Notes and Observations on the Corn Snake in Kentucky
Text and photos by Phil Peak
| When Roger Barbour's book, The Amphibians and Reptiles of Kentucky came out in the early 70's I was still in grade school. Having developed an interest in herps, I checked this book out often at our local branch of the Louisville free public library. Many a night I read myself to sleep poring over the species descriptions and range maps. I longed for the day in which I would encounter each of these wondrous and beautiful species in the fields and forests of KY. Some seemed more attainable than others, and a few seemed a million miles away. | |
| One of the species that garnered my attention was the corn snake, known now as Pantherophis guttatus. Barbour's description of this snake alluded to its rarity. He mentioned that it was known from one locality in eastern KY (though he failed to mention where!), and that it was known from Barren and Edmonson counties in and near the Mammoth Cave National Park (MCNP) area. He goes on to say that it is common nowhere, and that only an occasional specimen is seen. |
 |
|
Over the years since then I had talked with many people that had searched for corn snakes in KY and failed. Some of these people even doubted that the population existed. A look at the range map in the late great Roger Conant's eastern field guide of reptiles and amphibians clearly depicts these two isolated KY populations of corn snake. |
|
|
|
Why our population is noticeably
fractured from the main range of the corn snake is still not completely
known. What is known is that throughout the vast majority of the corn snakes
range in the Carolina's, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi,
and Louisiana the range is contiguous. The appearance is that this is a
decidedly southern snake.
There is a second grouping of population that encompasses some of the states on the eastern seaboard. This would be in the area of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and the pine barrens of southern New Jersey. |
| There alone in KY sits two dots on the map clearly isolated from any other population. In many ways this aspect made me all the more interested in learning more about the corn snake in KY. The only way to do this was to make a dedicated search for them based on the data that was available. | |
