Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Whos working with trimorphodon? Ever seen one like this? Im going to try breeding him to a nice female this spring and see what happens. Like to see who else is working with these seriously underrated snakes.

-----
Cheers
Lateralis
"I would rather be precisely wrong than approximately right"
Marion "Doc" Ford

I have a Trimorphodon vandenburghi (The Southern Cal., sub) almost identical to that! Mine is still pretty young ~ not very relaxed either lol Tail Rattler, strikes repeatably, much meaner than my Sonorans.
Its beautiful though, nice picture.
Heres a pic of one of my sonorans.
You're right these snakes are very underrated, I love them and will be getting more when I get back out that way. Thanks, Leo

Skin & Scales

Nice one Leo, yep mine are sort of nippy but tend to mellow out after I pick them up. The picture I posted does no justice to that snake, it is some sort of hypo from what I can see, but it will take a breeding to see what comes of it.
-----
Cheers
Lateralis
"I would rather be precisely wrong than approximately right"
Marion "Doc" Ford

I love these underrated animals.

My California girls (one pictured) hiss up a storm, but it's all bluff. They will strike, but never on-target. They constrict f/t fuzzies with vigor, which is neat to see, as it's more a cute pouncing of small coils than the more familiar brute-force constriction of kings, rats and bulls.

My adult Sonoran never bothers.

Are the California and Sonoran forms officially recognized subspecies? I'm finding conflicting info. The Stebbins Field Guide (2003 ed.) lists only T. biscutatus generically as Western Lyre Snake with no mention of the Californian and Sonoran subspecies.

Nice looking snake There are three recognised sub-species of Lyre snake that I know of ~
The Texas Lyre snake Trimorphodon vilkinsoni,
The Sonora Lyre snake Trimorphodon lambda and the
California Lyre Snake Trimorphodon vandenburghi
(This info was taken from The Stebbins Field Guide to Western Reptiles & Amphibians ~ Peterson series 1966 ~ A classic)
Good to see other Lyre Snake keepers on here, these snakes are awesome and worth waiting up for at night to see them active lol Thanks, Leo
Skin & Scales

Actually, vandenburghi is now considered to be T. b. lyrophanes. For those of you who are interested, there has been some recent molecular work done with Trimorphodon over it's entire range. The work was done by Thomas Devitt and was just published in Molecular Ecology. Pretty interesting work.

Ian Latella

Yep the CA. Lyre got renamed. Tom Mills has a nice little paper out on breeding trimos. My pair are both sonorans, the male is a hypo that I found 2 years ago, female is from the Pajaritos. Looks like a Tau but I know its too far north for them, shes a big sow though and is near 3.5' in length. I just started cooling them down this past week since we finally went below 60 here in the desert. With any luck they will breed in the spring.

cheers
Lat
-----
Cheers
Lateralis
"I would rather be precisely wrong than approximately right"
Marion "Doc" Ford

Thanks for the info. Do you have the full citation for that paper by Mills? I haven't had any luck finding it so far.

Ian

Sorry about that, it would help alittle eh?

Look in Herpetology Vol. 23, No.1 - April 1993
Mills, Thomas M.
Reproductive Behavior in the California Lyre Snake

-----
Cheers
Lateralis
"I would rather be precisely wrong than approximately right"
Marion "Doc" Ford

Thank you for pointing out Devitt's work on Trimorphodon. Very interesting read!