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Distribution
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This snake you find in the southern tip of the Mexican peninsula Baja California in the cape region south of La Paz. This cape region ist bordered from the Sierra la Laguna-mountains towards the northern parts of the panhandle. North of the named mountains occures the subspecies bimaris. Around this mountains there is an intergrade zone of both forms. Wether bimaris is only a colorvariant of the vertebralis or an own subspecies is still in international discussion (Grismer, 1997) (Escobar, 2000).
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Description
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This snake has a yellow, sandcolored to orange ground color, wich light up a little on the sides. There are 34-51 body blotches. The coloration of this saddles begin with a pale light brown to colorful orange or rubi red in the neck and becoming to black towards the tail. There are, too, vertebralis with darker neck saddles in our terraria and in habitat, those animals are maybe a form of natural intergrades. On the side there is a row of darker spots between the saddles. Below this there is a further row of smaller spots. The saddles are normaly clearly seperated, only in the neck they can connect each other and the side spots. The belly is white to yellowly and mostly without markings. Under the tail is normaly a black stripe from the cloaca to the tip of tail. The head is slender and orange to red colored. On it there are no black markings.
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Total lenght: In the literatur you can find 1,78 cm, more is not written. In terraria I know a males with aprox. 1,8 m. But most of the animals are under 1,5m in leght. Body and head are very slender for a member of the genus Pituophis. The scales are keeled. In midbody there are 27-30 scale rows. Speciality in head scales: 2 präfrontalia. The snout scale (rostrale) is as broad as high (rostrale : nasale 1:1).
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Habitat
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This gopher snake lives in the dryer cape region, where you can find many vegetation zones from deserts to tropical dry forrest. All zones have a low rain amount and sometimes cold nights because of the near Pacific Ocean. On the cape of Baja California are coast areas in sea level, high plateaus in aprox. 1600m and mountains up to 2200m.
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Way of life
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There are not many informations about the cape gopher snake in the habitat. Most of the known animals were found in the evening on road sides or flatned by cars. This can lead to the conclusion that those snakes in hot summer transfer their main activity into the evening, too. Dayover they maybe live in rodent tunnels.
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Diet
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In the habitat this snake mainly feed on several sorts of rodents and birds.
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Hibernation
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This subspecies should hibernate like most of the Pituophis.
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Reproduction
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The females lay in a suitable place a clutch of 4-10 eggs. In hatch the cape gopher snakes have a leght between 30 and 48 cm. For a member of this genus the hatchlings are always very slender and gracil.The coloration is similar to the parents, but all colors are very pale. They need aprox.1-2 years to get the colorful bodycolors of the adults.
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Keeping in terrarium
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