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Posted by chrish on January 29, 2003 at 13:01:08:
In Reply to: w/c hog posted by colby on January 27, 2003 at 20:06:43:
Extrapolating from Platt's data that I mentioned in my post below, you could estimate the age to some degree....
He found that a big female at 45 months was 490mm SV. He also found that hogs were growing at an average rate of 7 mm a month at that age (I assume this represents the average over a 12 month year).
So if your snake has a SV length of approximately 24 inches (or 609 mm) she is 119 mm above the size of the 45 month old females which makes here 17 months older, or around 62 months (5 years) old.
Of course, we make several assumptions here....
1. Your snake comes from a population with similar growth rates to Kansas snakes (if they are from further south, maybe they have longer to eat a few more meals every season?)
2. That growth rates remain constant after 45 months of age (unlikely, since they are declining continually as the snakes get to 45 mos).
Given those two assumptions, I would feel comfortable saying the snake was at least 5 years old.
