San Francisco garter snake

San Francisco garter snake

The San Francisco garter snake ( Thamnophis sirtalis tetrataenia ) is a rarely occurring subspecies of the ordinary garter snake ( Thamnophis sirtalis ).

Characteristics, lifestyle and status

As for all garter snakes also applies for the San Francisco garter snake: females are usually a meter long, sometimes up to 1.20 m. Males rarely reach a length of more than 70 cm.

They have a wide range of food and eat fish, slugs, worms, amphibians, mice, rats, and even small birds. A litter usually includes five to twenty-five pups.

This because of its red-blue color very popular garter snake is threatened with extinction. Your game population was estimated in the 90 years to only 200 to 1500 animals.

Breeding

It is available since the mid-1970s in the U.S. endangered species list. Possession, trade and thus the offspring of the San Francisco garter snake by private terrarium are banned there. Sooner should even have been fed to cobras, the resulting offspring in zoos. In all other countries there are no specific requirements for breeding and husbandry.

From five imported animals from Memphis, the first European breed was developed in the 1980s, first in zoos, especially in the Rotterdam Zoo. Offspring of these are called " Rotterdam blood line" means. Later, captive-bred animals were also issued in private hands. From the mid- 1990s these were supplemented by five animals the so-called " Austrian bloodline ". This line was never confirmed by investigations of the genetic material.

The offspring of this subspecies turns out reports of individual growers, according to a result of inbreeding effects more difficult than with other garter snake species. These animals should be frequently sick and partly also suffer from diseases or die, the impact is not as strong in other subspecies.

Dissemination

The San Francisco garter snake has its natural habitat in only a small area on the California West Coast of the United States near San Francisco.