Mountain Blacksnake

[monelle]

In the book Snakes of the Catskill Mountains, there is a called a snake called the Mountain Blacksnake, which is differentiated from the Common Blacksnake in that the belly is yellowish (not gray), it has keeled scales, and it is larger. In fact, it is called the largest snake in the area, often attaining a length of 7 feet. The book also says that this snake is much less nervous than the Common Blacksnake.

I cannot find any reference to this snake on the internet or in Google images. As the book was written in 1953, I am wondering if this snake is now called something else (e.g., Eastern Rat Snake?). Please forgive me, I am trying to put together some photographs for my grandson, but I know absolutely nothing about snakes.

[jjhill001]

Tossup between the eastern rat snake, formerly the black rat snake and northern black snake. That's assuming that they are even talking about separate species. In reality, I've seen black rat snakes with whitish tones and I've seen black rat snakes with yellowish tones in their color. It very well could be a locality morphological coloration difference in either the black rat snake or northern racer.

The black rat snake is technically the longest snake in North America (Indigos are unofficially the largest) with a record size of 8ft 5 inches recorded back in 1939. This would give more credence to the idea that if they are saying they hit 7 feet pretty regularly that it's a black rat snake that they were talking about.

The record length for a Racer is only 6ft 1 inches but that record length includes the entire racer species and not just the northern ones.

Another difference is that the Racer DOESN'T have keeled scales while the Black Rat Snake has slightly keeled scales.

Thirdly, behaviorally speaking, racer snakes are noted to be quite irascible compared to rat snakes.

So, based on the description I'm gonna say that the Common Black Snake in 1953 was the Northern Racer Snake and the Mountain Black Snake was the Black Rat Snake (Now Eastern Rat Snake).

[monelle]

Thank you so much for detailed response!