OK, so what I thought might be hemipenile bulges is some other tissue. I went to a reptile show today and saw two chucks of some redback locale. The dealer said he got him from a guy that had them for about a year, but he wasn't sure what locale they were. I was very tempted but the male was on the thin side so I passed. The dealer thought they were from somewhere in AZ. The female was much more typically colored of what I normally expect female redbacks to look like. I picked her up to check out her vent area. She too had those bulges and without even asking, when the dealer (a snake guy) saw what I was looking at, he tried to invert the hemipenes. Nothing happened, of course, with the female, but when he tried the same on the male, the hemipenes popped out. I don't know how often this is done with chucks (I know with Meller's chameleons, there is concern of doing damage because their hemipenes are not easy to invert), but the process didn't seem to hurt either of them.

So here is my question. Is what we are seeing as bulges with some female chucks (which I've also seen with other lizards, sometimes causing confusion), muscle tissue, fat deposits or some other tissue? Surely, someone here knows because I don't think those non hemipenile bulges in females are a rare occurance amoung lizards in general.

Finally, here are two males from the same locale from which the unusual colored redback female was collected. The bigger, more red one is the one that died two days after I received him. The smaller one was mistakenly sent to me as a female with the larger male (not by the dealer himself, but by one of his helpers). I immediately knew that I had mistakenly been sent two males. Less than two hours later, he was boxed back up, ready for another plane ride and on his way back to the dealer. I was too anxious to receive a female to go with the male and just assumed the bigger male was not as active and alert as the smaller one due to him being cool right out of the box. I'm kicking myself now for not holding on to the smaller one longer. Although he wasn't as colorful as the larger male, he had a great temperament. The day after I sent the smaller one back, it was obvious that something was wrong with the male I kept because he wasn't using his legs normally. The day after that, he had convulsions and died. Unfortunately, the dealer no longer had the male I sent back, so now, I'll have to wait until July before any possible replacement.

The first two pics show the male that died. The third pic shows the male I should have kept.

Perry

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