''Euprepiophis perlaceus'', also known as Sichuan rat snake or pearl-banded rat snake, is a species of snake in the family

Colubridae Colubridae (, commonly known as colubrids , from la, coluber, 'snake') is a family of snakes. With 249 genera, it is the largest snake family. The earliest species of the family date back to the Oligocene epoch. Colubrid snakes are found on ever ...

snake. It is endemic to western

Sichuan Sichuan (; zh, c=, labels=no, ; zh, p=Sìchuān; alternatively romanized as Szechuan or Szechwan; formerly also referred to as "West China" or "Western China" by Protestant missions) is a province in Southwest China occupying most of the ...

Province in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. This snake is designated as Endangered by the

IUCN Red List The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is the world's most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biol ...

. It is found in the Palearctic. It is one of three

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

of Asian rat snakes which were formerly assigned to the genus ''

Elaphe ''Elaphe'' is a genus of snakes in the family Colubridae. ''Elaphe'' is one of the main genera of the rat snakes, which are found in many regions of the northern hemisphere. ''Elaphe'' species are medium to large constrictors by nature. Althoug ...

''. They were separated from ''Elaphe'' in 2002 by Utiger et al. following evidence from DNA analysis. It is a true rat snake but it is not as closely related to other northern-hemisphere rat snakes as its former place in ''Elaphe'' would suggest.

References

Euprepiophis Snakes of China Endemic fauna of Sichuan Taxa named by Leonhard Stejneger Reptiles described in 1929 Taxobox binomials not recognized by IUCN Endangered Fauna of China {{Alethinophidia-stub