Reptile & Amphibian Forums

When you breed a Dwarf to a super Dwarf...the babies are ? Dwarf and super Dwarf ...if so can you tell the differance?
Kevin

The babies are neither, they are a cross. A friend of mine has a 14ft (I think maybe 13ft) Jampea/superdwarf cross.
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John Light

I've seen 10ft cb super dwarf animals that were 2 yrs old. The reason these animals stayed small in the wild is because of an adaptation not an evolution. Once these animals are started and fed appropriately, they grow like most retics. I bet in teh next few years we will be seeing super dwarfes that are over 14ft long (I guess that is smaller than an 18-20ft giant but not what I consider a dwarf).
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Josh & Krysty Hutto
J&K Reptiles

Various Ball Pythons, boas, dogs, cats, fish, an amel tiger retic female, a couple sulcatas and a few other odds and ends.

a BAD dog is MADE not bred, support the American Pit Bull Terrier as the greatest breed of dogs on Earth!!!!!

It's part evolution and part food availability (which over time is what causes their size evolution). When all the adult animals coming in from the wild are the same size this is their 'natural' size. If you take that animal and feed it ten or twenty times the amount it normally would in the wild then obviously it's not going to look 'natural' anymore. It's the same reason there are no burms or retics cruising around in the wild obscenely fat, we do that for them. They aren't supposed to look like blood pythons, they're slender bodied snakes naturally.

On top of this there are a LOT of animals being sold as CBB Superdwarfs that are either outright mainland normals, some kind of cross or CH animals of unknown background. Add this to the large amount of people that spread stories based on hearsay rather than actual experience and there's a lot of misinformation out there.

I've got 1.1 2004 CB Superdwarfs and another 1.2 2005 CB group. My 2004 female laid her second clutch for me a month ago. None of these animals are over seven feet. I openly admit I feed them normal sized meals once every 7-10 days. I'm not power feeding them just to see how big they can get.

The point is that they do have the genetics to stay relatively small. It's possible for people that don't want a gigantic retic to keep them. I've attached a recent picture of my 2005 male for size reference.

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www.dbherp.com

I have 1.1 super dwarf X Jamp crosses. These snakes are five years old. They have not been power fed and are currently fed 5 to 6 pound rabbits every 14 to 16 days (though they would really like to be fed daily ). The female is around 13 feet long and the male is about 12 feet long. It seems to me that the males are much closer in size to the females in at least this 'dwarf" cross. They are around 50 to 60 lbs at present. Again as others have said, they are smaller than mainland or insular varieties such as the Sulawesi's, but they are still big snakes. They are however, great snakes to work with and I believe that one day the size alone will not be the driving force behind owning one of the "smaller' insular varieties of retics.

Glad someone responded with intelligence. Thanks Dave.

Just look at the size comparisons at birth. SDs are hatching 1/4 the weight of a mainland. If they could reach 10-12 feet and keeping the same ratio, mainlands could reach 40-48 feet. I think whoever you saw with a 10ft SD at 2 yrs you better check who they got it from and its genetics. There are way to many notworthy SD breeders out there like Dave, Bob, Mike, Garrick who all have their adults quoted at 6-7 feet. You think they are all mistaken?

I didn't say it's not possible to keep them small, it is. It is also possible to keep a mainland under 12ft by feeding it one appropriately sized prey item every 10 days. It probably won't breed at that size, or at least consistantly but my arguement is that these "dwarf" locality animals can get big (not the 20ft giants but big). As far as the animals I quoted, they came from a very very reputable breeder that is on your list and these things were tiny at 65g when they arrived. So unless they were just extreme runts, I would bet the are true super dwarfs that were power fed (he also has a few others from that same group that were fed on the 7-10 day routine that are less than 5ft).
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Josh & Krysty Hutto
J&K Reptiles

Various Ball Pythons, boas, dogs, cats, fish, an amel tiger retic female, a couple sulcatas and a few other odds and ends.

a BAD dog is MADE not bred, support the American Pit Bull Terrier as the greatest breed of dogs on Earth!!!!!