Grey Rat Snake
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Gray's Ratsnake is a name of another snake, Coluber ventromaculatus
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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.