rat snake ident?

[tucker]

From the picture it looks like he's too heavy body to be a rat snake. At 4-5 ft my rat snakes are a lot slimmer than my 4 ft Corn. So Maybe a great plains, as they were once part of the "corn" snakes.

[Jason_Hood]

Originally Posted by tucker

From the picture it looks like he's too heavy body to be a rat snake. At 4-5 ft my rat snakes are a lot slimmer than my 4 ft Corn. So Maybe a great plains, as they were once part of the "corn" snakes.

Ummm, rat snakes, as in Black Rats, get much larger and heavier than corns do so I don't get what you are saying here.

This looks to be a black rat with the possibility of other influences in it to account for the color but the black rat is wide ranging and has many different looks to it including the "greenish rat" in the coastal plains where the yellow/black rats occur and look totally different than in other areas. This could also be a corn rat cross that was back crossed to a rat again, F2 crosses/hybrids get funky and hard to ID. I have a pet shop neat me that has albino black rats/corns crosses as adults and no matter how many times I tell the guy he still labels them as just black rats and breeds them every year to sell. The babies are more obviously not pure when you see them.

Jason

[buzby]

Thanks to everyone for the replies and suggestions as to Magwitch's possible breeding. As I said before, it really doesn't matter what's in there, just interesting to see what people think.
Found out that he is about 5 years old, he was supposedly given in to the shop as his previous owner was downsizing his collection, but now I've got to know him, I think he got handed in because he is just so naughty! He gets up twice a day soley to trash the place and spend some time attempting to open the viv before going back to bed leaving me to tidy up ready for his next assault! He's such a character, I adore him