"maternal recognition of pregnancy."

This doesn't refer to any conscious recognition on mom's part, of course, but rather to her body's recognition that eggs are developing so that the necessary hormones are occurring in the bloodstream at the proper time and at the proper levels.



I like it, because when I get 100% slugs (non fertile eggs) it's obvious (see pic below, sorry for the poor quality, it was taken with a phone).







However, when you have most of the clutch that IS fertile...you can still have a non-fertile egg in the clutch (usually just one) that looks every bit as good as the others. You only know it's not fertile by candling, or just when it starts to rot. So, if the other fertile eggs send a chemical signal to the mother, "hey, develop my outside egg covering" then that would explain why the non fertile eggs still look good!



Notice the one egg in this clutch (4th one in) that wasn't fertile in the pics below. You have to rotate one of the pics in your mind...but you can see it was every bit as "normal" looking as the rest of the clutch.



Very interesting (and logical) explainations.



Thanks again for sharing...



-R

[ Hide Replies ]

• Dystocia in a pueblan milk snake - bwaffa, Mon Jul 19 20:54:25 2010
• RE: Dystocia in a pueblan milk snake - amazondoc, Tue Jul 20 00:51:59 2010
• I had the same thing happen... - RG, Tue Jul 20 07:10:11 2010
• RE: I had the same thing happen... - bwaffa, Wed Jul 21 09:57:16 2010
• sounds good..... - JYohe, Wed Jul 21 18:59:35 2010
• this makes sense... - RG, Thu Jul 22 08:36:57 2010
• RE: this makes sense... - bwaffa, Thu Jul 22 16:53:23 2010
• things I see... - JYohe, Tue Jul 20 17:51:44 2010
• RE: things I see... - bwaffa, Wed Jul 21 10:07:00 2010
• RE: Dystocia in a pueblan milk snake - snake_bit, Tue Jul 20 21:15:36 2010
• RE: Dystocia in a pueblan milk snake - bwaffa, Wed Jul 21 10:05:14 2010
• Any woman that... - RG, Thu Jul 22 07:57:51 2010