Past Snakes

[Tyrel26]

Yeah ive noticed from the photos here that the babies are quite large at birth, i posted a pic of the babies i had from a wc pair, they seem very tiny compared to the ones ive been seeing here.

It is very interesting that cb snakes produce larger babies, one would think that 10 large babies would have a higher survival rate that 20 tiny ones but i guess when you are food for basically everything the numbers are what count.

thanks for the info

[ConcinusMan]

Yup. Numbers count in the wild. Believe or not, I've seen 18 inch ordinoides have only 5-7 offspring but they were larger than any concinnus babies I've seen coming from a 3 foot female.

I think the reason why there are far more ordinoides is that they can adapt to habitats that are off limits to concinnus. If the amphibian population crashes, ordinoides can adapt and still thrive, far from water. Concinnus generally cannot. I knew a professor from WSU that told me that they use concinnus statistics to gauge the health of local watersheds and wetlands. Even when these are in decline, ordinoides populations continue to thrive or even increase.

All the rain we've been having lately is going to be good for concinnus. They will have an abundance of amphibian larvae in shallow temporary pools right about the time the offspring are being born. Dry years are bad for concinnus populations but don't affect ordinoides.