Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Here is a few pics of my spilotes. First one is my male next two are my females. I need to take mine outside and get some outdoor pics, they really look nice. But I am to afraid they will end up in a tree.

They look great. I especially like that last, really dark one. What a beauty!

He is my favorite to. He was skinny when I got him a year ago. I think out of all the w/c snakes spilotes are the easiest to fatten back up.

Interesting comment about fattening back up. Many of the imports are so thin I have been afraid to work with them, assuming bad parasites or too stressed to thrive, but you guys are doing great work getting them over the travel/import stress. Thanks for posting, I have rarely seen such dark ones. I assume most of the Spilotes we see are from Guiana? One of you experts ought to submit an article for publishing, a lot of us know very little about these interesting snakes. vic h.

All five of my imports are from Guyana. They all were thin when i received them and all of them survived with no problems. I really like the dark male and I have not yet to find a femal to match him with.

Another thing I always here about are there bad attitudes. Four out of the five of mine are very hadleable. You just can't restrict them or make sudden movements. I just notice they are very terrtitorial when taking them out of there cage. They are actually my favorite snake to hande just because they are so active and curious. I don't know what other opinions are on handling and attitudes of these snakes but I would like to here.

I belive the guayana and surinam animals tend to fade to black towards the tail, are generaly larger, and are the most common imports now a days.

Temperment wise, from the limited experience I've had with them less than 10, I think Ken summed it up pretty well.

Great snakes in my opinion
Nate

i was thinking the same thing re: the darkness of recent imports. where are all the high yellows? btw, dick bartlett wrote a good article about this species in the august/2000 reptiles even showing pics of the coveted mexican strain. shown below is my 04 female [top] & 03 male. although cb & will greedily grab mice out of my hand, they still remain territorial while inside their enclosure. they have never intentionally bit me but the male will sometimes head butt me to drive me out if he's in a bad mood.

I've noticed that as well. I usually see a few at the Hamburg Pa show but they seem to mostly to have the surinam/guyayna look. Vivid yellow near the head and neck that muddies up at mid body with the second half being mostly black. I used to have a large speckled speciman that was incredible. The scales of the first half all had yellow centers. The second half was jet black. I recall alot of similar animals in the classifieds back then, maybe 5 or 6 years ago. Here's a typical S. American speciman I picked up at a show.

yeah, i had one of them once myself. i used to call them 50/50's because of their appearance. it was almost like 2 different snakes had been spliced together. later on i decided i didn't care for that look & sold her off. btw, that bartlett article i mentioned above shows a pic of a nearly 100% speckled animal from guatemala. it's pretty & all but it's still the mexicanus spilotes pullatus that i'd love to get my hands on! they are the best of show bar none!

nm

Four out of my five are from Surinam and the fifth (small female) I'm just not sure, but she does look like more of a CA strain than SA. Other than ticks, I had no problems with parasites and they all had decent body weight and good appetites to begin with.

As for attitudes and handleability, I totally agree with you Ken. They are all very, very active, curious and confident and typically will not strike unless they feel they are being directly threatened. Even then, it's often a headbutt and not an open mouth strike. With other snakes, it seems that just picking them up is a direct threat, but with the Spilotes, you have to cross a certain threshold to get them riled. But then they seem to calm down again once the threat is over. Territorial is another good way to describe them and in about 1.5 years of keeping them, I would say all the bites I've received have been either getting them out of their cages or pulling them out of a feeding tub while they were still in feeding mode. The nice thing about them is that they have relatively small teeth, so bites aren't really all that bad.

I'm with everyone else. That black one is really nice. They all look like they have plenty to eat. Awesome snakes.