you will be fine, IMO.

 

[Jadie.Glitch]

Thanks ^_^. I was hoping to hear a response like that. I plan on keeping good records which will help immensely, Im sure.