Please Identify

[Lisa4john]

To the untrained eye I suppose. This is why I see so many snakes for sale, particularly infernalis, parietalis, concinnus, fitchi, or any other garter with red spots, being misidentified as one or the other when its not. Even worse, this leads to hybrids which are then sold as one of those snakes.

To clarify, red pugets have puget facial markings, darker black, and a different shade of orange. If I showed that snake side by side with a similar snake of a different subspecies, the differences would be quite obvious. Just like a laterally striped concinnus next to a fitchi. Yes, very similar but the colors are different as well as other visual clues.

Time and time again I see people calling red pugets, "valley garters"

Yeah, I could see that, I looked up some pictures and can definitely see how they could be confused. I'm just grateful to have her and that she ate already. I'm excited to watch her grow. Thanks for the info.

[ConcinusMan]

I know I already answered this but I found a video...

I would say valley garter, but the face marking resemble the pugets I have.

That's because it is a puget. Definitely can't always go by color. If you did, you would swear it was a T. s. fitchi. But the location makes that impossible. It is a puget. Almost all of them look like that around Vancouver, B.C. whereas in WA state we get a variety of different colors and patterns in that subspecies. Sometimes depends on location, while other locations have more variety. Like in Lewis county where I got many of mine this year, there's a wide variety. Red like that one, black with yellow stripes and yellow bars or spots, or without bars or spots. The one thing that remains constant in all of them, is those facial markings. They all have it. Here's another puget from Vancouver B.C. Seems like all of them around there are the red phase but take a look at the facial markings and you know it's a puget. (see 1:10 in the video) Occasionally concinnus' have similar markings but they're out of range to be mistaken for fitchi or pugets.



Apparently, there is some confusion here in the video too. Looks like a Chinese (?) dude but he's in Canada, and talks like he's from Australia. Now I'm really confused. The snakes, I know. People are another matter. LOL.

[Lisa4john]

Thank you, Richard. It was kinda fun to listen to him talk too. I wonder how many garters fall under the "common garter snake" title...