Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I received these two beauties last week. I've wanted to work with Aspidelaps for a while now, and jumped when I was given the opportunity. Though they're not the more colorful A. l. lubricus, they're still gorgeous to me and I'm greatly looking forward to watching them grow more and (hopefully) eventually breed. Speaking of, if anyone here has any experience breeding Aspidelaps, I would appreciate any little tidbits of advice to begin compiling for later.

Sorry for the washed out or dark photos. They were being quite squirmy and defensive, moving a bit too quickly to try getting pictures on an open surface so I had to incorporate the Kritter Keeper. Despite the fact that these aren't considered 'lethal,' I didn't want to try my luck with him!

Male

Female


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Chance Duncan
www.rivervalleyexotics.com

Nice score chance. I still want to work with Lubricus Lubricus but it seems no one is breeding them or you just don't see them forsale anymore.

John

I saw one A. l. lubricus baby at Hamburg about three years ago. I'm also very interested only in that Aspidelaps species.

Those are nice looking snakes though Chance.

Thanks for the kind words both of you. I did notice that Glades currently has A. l. lubricus listed on their site. I believe they're '07s. I'm not sure if they still have any left...and they were fetching a hefty price, but for snakes that have all but disappeared it's not a terrible deal.
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Chance Duncan
www.rivervalleyexotics.com

They are deffinitly around...

I've sold 5 adults in the last year and a half
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Northshore Reptiles
2004 Northshore Reptile Show
Saturday July 24 and Sunday July 25
Slidell, Louisiana

Gorgeous snakes Erik. I'll definitely have to pick up that ssp. one of these days.
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Chance Duncan
www.rivervalleyexotics.com

5 adults in a year and a half still isn't that many. They maybe around but still few and far between. I'll keep looking....just don't want to be killed on the price :

John

Aspidelaps lubricus infuscatus is probaly going to be abolished. I belive Broadley is currently working on this. Check Wolfgang's site for the info.

Personaly, I have always thought that typical A.l.infuscatus were simply locality A.l.lubricus. There is a huge intergrade range between the 2 ssp and I had a monsterous female that was A.l.infuscatus but looked A.l.lubricus all the way. The only differences between the 2 are sub cuadual scale counts which were only 1 or 2 rows difference between the 2 ssp (If I remeber correctly), more defined bands, brighter or lesser color and overall size. Not really enough to warrent them being seprate IMO. Of cource we will have to wait and see what the experts say but the trend is leading to placing them together.

As for breeding, keep them for longer then 6 months and I will pass on all the info I have chance I bred them twice and have a few pointers I can give.

later,
jeremy

I may just take you up on that offer. Thanks for the taxonomic information. I'll keep an eye out and watch for the possible change.
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Chance Duncan
www.rivervalleyexotics.com

I must revise what I posted. It was A.l.infuscatus and A.l.cowelsi that were clumped together. My personal feeling is that A.l.lubricus and A.l.infuscatus are also very close though the experts haven't said that. They supposedly IDed a specimen of A.lubricus that may represent a new taxon as well. My feelings are that A.l.infuscatus and A.l.lubricus are very similar. I will hold to that until mtDNA anyalsis have been done to paint a better picture of the species.

A.l.cowelsi and A.l.infuscatus are definitely similar and I have often laughed at the folks who tried to pass off the former with an increased price tag. The pictures were simply A.l.infuscatus with a black head. Most A.l.infuscatus do not have an all black head in US collections.

Again, forgive my mis info there. Im tired as hell. Im on my 12th strait day of working ; ;

BTW, Chance, I was just fooling with ya. I am sure ive posted breeding info here in the past if you want to try and do a search. If not then I will write you an email when time permits.

Take care,
Jeremy

Hah, I didn't take offense. I'm the first to admit that my interests change about as often as my shorts. It's a tough situation when you've made the solemn vow to your partner that you won't get any new critters without raising the money by selling others first. I'll get a new project in mind and have to raise the funds somehow... Anyway.

I guess I need to study up on my Aspidelaps taxonomy a bit more. I didn't know there was a possible other ssp. With the bigger and bigger push in taxonomy to be able to quantify every species based on DNA rather than simple morphology (that little fact that the canebrake folks hate! lol), I'm betting we'll be seeing more and more species shifted around. Of course, that gets a lot of people's hair up because they've already learned the previous Latin and then have to go learn a whole new set. It irritates me as much as anyone having to re-memorize newly redescribed species, but I fully understand that the science of taxonomy is changing, and with that change many species too will change or be tossed out altogether. No sense hanging on to something for dear life just for the sake of it. End of taxonomy rant.

I'll try to dig back through the forums and see if I can find your old posts. Something about the way this search feature works here though makes it a bit difficult to navigate very successfully. If you do get the time, I'd appreciate a bit of insight into the tidbits you gathered.
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Chance Duncan
www.rivervalleyexotics.com

Any thoughts on the striped infuscatus that one sees? Incubation aberration, genetic, etc?
Also, curious if the jumbo infuscatus female was one that I got from you, Jeremy.
Andy
(I'm tacking on a lubricus pic to show off)

Wait a min, I recognize that worm!!! Andy, how are you and more importantly how are those lubricus?!?!?!?!

As for the jumbo infuscatus, nope, the one you got was my female lubricus (who was also huge!!!) The jumbo infuscatus was an animal I had a long time ago that was popped out looking exactly like a lubricus. The rest of the cultch was more typical infuscatus. I ended up trading her for some other snakes and regret it everyday ; ;

Its nice to see that little bugger. Thanks for the pic! Drop me a line when you get a chance.

Take care,
Jeremy

As for the striped variety you see, they are simply abarent.

Because there was a discussion of it down in the thread, I thought I'd go ahead and update with what I've since found out. Baldwin and Broadley formally dropped A. l. infuscatus altogether and now all Namibian Aspidelaps are A. l. cowlesi. They even suggested new common names for the two subspecies: coral shield cobra and Nimibian shield cobra. The paper can be cited here:

Broadley, D.G. and A.S. Baldwin, 2006. Taxonomy, Natural History, and Zoogeography of the Southern African Shield Cobras, Genus Aspidelaps
(Serpentes, Elapidae). Herpetological Natural History, 9 (2): 163 –176.

So it appears that A. l. infuscatus is no more. Neat reading though. I found this information on a thread here:
http://www.sareptiles.co.za/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3311

There's a picture of a monstrous female Namibian there as well!
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Chance Duncan
www.rivervalleyexotics.com