Reptile & Amphibian Forums

For Sighthunter, Don, VegasBilly and anyone else keeping Spilotes, I have a question about mouth color and/or locality. I recently picked up two "farm bred" baby boys from Surinam. More black than most tiger rats I see posted. Their rear thirds are entirely, solid inky black. Just gorgeous. I also noticed that they have black mouths (inside). On Tuesday, I walked into Ben Siegel's (my local shop) to get feeders and they told me they just had someone drop off a baby tiger rat that they wanted to sell. It popped as a female so I snatched her up. Her coloration is what I would consider more typical with lots more yellow than my two boys including lots of yellow rings around her tail. She appears to have a normal colored mouth interior, not black. If I had to guess at her locale I would probably say Honduran or some other Central American locale. So my question is, if you have locale-specific animals, can you tell me what color the insides of their mouths are? Also, does anyone know about size potential for the various locales? Do South Americans get larger than Central Americans like in boa constrictors?

PS - I'll get pics up of the new baby this weekend - letting her settle in and digest her meal for a few more days.

Thanks!
Billy

All of mine have no black in their mouths. Moby you are on to something new? Maby some sort of desease? Can you send a pic?

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"Life without risk is to merely exist."

I'm sure it's not any kind of disease as these two are just babies, recently out of the egg (judging by the prevalent umbilical slit) and doing awesome. I will try and get some pics of their black mouths this weekend.

Billy

>>All of mine have no black in their mouths. Moby you are on to something new? Maby some sort of desease? Can you send a pic?
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>>"Life without risk is to merely exist."

The largest I have gotten from import is 10 feet. The animal pictured is 10 feet at at 3 years of age.

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"Life without risk is to merely exist."

Do you have any locality data for that monster? Maybe we can get an informal survey going for localities and size. I bring this up because, most of the tiger rats I have seen seem to be of Central American descent while the two little guys I have are from Surinam. Just trying to put together any differences between the two geographic variants of what I believe are both S. pullatus pullatus. Does anyone here have, or know of any other South American Spilotes?

Thanks!
Billy

>>The largest I have gotten from import is 10 feet. The animal pictured is 10 feet at at 3 years of age.
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>>"Life without risk is to merely exist."

Honduras is the locality of the one pictured. I know of two 10 footers from Honduras so far.
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"Life without risk is to merely exist."

Hey everyone!

I've got a pair of CB Spilotes that were sold to me as 'offspring from wc peruvian parents'!
They are rather black, with their back third beeing entirely black. They have yellow ventrals in the first two thirds, and some yellow stripes on top.
But, thats the difference to the ones from the original post, their mouth color is almost white.

Sorry, I'm very busy at the moment, but I'll try to post some pictures asap.

Martin

I've never even paid attention to what the color of their mouth is/are. I rarely if ever hold any of my collection. I'm a firm believer that even though they're not biting...they're still stressing. I also find the more you interact, stare, or just plain mess with them, the more your mind can mess w/ya'. Its amazing the things that are "wrong" w/our herps...if you look long enough something will appear out of sorts.

My Spilotes eat do darn fast its hard to even see inside their mouths. Mine are housed in 48"x36"x24" (lxwxh) so I have to really reach in w/tongs to feed them. Then they grab it and take off.

I will pay more attention next feeding and report back. Beautiful little Spilotes you have there by-the-way. My adults have been tearing up the cage w/their breedings - 3 copulations so far that I've witnessed.

Bill

Thanks for the info and compliment Bill. Put me on the list for one of your babies!

With all the talk of "normal" colored mouths I went back and double checked my little guys, and sure enough, the front part of their mouths are definitely a very dark purplish color. For their last feedings I tried just holding them and feeding them off hemo's while holding them. No worries with these little pigs! And I got a pretty clear look inside the mouths. I'm trying to figure out a way to get a pic of it without forcing and holding their mouths open...

Billy

PS - not a tiger rat, but an eastern tiger...