This beautiful snake is named Pixel and is an adult male SPECKLED KING SNAKE from southwestern USA, but bred by a friend of mine here in the UK in 2014. It was meeting and handling a speckled king snake as a young child which first ignited my love of snakes, so I am especially delighted to still have this species in my collection all these years later. Everyone who meets Pixel seems to love him as much as I do as well!

Pixel, like most adult speckled king snakes, has a single yellow spot or speckle on every dorsal and lateral body scale. As you can see in the pictures above these speckles are a range of sizes and can be roughly circular, oval or just a random shape, which makes every individual of this species absolutely unique. As babies this ‘speckling’ isn’t nearly as defined as you can see below – the picture on the left was taken when I first bought Pixel as a baby in 2014 and the picture on the right was taken just a year later – quite a remarkable change in the first year of life!

Speckled king snakes will always be one of my favourite snake species because of my experience of handling one in my childhood but also because I think their pattern is absolutely fantastic – I hope you can see why from these pictures!