I was able to view live snake sperm under my microscope once when I found a "wet spot" left on a plastic cage bottom by a pair of copulating colubrids. I have metal dental tools I use for scraping debris from cage bottoms and I used a spatula shaped one to just scrape lightly across the wetness. I smeared it onto a slide and placed a coverslip over it (this flattens it to a minimal thickness so it becomes visible microscopically). I was amazed at the numbers of live "swimmers" I was able to see! Perhaps if you kept a breeding pair of ball pythons on a surface with no substrate, such as plastic box, you may find trace amounts of seminal fluid that you could collect?
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Susan Sentman
SSNAKES Reptiles
susan@ssnakes.com

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