"Nekked Snakes"

It was early October 1992 and I had been the Curator of Education at The Texas Zoo (Victoria, Texas) for a little over two months. Being the only herper on staff, naturally all reptile related calls were funneled to me.

The phone rang. Well, it was more of a buzz than an honest to gosh ring. In fact, musically speaking, when our phone buzzed, it produced the first two notes of "Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones (oops, I'm showing my age!). Dutifully, I answered. The man at the other end of the phone spoke with that deep South Texas drawl that only South Texans can emit. He said that he had some sort of weird looking snake and wanted to know what it was. It was then I related to him that I had a strict policy regarding identifying snakes without the benefit of actually seeing the animal with my own eyes. I just don't do it and for very good reasons.

The first reason is that most laypersons cannot seem to tell the difference between a band encircling a snake's body (like that of a milk snake or a coral snake) from a stripe running the entire length of a snake's body (like the vertebral stripe of a ribbon snake or a garter snake). This makes their attempts at description suspect and totally unreliable. By the way, the best idiot proof ID system I've seen to date is in Jim Dunlap's book, Slithering' Round Texas (Wordware Publishing Inc., 1994). Jim illustrates possible patterns and designates them by a letter. The he gives a numerical value of ten (10) possible colors, using a primary (background) color and a secondary (pattern) color. Using this system, one can match up letters and numbers and should come reasonably close to a proper identification. The second reason for my policy is due to a story I heard sometime ago. In retrospect, this story may be in reality an "Urban Myth." Urban myths abound in our culture and are stories told about some horrific or amazing event, but have never been published in newspapers or any other type of official report. One specific urban myth comes to mind. Scuba divers (a fellowship to which I belong) dive down into the depths to inspect the structural integrity of a dam and see catfish of such huge proportions that they swim frantically to the surface, exit the water in wide-eyed terror, and swear they'll never go back down again as long as they live. I've heard this particular story about virtually every reservoir in Texas. The strangest thing about urban myths is that the people relating these stories will swear that they know the person(s) who witnessed the events - personally! Sorry, it just ain't so.

But this particular story goes a little something like this: A call comes through to the Reptile Department at a zoo (I believe it was the Houston Zoo in the version I heard). The call was from a frantic parent claiming a snake had just bitten their child. To add to their crisis, they weren't certain if the snake was venomous (I'm sure they used the word "poisonous") snake or not. The herp staffer asked them to describe the snake. "It's black, all black!", cried the parent. "It's nothing to worry about then. No doubt it's a harmless species.", responded the keeper and hung up the phone. The snake in question turned out to be a melanistic (all black) coral snake!

Whether the story is true, or as I suspect, an urban myth, it nonetheless serves a great object lesson. I hope the reader adopts this same policy. One never knows what strange and unusual mutation may be involved. And in this day and age when one can successfully sue a national restaurant chain because one orders super-heated coffee and place said super-heated coffee between one's own legs resulting in self-scalding. Just the same, a miss-identified snake might get one sued!

After explaining all this to the caller, I went ahead and crawled out on that proverbial limb and asked him to describe it to me. Now I'm very confident in my knowledge of snakes native to Texas, but this guy just wasn't making any sense. I'd never heard of a black snake with pink sides. Whatever this guy was drinking.... I talked him into bringing it to the Zoo for proper identification. But just before I hung up the phone, I asked him one last question. "Are the scales on the body smooth or rough?" "What do you mean, smooth or rough?" "Are they smooth or do they have a ridge through the length of the scale?," hoping I was clarifying my request. His response was of no help at all. "To tell ya the truth, I don't see no scales."

