Well I don't want to get into the whole "tree marking contest" between Mr. Jake and Mr. Good. :argue:
However I do feel that Mr. Good misinterpreted what the other gentleman was saying. I had never heard of a Western rat snake myself. So falling off the barstool a little bit prematurely is what I saw. More often than not in our society, experience is based on years worth of hands on education and observation. However, the opposite is true as well in smaller cases. Kids today are definately more experienced in modern music than I am. You can be experienced with only a few years in a hobby, based on the research that you do, books that you read, and maybe official schooling. Not all of it has to come from first hand experience. So to dismiss someone with only 13 years under their belt is only a step backwards in my opinion, merely judgemental. We all have our own perspectives on things, even corn snaking. Sadly enough text doesn't come with voice inflection and tone, so it's easy to misinterpret a bunch of words if you aren't hearing it personally. I didn't see anyting condescending in Mr. Jake's statements whatsoever. I just saw the lashing out over some pretty honest and inquiring questions. *shrugs*
I just want to start a new tangent to this discussion as it were. I am a bit perplexed on the whole classification of "rat snakes" of North America.
Ok, we all know corn snakes, obviously the forum this is. Corn snakes can be white, red, orange, green, speckled, polka-dotted, striped, pink, and yellow, and nearly black or all grey. But they're all considered corn snakes, Elaphe gutatta. Correct?
However, on their close kin in the family tree, the rat snakes..we have felt the need to group them into different species based on the locality of which they're found and the coloration/patterning of their scales. Does anyone else have a problem with this?
It sounds like the dominating theory in the 16th through the early 20th centuries that those Homo sapiens with hyper-melanin skin color were considered a different and inferior subspecies of human. I'm not making the point that the different classifications of snakes makes them inferior to one or another, but merely is an outlandish attempt to merely classify what neednt be classified.
We all know that corn snakes from different areas of their range tend to have different coloring and patterning. But they're still considered to all be corn snakes. So what I'm trying to understand here is why are rat snakes separated into different species based on their locality and coloration/patterning? To me, they don't appear all that different..they've just adapted to a totally different environment.
I've even read that more and more grey color based corn snakes are cropping up due to in large part the urbanization their habitat is being transformed into. They blend in moreso with the paved and artificial surfaces and are more likely to survive and pass on those traits.
From what I remember years ago about Southern Florida was a lot of yellow grassy undergrowth, which is an environment to which yellow rats would be best equipped to survive in. Whereas up here in Indiana, we have the black black rat snakes with yellow/white speckles that blend in well with the deciduous forests. The large amound of shade with trickles of sunlight filtering through.
Picture of Black rat snake found in my pasture:
And while Mr. Jake's snake does appear similar to the purported Western rat snake (Texas if you prefer), I can see how that would be best suited for an environment west of the Mississippi. However clearly wouldn't be in South Carolina unless it was an escapee. It does resemple the "Greenish" rat snake that Rich posted an example of, so in that case you would definately get an intergrade of some sort.
Is there conclusive genetic DNA documented evidence to classify all of these snakes separately? Thats what it all boils down to.
Feel free to correct me on any mistakes of which I may have made. I'm just trying to understand the whole desire to reclassify things just based on location and color. =)
