Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I recently acquired a male "lowland" male O.t. ridleyi from a good friend a couple months ago. It has been a dream species for a while and of course general curiosity got the better of me to look for a female.

The thing that surprises me is that it seems everyone has the "highland"/ Cameron Highland locality that has been worked with by Zerkle Reptile Co., Sarpamitra, & DM Exotics.

The only other ridleyi that I see floating are the "hobby form" if you would say so. A buddy of mine hatched a clutch kast year and upon checking his messages, his pair came from someone who claimed to have bred a highland to a lowland.

I guess I'm tired of digging and trying to get to the simple question: is anyone working with "pure" lowland/Malaysian O. t. ridelyi? If so, I'd love a female or even a young pair just to try and help keep this locality/phenotype around!

Thanks!

There is no such thing as highland and lowland for the way the hobby is identifying them. It has turned into the colorful ones being labeled as highland and the dull ones lowland. You will also notice that almost all babies are labeled as highland because you won't know what they will look like as adults but that label sure does get people to buy them. I have always said to ask to see pics of the breeders if you are buying babies to better understand what you are buying. I you like the silver/blue/lavender animals, then look for parents that are within that color range and you should end up ok. If you want the crayola crayon looking ones, look for babies produced by parents that look like that. Ridleyi occur in both highland and lowland areas and also in more countries than only Malaysia, but the ones that are collected in Malaysia are usually coming from a place called Cameron Highlands(not Cameroon like I have seen on MM ads), or surrounding areas in Perak on the way up to the Cameron Highlands. However, collection can also occur in places other than that location but most of the collecting networks are in that region. I see plenty of them that come through Malaysia and only every once in a great while do I see a field collected specimen that is somewhat colorful, but the majority are what the hobby would call "lowland" based on their color(but they came from the highlands). There are some extremely colorful animals that originated from undocumented bloodlines in Europe, but the people in the origin countries that I know have never seen animals that looked like those and we are talking 20+ years of collection. They could be a morph, or line bred, or both. Ridleyi also occur mostly in cave systems which have built in water and food sources and can support long-term colonies. With everything supported, the populations can remain stable and many generations can be represented in each individual cave system. That means they can evolve to have a particular look or color depending on the cave population. The way that hobbyists may breed to produce a certain color can happen naturally in a cave system if the color becomes dominant. I have seen different populations look more blue, more white/gray or more lavender. Your buddy that bred them probably just bred a colorful one to a less colorful one unless he has deep roots in the ground in Malaysia like I do. So all that being said, you are at the crossroads of adopting what the hobby calls "lowland" and "highland" or actually knowing where your animals originated from and using the terms accurately. To make things even worse(or perhaps better), I sell real highlands based on where they were collected from as highland animals but the hobby wants to stomp that out and call them lowlands because they are less colorful. You can see images on my website beautyratsnakes dot com

Thank you Dan!

I appreciate the time and detailed response! I'll do my best to find a "matching" female for this male and avoid labelling them as "lowland" for the sake of attempting to keep the future offspring "phenotype" as similar as possible to what they are.
Your time in the field and networking with collectors definitely wins over the hobby game of "he said, she said, they said".

If I save up some coin, I'll have to try and obtain some pure locality highland animals off of ya in the future!