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Project Noah Nature School
Large black snake with a light colored belly. Thin but long
We live in the woods but it was in chicken coop
Snake stayed in chicken coop for 3 days before disappearing. Always in the same spot. Not the 1st black snake I've found in the coop but this one wasn't as big around and was very shiny.
Well we wouldn't be like that if people wouldn't use the same name for 5+ species ;) It's so confusing!
Ironically, from the link I posted, I learned that herpetologists are extremely picky about common names. lol
Wiki usually takes several years to get updated haha. And "black snake" is a terrible common name! Just as bad as "chicken snake", drives me crazy when people use that because it refers to many species and they never know what it actually is haha
Oh, I didn't know because Wiki doesn't give that many specifics and even referred to it as Texas blacksnake. If you drop the "Texas", can it also be called simply a black snake? 0:-)
The common name is black rat snake or western rat snake. The name Texas rat snake was a subspecies, but when the genus switched to Pantherophis from Elaphe they got rid of subspecies for this specific species.
Here's a matching photo with some info: http://mdc.mo.gov/media/image/texas-rats...
Spotted on May 30, 2015
Submitted on Jun 2, 2015
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