Granted, I've not seen every captive Eastern Indigo in the United States, but what I have seen did not exhibit the reds seen in wild stock. I have an adult pair that have extensive red faces & throats, except for the fact that it's not red. It's brown. That seems to be the norm.

I know y'all just love hearing from the "old guys" about the "old days", so here goes.

I have never seen an Eastern Indigo in the wild that had brown faces. I've seen, observed, captured & kept, and purchased many Eastern Indigos in my life. The ones I captured years ago south and west of Miami; Homestead, Florida city, and even a big DOR on Big Pine Key, all had dark blood-red. Some were more vibrant than others, but they were red. Not "kind-of-red", and never brown. I purchased a snake from Hiawatha Python up in Minnesota (that gives away my age! LOL) that not only was as beautiful as the Italian snake, but had red on top of the eyes and a complete red ring around the neck. Red came up on th lower lateral scales for a quarter of its length. Now that was a VERY nice snake, but other similar snakes still exist in nature because we've seen recent photos.

Our captive stock in the U.S. is greatly inbred, even breeding reds to northern black phases (some feel there are actually two species of indigo in the Southeast). We give them non-varied diets instead of snakes, which in the wild probably makes up the greatest percentage of their diet.

We've done it wrong, and while they are absolutely remarkable snakes, I have to agree that the days of red captive Indigos in this country are over.

Cheers (sadly),

Terry Vandeventer

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