Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Claudia would like to remind you to stop and lick the flowers:

Here she was the day I got her:

It's hard to believe she's the same snake. I swear, she gets brighter every day--I think she's going to be on fire when she grows up

That's lookin' like a fine example of an "Everglades"......nice to see you captured the red tongue in the one pic!,which is a good "marker" of a true Everglades.

She's taking on some intense coloration already, and should be outstanding as an adult!

~Doug
-----
"Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!"

I would argue that my line of everglades are pretty darn pure but I still get some animals that have partial or fully black tongues. I have also found quite a few yellow rats with red tongues. It sounds nice to be able to say that you can tell the purity of an animals lineage just by looking at the tongue but I just don't believe that. I will take a look at some of my adults later on and see how many have red tongues and maybe if I have a black tongue adults available I will get a full body pic of it and a tongue shot and see if you would rate it as pure. I really don't know if my breeders have red or black tongues but I do know they are sweet looking.

jason

Jason,......

I really didn't mean to imply that an obviously nice orange "everglades" that had a dark tongue could not be an
"everglades", but meant more that it's a trait that they are much more prone to have than a Yellow Ratsnake, and can be helpful in identification.

I have also seen what I would call good examples of everglades with dark tongues as well.......if you have seen yellows well beyond the range of "rossalleni", with red tongues, or red/black tongues, then I guess that is very possible too.

Your collection certainly looks great to me!

best regards, ~Doug
-----
"Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!"

No worries Doug. I just hate to see that comment perpetuated all the time when it simply is not true. Granted, many of the really nice everglades have a red tongue, but not all. I have had one complaint with my line since I have been selling them and that was from somebody who thought they got a bad animal based on the tongue color.

As babies the glades don't look like much, I know, but this customer was very upset with his animal and demanded a refund. He thought he got ripped off thanks to all the wholesalers that sell yellows as glades that he had dealt with. I talked him into keeping it for one year and then getting back to me with the agreement that I would buy it back at cost plus $40-50, or something like that for food and care, if he was still not happy at one year. Long story short he was happy and has since bought more animals from me. The point is that he based the entire idea of a good glades on the tongue color because that is thrown around so much.

By the way I picked up a pair of adults from someone who purchased the animals from Kathy Love the last year she sold any stock and one is much deeper red than the other. Of the two the deeper red animal has the blacker tongue. They both have red in them, but they both have black as well.

At the end of the day the parent animals are a far greater way to determine if the animal is going to be nice. I would say always ask to see the parent stock of the animal and it is also not a bad idea to ask how far removed the line is from the wild. I have seen a few amazing WC glades throw yellow rat looking babies. The wild population is so washed out that you now need to "work" a line for a few generations to get consistent glades babies out of wild stock.

Funny thing is, I asked for babies with red tongues when I first got into these and Kathy sort of laughed and told me a nicely as she could that the tongues were not that important and believe it or not she didn't have time to try to look at all the tongues of the glades she had available. I guess when you have that many babies color coding the tongues is just not that important.

Jason

That's very interesting,.........

The Love's, as well as R.D. Bartlett, were under the same "red tongue" impression,......at least they were as of 1996 when Bartlett wrote the book "Corn Snakes and Other Rat Snakes".

This may, or may Not be the case now,.....I don't know, the Love's and others have "gone through" many more of them than I have, that's for sure!.

thanks for your input on this!

best regards, ~Doug
-----
"Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!"

>>As babies the glades don't look like much, I know, but this customer was very upset with his animal and demanded a refund.

I have to say, I was very doubtful when I bought Claudia, as she was nut-brown and gray, looking very much like a black rat baby. As she was very inexpensive (which made me more doubtful), I wasn't too worried, mainly because I love all the rat snakes, and I have several yellow rats that are my beloved little darlings (including the favorite of all the snakes, Julian). If she turned out to be other than a Glades, I wasn't too concerned.

As she has grown and changed, though, I am absolutely stunned by her color development. She's also got a fantastically mellow personality, and has been that way since day 1.

Do you have belly shots of them as well?
Are those the hypos?
:Mark
-----
Surrender Dorothy!

crimsonking.piczo.com/

Hey Mark, I know what you are thinking on these and it is a trick of the flash really. The orange comes up to their jaw line if you look close but it is washed out by the flash. It does get darker orange further down. That is the breeding group for this year in that pic and the left one is a normal and the other two are hypos.

I am leaving for Kentucky in the morning to go see the Louisville Zoo and the Kentucky Reptile Zoo with a group from my herp society, so when I get back I will try to remember to get belly shots. I need to take pics anyway for some adds so it wouldn't be a big deal, plus I told you I would last time I posted that pic and you started asking me about their bellies. Some day I will learn the patience to take good pics of my animals.

Anyway I think I have high-jacked this thread enough. I am sorry I just like post on Everglades.

Jason

Well I wasn't really thinking anything at all Jason... Just wondered if you had some belly pics. I always forget to take them too and only really get them when I pose the snake in a tree or similar. By the way, that does help with the skittish ones... Give 'em a branch to climb on and they go to it like crazy. Then you can turn the branch around to get your shots.
I gotta get some better pics... Heck, I still have a few rossalleni eggs to hatch..
:Mark
-----
Surrender Dorothy!

crimsonking.piczo.com/

One of my "yellow" rats (who is very orange, with red-orange eyes) has a red tongue, too

>>I would argue that my line of everglades are pretty darn pure but I still get some animals that have partial or fully black tongues. I have also found quite a few yellow rats with red tongues. It sounds nice to be able to say that you can tell the purity of an animals lineage just by looking at the tongue but I just don't believe that. I will take a look at some of my adults later on and see how many have red tongues and maybe if I have a black tongue adults available I will get a full body pic of it and a tongue shot and see if you would rate it as pure. I really don't know if my breeders have red or black tongues but I do know they are sweet looking.
>>
>>jason
>>

Awesome pics and what an unbelievable progression. It gives me hope my babies will turn out nice!

>>Awesome pics and what an unbelievable progression. It gives me hope my babies will turn out nice!

Thank you Hang in there, it takes some time!

damn that's a good looking snake!

byron.d

>>damn that's a good looking snake!
>>
>>byron.d

Thank you! I was lucky to get her!