Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi guys, I got this cyclura hybrid from Glades Herps a couple of weeks ago. Does anyone know what percentage of Lewisi is present in their breeders? This is an 07' lewisi cross, he is starting to show some blue (mostly on his head). Also, any tips on taming him would be greatly appreciated, very fiesty (you can see it in his eye, lol).

Beautiful little guy! The Rhino I just got, is from Glades Herps. They have top notch animals!My guy is fiesty as well, best thing to do in my opinion is just keep holding him daily. Good luck with him!
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"The difference between 'involvement' and 'commitment' is like an egg-and-ham breakfast: the chicken was 'involved' - the pig was 'committed'."

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I too have a glades cayman, and from what I have been told by creditable people that the caymans sold in the US pet hobby are only sold as a "hybrid" as a formality. The truth is zoos that breed pure lewesi have been crossing them into the excisting line of crosses for 20 years now and some have probably even been seceretly breed, by zoo keepers INTO the "hybrid lines", ...have you seen Rob's Caymans next to pics of pure lewesi animals? there is little difference, if any at all. their as close to pure as you can tell without a microscope! good luck with your lil dinosauer.

The Glades cayman cyclura are not anything close to pure. They look nothing like pure lewisi. The first pic is of a 87.5% lewisi, the second pic is a possible pure caymanensis for a reference.

caymanensis

Two male caymanensis squaring off

You will notice that the "closer to pure" lewisi's will have no banding on the body. Baby lewisi will loose all banding by 6 months to a year. See next pic

1 week old 87 % lewisi female

87+% lewisi female 9 months later....banding almost completely gone.

That is not completely true. A long time ago zoos that could even get them to breed were not working with "pure" lewisi". The whole zoo line and animals in the pet trade were, are, all hybrid. That has recently changed now that a handful of zoos have more recently gotten blues from BIRP. Fred know exactly who has them. The older hybrids have been located, tested and no longer bred. Point is the zoos blood line was never pure lewisi until just recently.
I agree with Mark except for the chevron part.
This is Billy, the biggest Lewisi on Grand Cayman just after a fight with a another male.

JF, I stand corrected. I went through some old slides of pics I took of lewisi on Grand Cayman, photoed 10 adult males and some females at the botanical gardens, and a few had those black chevrons. This is a pic of a pure female. Be easy on me!

Ah no worries, I remember a thread a long time ago, you werent in it, that was one of the ways to tell you had a lewisi. The person had never even seen a pure lewisi. They have chevrons. Hows "Punk"? He should have been mine Is he getting nicer. So far my cornuta is pretty nice this year. I worked a lot with him this summer

jf

LOL, Punk is still a punk. He is the one on the inside of the cage. LT is on the outside, because I can carry and move him so he can go out in the yard and get excercise. Punk will chase me around the yard and terrorize and taunt all the other male cyclura. It's actually quite funny. He does however not have that angry psycho hatred that one of my rhinos once had. It's kind of like he just wants to bully everyone.

I'm one of the few "private breeders" that ever had pure lewisi. I also had hybrids which I didn't know were mixed that were bred into the pure lewisi. Rob's lizards look NOTHING like pure lewisi. Lewesi have a much more pointed head and LOTS of other characteristics that make them look very different. It's a story too long to get into here regarding the c.b. of lewisi and involved myself, Life Fellowship, and a number of Zoo's. There are NO lewisi that are pure now in private hands. My last male, "Godzilla" died several years ago on loan at Gladys Porter Zoo.....TC

So would that make Robert Ehrigs all hybrids? I thought he had at least 1 pure Lewisi that he was breeding.

And Blair's Big Blue as well, eh?

I don't remember David ever saying Blue was ever a pure bred. I have two from him, a male and female from 1999 and 2001 respectfully.

I'm actually on his waiting list. He claims 97% purity in his lines now so he must have or had pure animals at one time. He says the babies aren't your average little brown lizards we see all the time but are born light blue/green color like the 100% pictured on blueiguana.ky . These are so close you'd need DNA to prove any difference at all. Reflected by the price- $1200 EACH! Naturally, I would be looking to breed paying such a premium, though I would be happy with 90%. I have one of Blair's "Big Blue X Mrs. Blue" yearlings now, hoping it's female as a 97% would be an awesome sight for a big boy lizard.
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Tree hugging is the truest form of self preservation.

