Corn snakes are a type of ratsnake, as are Kitsachie. They used to be classified as the same species, along with Emory’s. To the best of my knowledge, all are now separate species.
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Yep, corns are also known as red rats in some places.
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Not sure if a full list of ratsnake species is wanted, but there are fairly accurate lists of New World and Old World ratsnake species on the “ratsnake” page on Wikipedia. The list at the top of this thread is a fraction of what is out there. With ratsnakes, having different categories for different species is a lot more important than developing a list of morphs.
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What if for ratsnakes, instead of putting every single species of rat snake, we did species as morphs, kind of like import for ball pythons, so if someone had an albino black rat snake then they would list morphs as albino, and Black Rat Snake.
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Not sure if anyone else has said anything about it, but most New World (mainly North American) rat snakes are no longer in the Genus Elaphe even though many breeders still think they are. They are in the Genus Pantherophis as they were found not to be as closely related to old world rat snakes as we first thought.
Black rat snake aka Eastern rat snake: Pantherophis alleghaniensis
Gray rat snake: Pantherophis spiloides
Yellow rat snake: Pantherophis alleghaniensis (quadrivittata is rarely used now due to it just being a color/pattern variation of the Eastern rat snake)
Everglade ratsnake: Pantherophis alleghaniensis (rossalleni rarely used on as well because also Eastern rat snake)
Baird’s ratsnake: Pantherophis bairdi
Emory ratsnake AKA Great Plains ratsnake: Pantherophis emoryi
Texas ratsnake: Pantherophis obsoleta lindheimeri
Greenish rat snake (mix between black ratsnake and yellow ratsnake locals): Pantherophis alleghaniensis
Fox snake: Pantherophis vulpinus
Corn snake: Pantherophis guttatus
Western Green rat snake: Senticolis triaspis
That is all I can remember for now, but there are of course more. If you need me to look into more of the New world rats I would be glad to.
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Striped is a trait in black rat snakes. I have an albino striped black rat female, and I have seen just striped for sale once (not on MM). I still don’t know if it is recessive, dom, or inc-dom but I don’t believe this just a line bred trait from what I have seen. Still working on finding someone that knows these things.
Brindle is another trait in black rat snakes. I know Bartley Reptiles on MM works with them, but I am not sure if they have a profile on these forums just yet. They may also know about the striped trait as they work with more black rat snake morphs.
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Kunashir island is a locality of climacophora. There’s mainland ones as well. Their common name should just be Japanese Ratsnake.
You would need a separate morph amel, calico, etc for each relevant species. There’s an independently occurring line of amel in a lot of these so you’ll need a amel for each species. On top of the ones that have other morphs as well axanthic in mandarians, melanistic in russians, etc
I would probably have two super categories: old world and new world and then drill down from there. Maybe start with the new world since they’re more common?
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The above list of traits has been updated with what I have been able to find across the internet.
Does anyone know of any that are missing?
Well, there are already issues with the Eastern rat snakes. There are rat snakes that are not Easterns in the category and Eastern rats that aren’t in the right category lol.
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Thank you Ashley! Which ones exactly? We will get them moved to the right place.
With us creating and processing such a huge amount of data for all these categories there was likely a few strays that ended up in the wrong place.
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Here are the ones that are not Eastern rats in the Eastern category:
And here are the Easterns that are in the “Other” category:
I am pretty sure the one labelled “green” rat snake is actually a greenish rat snake. Moonshine is a greenish rat snake mutation as well.
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Spotted some Eastern rat snakes in the Western rat snake category just now as well.
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@eaglereptiles Would it be ok for me to flag all of the animals not in the right categories? Like half of the snakes in the Western rat snake category are Easterns.
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Something that will be much easier for the both of us. Can you just tell me the common species names of the ones in the wrong place? It saves us both going through individual ads.
We can bulk move them by name into the correct place.
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Black, everglades, yellow, and greenish rat snakes. Some of them are just marked by their mutations in the title though. So that makes it a little harder.
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@eaglereptiles We now have people posting new eastern rat snake adds in the western category because they think they belong there.
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@osbornereptiles I asked your buddies Matt Most & Clint Bartley to come over here and tell us what they think should be done. I just made a large subcategory update, but am waiting on their input to proceed. Thanks!
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Hey all! I know I’m late to the party and I truly apologize! Ashley’s post earlier is pretty spot on in terms of current taxonomy classifications with a little adjustment. Currently, Texas rats (lindheimeri) are no longer recognized as a subspecies of P. obsoleta but are lumped into obsoleta (western rats) as a whole. The hurdles/issues we are currently running into is taxonomy classifications vs hobby acceptance. There are many in the academic community that take issue with the Burbrink paper (the paper that created the change) due to sample size and other factors. There may be conflicting papers published in the coming years that most likely alter, yet again 
the classifcation of north amercian rat snakes. However, as it currently stands the Burbrink paper is the standard. Outside of academia, most rat snake breeders HATE the classification as we find it hard to swallow a black rat snake and everglades rat both being P. alleghaniesis and loath the crossing of them (to each their own in that regard.)
I think the best way for us to have both accurate scientific classification listed (whether we agree with it or not) as well as satisfying the hobby’s want for segregation of the former subspecies in a classified ad format, is to actually create the categories off the list Ashley has provided above. The only changes/additions I would recommend, just to keep us scientifically accurate, would be to drop lindheimeri (but keep the Texas ratsnake category) and add Western rat snake (Pantherophis obsoletus). Hopefully this would satisfy both camps and keep things nice and clean in the event the taxonomy does change again!
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Just to put it all in one place with the slight adjustments to Ashley’s list, I think we should have the categories as:
Black rat snake (Eastern rat snake): Pantherophis alleghaniensis
Yellow rat snake (Eastern rat snake) : Pantherophis alleghaniensis
Everglades rat snake (Eastern rat snake) : Pantherophis alleghaniensis
Greenish rat snake (Intergrade Eastern rat snake) : Pantherophis alleghaniensis
Gray rat snake : Pantherophis spiloides
Baird’s rat snake : Pantherophis bairdi
Emory rat snake : Pantherophis emoryi
Western rat snake: Panterophis obsoleta
Texas rat snake (Western rat snake) : Pantherophis obsoleta
Fox snake : Pantherophis vulpinus
Corn snake : Pantherophis guttatus
Western Green rat snake : Senticolis triaspis
The final idea on cleaning up the category labels, perhaps listing them as Black Eastern, Yellow Eastern, Everglades Eastern, Greenish Eastern, etc and then the morphs would of course fall into place within the categories.
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