The Snake-of-the-Day headliner of this web site features photographs that we believe will interest our web site visitors. Each daily photograph will be posted at 11:00 am. central (GMT – 5) and replaced in 24 hours. Feel free to make suggestions regarding what snake photographs you would like to see in this daily feature. The animals pictured here are not for sale, unless otherwise noted, but you can find available surplus snakes for sale on the Surplus Page of this web site. We appreciate your patronage and welcome any suggestions you may have.
Both images show the same Scaleless Hypo Sunkissed corn snake that has just begun the physical separation phase of shedding its old epidermis. Relative to the epidermis of a typical snake, it’s obvious that Scaleless mutant corns have a much thinner and more delicate outer skin. As MARGARET NALL pointed out on the Scaleless feature of SMR’s FaceBook page toDAY (thank you, Margaret), their sloughed skin is identical in appearance and texture to that of most geckos. Of course, the obvious distinction between the two species is the mostly smooth and feature-less skin of the snake, compared to the bumpy skin topography of many gecko species. Usually, when starting the skin separation process by rubbing their mouth against something stationary, partial or complete failure results, leaving other weaker parts of the skin to tear first. Therefore, I like to put a hide of damp sphagnum moss in the cage when I see that they are about to shed. You can also see that the color of the new skin generation beneath the separating dead epidermis barely differs in color intensity compared to the more obvious distinction between old and new epidermal generations in fully-scaled corns. Amazing how the SCALE facet of the integumentary system (outer skin) in fully-scaled corn snakes appears to partially conceal the color intensity residing in lower dermal levels.