What am I?

[paigehi]

A student's family had this snake and were having trouble with it, so they've asked me to rehome it and right now it is hanging out with me at school. From the description I thought it was a normal, and indeed from the top it appears that way. However, the back 2/3 of the ventral surface is red, a quality I am more used to seeing in bloodreds. Any ideas? I still need to get the snake sexed, but once I know it's gender, any ideas for a test breeding?

Sorry for the quality of the pictures...snake isn't too used to me yet, though it is very passive and did not try to get away or strike, I've never yet met one that wanted its ventral side photographed!

 

[vetusvates]

I have a yearling female normal, and her ventrum does the same thing toward her tail. One of her parents was a fire (amel bloodred). But her dorsal surface is very normal,...not nearly as red-tinged as yours appears.

 

[marinneli]

The belly pattern (or better yet lack of it) and redness bleeding in MIGHT give you a hint he's het. for something like diffused. But also he might NOT be het for anything. You never know for sure unless you test breed him.

Or her.

If possible I'd try to breed him/her with an Avalanche (Snow Bloodred) because the markers in his/her appearance might be caused by the diffused a.k.a bloodred gene, but on the other hand Anery and Amel are the most common traits anyway. So testing with an Avalanche you'd test him/her against three most likely traits.

 

[Susan]

That's a nice normal! The infusion of color onto the ventral scales, especially on the caudal half of the snake, is very common in just about all corn snake morphs and really is no indication of any possible hets.