Grey Rat Snake

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gray's Ratsnake is a name of another snake, Coluber ventromaculatus
iGrey Rat Snake
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Reptilia
Order: Squamata
Family: Colubridae
Genus: Elaphe
Species: E. obsoleta
Subspecies: E. o. spiloides
Trinomial name
Elaphe obsoleta spiloides

A Grey Rat Snake (Elaphe obsoleta spiloides) is a species of rat snake. The snake is usually found in the woodlands of the Midwestern USA. They are easily recognized by their light grey color, accompanied by dark grey blotches.

Gray Rat Snakes are large and feed primarily on rodents.

It should be noted that while a taxonomic suggestion has been made to change the genus Elaphe to Pantherophis, and this suggestion has been taken up by the web community at large, most herpetologists do not accept the suggestion and Herpetological Review 2003 34(3) rejected the taxonomic change. One argument against the change is that the Russian study that suggested it was based off of mitochondrial DNA evidence, not nuclear DNA and thus no relevance to the reproductive and nuclear genetic relatedness of the genera can be inferred from the data.