El Rosario Gopher Snakes

Found in and around the oasis of the El Rosario area of Baja California Norte is a population of Gopher Snakes that is unique to the area and relativley new to herpetoculture. Like the West Texas area, this is a region where the ranges of two species meet, the San Diego Gopher Snake and the Bimaris form of the Cape Gopher. Also, the range of Sonoran Gophers ends close by. According to the literature, San Diego Gophers and Cape Gophers exsist side by side starting in this region and extending down the penninsula for about 100 mi. without intergrading like the West Texas Pituophis do. However, it is apparent that this population has some characteristics of each form, and as with a lot of intergrades, this makes for some really interesting animals. Individuals of this locale have a nice red-orange ground color on the posterior regions of their body unlike the vertebralis populations of the Cape which have the red-orange on the anterior of the body. Snakes from the surrounding area look nothing like these. The founders were collected by two guys from California in the late 90's and I was able to get my breeding group from one the guys that still is working with this locale. Below are some photos of various animals that illustrate the variety found in this population.

The two photos above are a couple of my female breeders. Like with Cape Gophers, females have the ability to double clutch.

This young male has a nice red-orange tail. However, with some individuals the red-orange can be very intense. Hopefully, I can produce some of these.

After working and breeding these snakes for awhile it was realized that there was an albino gene in this population when a dead in the egg albino was produced. Soon live albinos were produced and they are truly incredible looking snakes. I'm not much of a morph guy but since this morph is from pure locality animals that makes it different from some of these made-made creations.