Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi guys,

Next week I'll recieve 2 new mandarins for my collection, both captive bred.

I know the Sichuan locality are quite easy to tell apart, but whats with the Hunan, Yunan localities and eastern Chinese ones.

Can anybody help me with that?

Sichuans are more yellow and light gray. Hunan are generally heavily tipped in red within the gray body banding. Yunnan are diamond shaped down the back (and very under rated IMHO). There are Vietnamese ones to, which retain a nice yellow and are bigger from what I've seen. A poster here has a line of Viets that replace the yellow with white as they age.

You can see some of the differences here
http://www.zoocon.com/Herps/Elaphe/