"They're supposed to be true. They are said to have originated in the sugarcane fields south of Lake Okeechobee"

Yeah, but not surprisingly, anything fetching many hundreds of dollars is generally "said" to be true and genuinely authentic..

I have no idea if they are or are not personally, but I find it extremely odd that there is now also scaless Yellow rats as well as Everglades. I do know the very first scaleless so-called "cornsnake" is actually a 100% KNOWN emoryi x guttatus cross that originated in France in 2002 by Stephane Rosselle of "Reptilis".

I don't see it being very difficult or time consuming to produce an Everglades out of a Yellow Rat, or vice-versa and make it pretty convincing looking either, especially since none of the scaleless snakes in the hobby have much in the way of real detailed meristic features to begin with that you can really put your finger on.

Furthermore, some of the scaleless "Everglades" I have seen listed in the past look completely bogus to me. This one for example that was sold last year......The color looks way off, the saddle blotches are huge (as in many Texas Rats), and I don't see anything that even resembles orange or orange/red irises whatsoever either. Matter of fact, the irises look extremely pale and I have seen many authentic Texas Rats with that iris coloration, as well as darker gray. Maybe it was a F-1 from the first cross breeding attempt, and still took more after the Texas Rat's characteristics, who knows..LOL!

http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=270463

I also have to wonder why more of these origins and actual names of these people that are coming up with these things aren't known by someone that IS well-known. The things just pop up out of the clear blue one day and become available without anyone hearing about who had the first ones or knowing where they really came from. Seems to me this info would be more widely and proudly bragged about with this crazy stuff. It's generally with stuff people want to shuffle in as real that it is kept more quiet about, but there are certainly many exceptions to this.

Anyway, I'd like to ask him some time about the precise origin of this animal myself. At the very least, this one looks 10 times more convincing to me than some do. The Scaleless Yellow Rat I saw looked to be pretty convincing too, but I just don't know what to think about any of them as far as 100% authenticity goes, with the exception of many of the Texas Rats. They are pretty simple to identify, not to mention it would be the other types that would be passed-off as real, since they were the original scaleless and have been around longer so the price would be less than other "new" species/ssp.

Nick, do you happen to know if the scaleless Everglades itself was supposed to have originated from south of the lake?, or the normal parents that produced it originated from there?

In any case, the scaleless corns definitely ain't corns, some would be from the original emoryi x corn from France, and some would likely be Texas rat x corns, then back-bred some to be more convincing as corns. I have the translated article from the original breeder, so there isn't any question about those.

In France, the guy has all sorts of morphs now, including scaleless blood diffused), amel, anery, reverse Okeetee, hypo lavender, and green snow.

By the same token though, I have seen some of these Everglades that do look very convincing to me as possibly being authentic scaleless Everglades like this one Don Hamper had on his table at Tinley Park just a while back. Photo not taken by me. A friend on another forum did.


~Doug

-----
"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

serpentinespecialties.webs.com

[ Reply To This Message ] [ Subscribe to this Thread ] [ Show Entire Thread ]