Skip to main content
Help Center Community Shop

Comments

9 comments

Date Votes
  • spasmcreeksrun
    great mousers like our bull snake here
    0
  • varian
    i dont kill any snakes except cotton mouths and copperheads.  they are bad tempered and will bite you  for no good reason.  rat snakes are more apt to bite than king snakes so i just leave them alone.
    0
  • kimi
    Well my folks were farmers as were their relatives and they killed chicken snakes around the farm on sight , because they would cost the family money by swallowing up the fresh eggs, and Grandma did not like that at all!  They also lost a cat that kept the mice and rats in check to the bite of a chicken snake that hit it in the neck, apparently the wound got infected and then the cat died, and that's when I was taught that they would or could make humans sick if bit.  That said, I've always let them be when found in other places.
    3
  • montanajoe
    • Community moderator
    I only like the snakes  my buddy kept behind glass at the St.Louis Zoo,,  ;)
    0
  • Rocky Raab
    I've never suffered from what I call the "Eve Syndrome". I admire and respect snakes. At first, it was because I could not figure out how they move - quickly at times. Then it became an interest in the rest of their lives. And many of them are downright gorgeous, as well. I never kill one unless it is poisonous and I have made the mistake of blundering into it.
    0
  • chiefr
    We have Elaphe Obsoleta Obsoleta here.
    0
  • He Dog
    Chiefr, it is now Pantherophis.  Elaphe has been restricted to the European rat snakes.  Personally I have never met a snake I did not like, and I have kept a bunch of them.
    0
  • chiefr

    He Dog, One thing I learned in all my years of college was how F &&^$ed up taxonomists are. They have to fix something that was never broke. There are years of books out there with the genus elaphe and can extend the argument to all other forms of life from domain to species.  Reminds me of the "Cape Kennedy" debacle.



    Who knows what would happen if life was discovered elsewhere besides planet earth. 

    0
  • He Dog

    Chiefr taxonomy has always been based on morphology, but it turns out the shape of things often leads to incorrect conclusions about relatedness due to convergent evolution.  Organisms come up with the same answers to survival in similar habitats in different parts of the world.  Molecular biologists began looking at DNA in about the late 80's and have refined the technics and computer programs in the years since.  Today we compare DNA coding to determine relatedness.  That said, the naming is still done according to the old rules, so when Elaphe is voided for obsoleta, the first name previously used becomes the new name.

    "Who knows what would happen if life was discovered elsewhere besides planet earth."

    The Russians would claim they invented it along with the automobile, pizza and hamburgers.  We would give it the vote. 

    0

Please sign in to leave a comment.

Recent Activity