I thanked him for calling and agreeing to bring in the snake. Then I placed the receiver back in its cradle and muttered the word "idiot", and went back to my business. The next day I heard someone opening the door of the Zoo's administration building. Being the only one in the building at the time, I got up from my desk and went to investigate. As I rounded the corner of the hallway I saw a man and a young boy standing in the door frame. My eyes were immediately drawn to the gallon jar the man was holding to his side. In the jar was the strangest looking snake I'd ever seen. He was the phone contact from the day before and was two days early for our appointment. I invited them both into the Zoo's library where I could better examine this bizarre, weird looking critter. Strange and impossible as it might seem to intelligent beings, my first thought was that his fellow had caught someone's escaped Bismarck or ringed python (Bothrochilus boa). As I said, it was one weird, mamma-jamma snake. On its back was a broad, jet-black stripe with scalloped edges and the sides were a vivid salmon with a series of dark ovals colored like the vertebral stripe. The surface of the body had the look of velvet. I leaned forward to get a better look at its scales. True to the man's word, there were no scales. I was looking at my first nekked snake! With the exception of ventral (belly) and subcaudal (underside of the tail) scales, along with a few facial scutes, the snake was devoid of scales! The one nice thing about eating one's own words - they are non-fattening. The near complete absence of scales made it hard enough to identify this snake, but the pattern and colors created an additional burden. I hate to admit this, but I was completely stumped. A moment later, the Animal Curator - Sherry Hornstein (now the Zoo's Director) - came ambling through the library, made a casual glance toward the snake in question and said, "Looks like a water snake to me." I could have killed her. She was absolutely right, although still to this day, I think it was a lucky guess. But what lay before me was a neonate (baby) blotched water snake (Nerodia erythrogaster transversa). Alan Tenant, in his reprinted A Field Guide to Texas Snakes (1988), describes baby blotched water snakes as having "faintly pinkish ground color... conspicuously patterned over the forebody with dark dorsal bands which breakup posteriorly into dark saddles alternating with vertical lateral bars. The venter is pale yellow, with dark pigment lining the forward edges of the mid-body ventral scutes."

The guy who brought the snake in was intent on keeping it, but my silver tongue rose to the occasion once again and I talked him into donating it to the Zoo. Contrary to my personal belief system regarding naming captive reptiles, I christened this odd fellow "Netmut". This stood for its trinomial scientific name and the abbreviation of the word mutant. Netmut lived in a 10-gallon aquarium with a gravel substrate, cork bark refuge, water bowl, and an under tank heat-pad. Netmut lived in my office until the snake's untimely death on August 2, 1993. It survived for 301 days in captivity, shed five times (losing its tail tip with each molt), and consumed 48 meals (76 minnows, 1 toadlet, 1 cricket frog, and 1 grass shrimp). Netmut's remains were donated to Strecker Museum of Baylor University in Waco, Texas and represents the first known reporting of scalelesssness in blotched water snakes.

Scaleless mutations among snakes is not a new phenomenon. It was first reported by W.H. Stickle in 1942 when he collected a partially scaled aquatic garter snake (Thamnophis couchi ssp.) in King's Canyon, California. To date it has been observed in six other snake species: eastern garter snake (Thamnophis s. sirtalis), northern water snake (Nerodia s. sipedon), mole snake (Lampropelis calligaster rhombomaculata), Pacific gopher snake (Pitouphis c. catenifer), Texas rat snake (Elaphe obsoleta lindheimeri), and western diamondback rattlesnake (Crotalus atrox). The western diamondback rattlesnake has even demonstrated stranger scale mutations by developing some individuals whose scales point backwards!

The team of Bechtel and Bechtel worked with a captive propagation program with Texas rat snakes to determine if scalelessness was an inheritable trait. In 1985 they received their original pair of scaleless Texas rat snakes from the Bronx Zoo. Unfortunately, the female died of a gastrointestinal disease before she matured. In 1987, the surviving male was bred to a normal female. This union produced one male and three female (1.3) normally scaled babies. The females of this first clutch were bred back to their scaleless father in 1989, producing a total of 23 eggs (clutch sizes were 6, 7, and 10). Upon hatching, 4.5 scaleless babies emerged while the remaining 14 were scaled normally. In 1990, another cross produced 22 eggs resulting in 1.4 scaleless and 17 scaled babies. The research conducted by the Bechtels demonstrated an "autosomal recessive gene." Licht and Bennett (1972) and Bennet and Licht (1975) worked with scaleless snakes to determine if the scaleless mutation resulted in dehydration. According to the results of their studies, scaleless snakes lost no more water than their scaled counterpoints.

Sources:

Bechtel, H.B. and E. Bechtel. 1991. Scaleless snakes and a breeding report of scaleless Elaphe obsoleta lindheimeri. Herp. Review 22(1):12-14.

Bennett, A.F. and P. Licht. 1975. Evaporative water loss in scaleless snakes. Comparative Biochemical Physiology 52A:213-215.

Licht, P. And A.F. Bennet. 1972. A scaleless snake: Tests of the role of reptilian scales in water loss and heat transfer. Copeia 1972:702-707.