That is a nice pic of a micropholis! Is anyone breeding those in Europe that you know of. I know from reading accounts of herp expeditions and speaking with visiting Europeans that many times a pair of the reptiles were able to find their way to collections in Europe. I think this is the case with the Ecuadorian micropholis, some were taken to Germany and Switzerland.



I worked for the Dallas Zoo from 76 to 82 and during those years we bred many of the first kings, milksnakes,pygmy monitor (gilleni was my specialty, say hello to Dr. Horn for me), lizards etc., at least that we knew of, in the States.



We bred L.t.andesiana, in I believe 1977-78, out of Columbian origin animals. During those years we had a steady stream of visitors from many places worldwide but the majority were from Europe and especially Switzerland. Many guys like Helmut seemed to me to have stopped comming to collect in the summer after the 9-11 attacks,(have not heard of him or Peter Hiss/Tony Calmonte for quite a few years now, do keep up with Peter Kern on mountain rattlesnake reproduction). Do not have the address or phone number anymore for Helmut, you might check with Loui Porrus in Salt Lake for that information if he has it. Loui I believe was the US distributor and breeder of the albino hondurans/? when they first were introduced. I wondered why there were so many color patterns on those albinos morphs in comparison to say the albino nelsoni or sinaloans! I am not a great follower of the albino market so I have not paid a great deal of attention to them. I do remember seeing someone selling 75% albino alterna/ruthveni, they produced those by breeding in an albino ruthveni with a normal alterna I believe.



Anyway I am pretty much a "purest" and like to stick with breeding what "mother nature" spent so long perfecting in whatever little niche they evolved in. That is not to say that I don't like selective breeding for great color and pattern such is the case with grey-bands. You can't catch one as nice as you can purchase one from the breeders these days and they are local animals. We have been fortunate that we have a collectable population available on our side of the border, thus the serious collectors have recorded locality data along with a wealth of information on the natural history of many trans-pecos animals in addition to the grey-banded king.



This cannot be said of the tropical milks and the further south they are collected it seemed like the less data was available as to when,where, etc. Possibly the exception would be some of the groups out of Mexico that herpers went down and collected themselves and are well documented or other groups coming out of south america that were also well documented by the principal collector. Many others just "arrived" and you just had to take the importers and resellers "word" on subspecies and country of origin if you were that lucky.



After actively tracking down and trying to assemble a group of "pure" Python m.molurus, 30 years after they stoped importing them, I have come to appreciate the data and documentation that should track with every snake produced in captivity but mostly don't. Like you say, who will ever know the truth about the albino hondurans, we just know we like to look at them!



Thanks for the responce

Wlamore

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