Thanks, Doug! I'm not sure we should be calling these Popayans, though, since these are 50% "suitcase" locality, as well. "Colombian milksnake", although less specific, seems like a more accurate common name, ironically enough. I like the look of the one in the book, and the ones that Bill Lamor (too many Bill L.s!) posted on another milksnake forum a couple months ago. Looks aren't everything, though... I bet that with just a generation or two of selective breeding, one could get the band counts down into the teens, and produce their very own line of "hobby micropholis". Hey, why not, it worked for "albino sinaloae", right? As I recall, Nathan actually had a pretty good justification for that, but still... not only is it a slippery slope, but it seems to me that a different standard for purity applies when morphs are involved. Of course, it doesn't help that Williams (who was the first to describe sinaloae and andesiana as separate ssp. from nelsoni and micropholis, mind you) was such a "splitter" that the distinctions between many of the 25 subspecies are questionable at best. Maybe that's why everyone had such beautiful, pure micropholis back in the early and mid 70s... andesiana hadn't been invented yet! Seriously, though, I would like to try to find a low RBR mate for this guy and try to line breed for that trait, hopefully before someone else comes along and rewrites the book on milksnakes again! Even if I succeed, it would be disingenuous to represent them as pure micropholis... unless, of course, andesiana get lumped back into the subspecies. One can hope, I suppose...



Nate

[ Show Entire Thread ]