G.I.S.Artbiz SLC,Utah

I had pure Lewisi back in the mid 90's. The bloodlines were confirmed through DNA testing buy Texas A&M. I hatched my first clutch in 1997.

I have pictures but I need to figure out a way to scan them. No digital cameras back then.

Generally, 2 years is the magic number. In my experience, they normally remain flighty until the reach 2 years, and then one day they just remarkably become tame. There are some cyclura that do become calm and tame sooner, but this is not the norm.

I don't have much faith in the whole percentage of pure lewisi issue but when I acquired Azul almost 10 years ago I was told that he was 87plus% lewisi. He is an attractive lizard but looks different than photos that I've seen of pure lewisi from Grand Cayman. In the photo of him at a year old you can see how his chevrons have almost disappeared, while in the photo of him as a young adult you can see that the chevrons come out when he is very warm or fired up about something. When he is cool or stressed he is very dark. He also has a shorter head and narrower snout than most pure lewisi that I've seen in photos.

Regardless, he has a very interesting personality and has been a joy to keep the last 10 years. He is one of the few lizards that purposely seeks out human interaction and attention and will climb onto my chest while I am at the computer, settle in, and throw his front legs back for a nap. He's also bitten me on a couple of occasions, quite unexpectedly, so he is not trustworthy and I'm careful handling him. He's still one of my top two favorite, "keep forever" pets along with Bubbles, my adult female Rhino.

This lizard is definitely a high percentage lewisi and is one of the better hybrids I've seen. The biggest difference is the short face and thick spines down the back. Other than that it looks remarkably like a lewisi......TC

Thanks, Tom, I appreciate your comments. I didn't receive Azul right from the breeder, Chris Domino, but when I contacted him he was not very willing to share any information with me about his geneology. I got more information about Chris's animals from other people with Cyclura interests back then.

Many of us feel that, even tho he is a hybrid, Azul is a great ambassador for the IRCF and BIRP and he's attended many large shows helping fundraise for the GC Blues. He attends almost every educational exhibit that I do helping to educate people about the decline of the Cyclura species. He even has a fan club that comes to see him every year at Reptile Fest in Chicago! LOL Even though he is a brat I hope that he is with me for a very long time.

I had the real deal and if he were mine I'd keep him. He's a great looking lizard.....TC

By the way talking about longivity, Godzilla one of my pure lizards was in captivity on Grand Cayman owned by a cab driver, Mr. Ira Thompson for well over 25 years. He died in this country after another close to 20 years of captivity and was an adult lizard when Ira caught him. Who knows how old he really was perhaps 60 even 70 years old. The point is they live a very long time a fact which has saved several species from extinction including lewisi......TC

Why do they live such a long time?

I guess because they can..lol...I'm not sure but it probably has to do with a long term survival strategy of the species because they're insular lizards. Their natural habitat is hit by natural disasters frequently along with many other potential threats to their survival in which longivity would be beneficial.....TC

Tom, I was thinking that too. another reason maybe that they have no natural predators, they were the top of the food chain and the largest native animal on the island.
I have seen pics of godzilla but towards the end. His mouth was torn up by a female and he was pretty skinny. I bet he was impressive as hell in his day. GP Zoo have his sperm still I think. Maybe his bloodline will continue some day
jf

By the way Que-e[not sure of spelling] was a female I owned bred many times to Godzilla was the lizard the station at Grand Cayman is named for. Now like Paul Harvey used to say"now you know the rest of the story". Life Fellowship owned her first and I later purchased all their stock and added them to mine....TC

God, I hope so as he was magnificient. I had another male, not as well known, but equally magnificient I called Mr. Blue because he was without question the "bluest one" I've seen and that includes lizards on Grand Cayman.....TC

