Taxonomic discussion

[prattypus]

I am glad that I am actually able to understand this stuff


I do not however... take the time to study too much of it past which snake are which species... primarily because we are humans applying strict and exact labels to things that are constantly changing and evolving around the groups we put them into. Our labels can only be so exact... and who gets to decide who is right and who is wrong? When is that exact moment that an isolated population of a species has changed enough to be its own species? When in reality... it is still what it originally was... just slightly modified! And will continue to change... forever! Who are we to make up names and stick them on everything? In the eyes of the animals... it is totally irrelevant. A snake is a snake no matter what his lineage, and unfortunately we will never be able to truely label a snake that is on the fence like the ones in the pictures without knowing his exact ancestry. We could speculate until the end of time.. but it will never reach a definite no matter how many agree. And even when you have a captive bred specimen... you can never actually be 100% sure that a parent of a snake does not have some tiny amount of another species or subspecies in it. You can be 99, but you can't be 100. So it's all very confusing and there are never true definites other than the assumed ones. That is the only reason I really don't bother joining in on stuff like this.

personally.... I am positive that the san francisco garter is doomed, as it stands now. Even if they did somehow make a comeback... which is doubtful considering the vast majority of the world does not give two sh*ts about snakes and will not move over or stop to avoid smushing one with their car... (hell some will even aim for the snake) And simply not enough land or snakes remains for them to make a sufficient comeback. Inhabitable land even in protected zones will get smaller every year due to the usual pollution and drying up of ponds and creek beds. If the species does somehow make a comeback... They will have expierienced such a tight genetic bottleneck that they may eventually phase out anyway... they will basically be genetic clones of one another... much like the way cheetahs went through. Yes, it is sad, yes it is awful, and no one wants to see the beautiful snake dissapear... but I simply do not see much hope for them unless a taxonomic change is made to group san frans and cali red sideds closer together. When I look at a San fran... I see a striped cali red sided... but that's just me and I have never had the opportunity to study any of it in detail.

While the San Fran is limited in it's range, what's left has been protected- so I believe, so what habitat remains will not be further imposed upon.