This beautiful animal is a Mexican black king snake, a species which in the wild would be found in north-western Mexico.  King snakes are so called because they have the ability to eat other snakes, and they are also believed to be immune to the venom of several types of venomous snake including rattlesnakes. 

This snake hatched a year before the above picture was taken, and at that time it was considerably smaller as shown in this next picture:

Mexican black king snakes often start their lives with a little bit of yellow spotting on their jet black scales.  Every time they shed their skin the yellow spotting fades a little, so that by the time they are fully grown the spotting is usually completely gone and the snakes are a pure jet black all over and very beautiful indeed.  The pictures below show how much some of these spots have faded in the one year between these two pictures being taken:

When you look closely at the skin it is very easy to see the individual scales and to see that they are a bit like a diamond shape, only with rounded edges and corners, and very beautiful indeed!

When any snake is preparing to shed its skin, its colour fades and the skin often takes on a very dull appearance compared to its normal colouration.  Also, the eyes cloud over and often look bluish-grey when they are preparing to shed their skin.  In Mexican black king snakes this is particularly noticeable as you can see from the pictures below!  These pictures are of the same snake as in the pictures above and as you can see it looks very different indeed! 

The bluish tinge and cloudiness of the eyes are caused by a build-up of fluid between the old outer skin and the new inner skin.  This fluid helps the snake to shed its skin when the time is right, by allowing it to slide off more easily.  To ensure that all of my snakes are able to shed their skin without any difficulty, I also always provide a tub of moist sphagnum moss in their enclosures when they are preparing to shed their skin, and that is what this snake is pictured in above.