Gotta see him

Bro, I have slides of Godzilla not pics I can post. That's how long I had him. Right now I'm in the process of turning thousands of slides into disks. When I do I have some UNREAL stuff from back in the day....Not just Cyclura but unreal stuff from all over the world. I have one BLUE GPT slide that makes any designer Blue Chondro today look ugly. It was in Thailand and I offered $5,000 for it in 1983. Dang wouldn't sell it.....TC

Wow, awsome info and photos guys. Jiffy that is a beauty you have there, mine is about a year old or so, his stripes still seem pretty bold i guess. You can see the photo's of this baby's parents on gherp.com in the gallery. They definently look to have a much lower percent of Lewisi than any of these pics ive seen here.

Tom Godzilla was your cyclura? Dang! That lizard was HUGE and AWESOME. I helped out, when he had surgery on his tail, no words can describe how amazing he was in person. I remember when Colette would go into his pen, and boy did he have a fit about it. I recall they brought a "pure" female from "Philly zoo" if I'm correct. She was very pretty, and had a slight yellowish ting to her, but she was super skittish. And I remember they had a young female about 2ft or a bit larger, that was never paired because she was too small, but she did lay 2-3 eggs without ever being bred. Last time I visited, they had hatched 2 blues from another pairing, everybody always said that GODZILLA was too old and slow to breed, it was a dam shame because he was solid blue with those piercing red eyes. I recall the resident vet was experimenting on trying to keep iguana semen alive long enough to some how try to artifically insemenate them.

These are some old photos I took from Cycluras at GPZ.

YUP, Godzilla was mine. It realy saddened me to hear of his demise.....TC

Here is a shot of your other hybrid, who is wintering here. Such a SWEET man. Dunno, I might actually like him more than Azul! Then again I could be biased because he is actually living with me.

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Cindy
PHFaust

Email Cindy

Land of the Outcasts!

ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS....TC

Tom, Osama is an attractive lizard in his own right but not so attractive as far as lewisi hybrids rate. The real thing that he has going for him is that he is as sweet and calm as they come and is a great educational animal. I had an abundance of males here so Cindy gets to keep him over the winter and, if I have a generous moment before next April, maybe she will keep him forever! LOL It won't be the first time Cindy ended up with one of my surplus Cyclura. Here's a photo of Osama taken a couple of years ago with his previous owner.

>>Tom, Osama is an attractive lizard in his own right but not so attractive as far as lewisi hybrids rate. The real thing that he has going for him is that he is as sweet and calm as they come and is a great educational animal. I had an abundance of males here so Cindy gets to keep him over the winter and, if I have a generous moment before next April, maybe she will keep him forever! LOL It won't be the first time Cindy ended up with one of my surplus Cyclura. Here's a photo of Osama taken a couple of years ago with his previous owner.
>>

OHHH please feel generous! Actually I was thinking I might try to turn a green blue with some food coloring.

Osama is a WONDERFUL tempermented male and has been great for my educational program as I can use him where I cant use my tempermental rhino.
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Cindy
PHFaust

Email Cindy

Land of the Outcasts!

Will this do? Here's my new project. Isn't it amazing what food coloring will do?..lol..Actually this is genetic and exceedingly beautiful.....TC

WOW! You're joking right?
That would be an awesome looking 6 footer! Do they change with their mating colors?
BTW.. I got to meet Godzilla back in '98 at your place in Bushnell.
THAT was an awesome kritter. You had the albinos too. You get all the killer lizards! No fair!
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Tree hugging is the truest form of self preservation.

G.I.S.Artbiz SLC,Utah

Hopefully this works. I found pictures of the male and eggs hatching that I was able to scan. Notice the long snout as compared to other Cyclura. These were by far the most incredible animals that I've ever had the pleasure of working with.

that is incredible. What's the story on him; did you already say? ...I'm losing my place in this thread. Did you not hang on to him or...?
This is my Blair (From Big Blue X Mistress Blue) as you can see, he looks very Cuban (to me at least). And he's only getting cuban-er... rusty reds, bright red on the bottom of his trunk and throat especially the past month. I love him. But he don't seem that blue to me.